[chris3377]

I know this probably isn't the best forum to ask a question like this, but it is the only one I frequent, so I will try to see if anyone knows here first. Supposedly MP3 files are smaller than .WAV files right? So how come when I try to convert some huge WAV to MP3 it comes out bigger? For example, my GF wants to get into a business and they send her audio recordings of speeches made by people already in the business. One such recording is 2h30m long and 36.5MB in size. When I compressed into MP3 using Blaze Media Pro, or another program I used to have, it turns out to be 145MB in size. Almost 4 times the size!? What's going on?

[bubba966]

Isn't a WAV file about 10MB per minute? So that'd make a 2h30m WAV file be about 1.5GB in size.

Are you sure that you're starting with a WAV file? And what type/bitrate MP3 are you trying to convert to?

[srb]

10MB/minute would be for a 16bit, 44.1KHz STEREO file.

A speech recording would most likely be a MONO file, and probably recorded at a lower sampling rate, maybe as low as 11.025KHz, and at only 8bit - and still be good enough to capture voice.

At that rate, it could be 645KB per minute or about 97MB for a 150 minute file.

I can't see going much lower than that though, and if your file is only 36.5MB to start with, it sounds like there is already some compression.

Sometimes compressed files subjected to another compression algorithm can actually grow larger.

[chris3377]

I'm turning it to a 16K Hz with 128bit. Maybe it already was compressed, but the properties shows it as a WAV. I don't get it.