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why are my wav files soo large?

Posted: Tue Jun 05, 2012 8:47 pm
by phantom33
I'm using the recording software then exporting as a wav. it seems that for 20 minutes of record time i'm getting around 186 MB, thus not allowing me to upload the recording to the third party software anyideas?

I've tried lowering the default sample format to 16 even 8 bit with no positive results. any ideas?

Re: why are my wav files soo large?

Posted: Tue Jun 05, 2012 9:24 pm
by steve
CD quality WAV files are about 10 MB per minute.
(consider an audio CD that has a capacity of around 700 MB / 70 minutes).

Re: why are my wav files soo large?

Posted: Tue Jun 05, 2012 10:15 pm
by kozikowski
not allowing me to upload the recording to the third party software anyideas?
Which is?
I'd be really surprised if any on-line service encouraged you to push uncompressed, perfect quality, WAV files. Everybody compresses and it doesn't make any difference if you can't edit the work later, because none of it is intended to be edited later. That's why you have to keep a complete WAV library of your own work and never use MP3 for production.

Koz

Re: why are my wav files soo large?

Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2012 12:58 pm
by phantom33
kozikowski wrote:
not allowing me to upload the recording to the third party software anyideas?
Which is?
I'd be really surprised if any on-line service encouraged you to push uncompressed, perfect quality, WAV files. Everybody compresses and it doesn't make any difference if you can't edit the work later, because none of it is intended to be edited later. That's why you have to keep a complete WAV library of your own work and never use MP3 for production.

Koz
it's an in house software we use..nothing that goes "online" the software doesn't allow anything but wav's

Re: why are my wav files soo large?

Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2012 4:13 pm
by steve
phantom33 wrote:it's an in house software we use
Does it have a name and version number?
What is the exact format that you want? (for example, "16 bit (Microsoft) PCM 44.1 kHz stereo WAV")

Re: why are my wav files soo large?

Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2012 6:26 pm
by DVDdoug
I've tried lowering the default sample format to 16 even 8 bit with no positive results. any ideas?
Something's wrong, but I don't know what... Uncompressed file size is directly proportional to bit-depth, sample rate, and number of channels.

File size for uncompressed PCM (i.e. WAV) file size is a straightforward calculation- There are 8 bits per byte, so 16-bit stereo requires 2 bytes per-sample x 2 channels, or 4 bytes per sample. At a sample rate of 44.1kHz, you have 4 x 44,100 = 176,400 bytes per second of audio. (Plus a few bytes for the file header.)

Re: why are my wav files soo large?

Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2012 7:16 pm
by steve
DVDdoug wrote:File size for uncompressed PCM (i.e. WAV) file size is a straightforward calculation- There are 8 bits per byte, so 16-bit stereo requires 2 bytes per-sample x 2 channels, or 4 bytes per sample. At a sample rate of 44.1kHz, you have 4 x 44,100 = 176,400 bytes per second of audio.
= 10584000 bytes per minute. Pretty close to the "rule of thumb" 10 MB per minute.