Convert WAV to MP3 or MP3 to WAV

By  on  

Boy I would have loved this post a decade ago when I was ripping CDs from my local library.  The memory is actually quite hilarious:  I would request 100 CDs at a time from the local library system, pick up however had been delivered at 10 a.m. that morning, and return them at 5 p.m. that day.  I had a giggle with the librarian in those days but the real giggle was the fact that the WAV files were bloating up my hard drive.

The following simple command would convert those WAV files to MP3s:

ffmpeg -i song.wav song.mp3

Of course converting from MP3 to WAV would simply be swapping the extensions in the command above.

ffmpeg is a marvel of a utility.  Video conversion, audio conversion, and probably the key to world peace.  Thank you ffmpeg!

Recent Features

  • By
    Create a CSS Flipping Animation

    CSS animations are a lot of fun; the beauty of them is that through many simple properties, you can create anything from an elegant fade in to a WTF-Pixar-would-be-proud effect. One CSS effect somewhere in between is the CSS flip effect, whereby there's...

  • By
    Facebook Open Graph META Tags

    It's no secret that Facebook has become a major traffic driver for all types of websites.  Nowadays even large corporations steer consumers toward their Facebook pages instead of the corporate websites directly.  And of course there are Facebook "Like" and "Recommend" widgets on every website.  One...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Basic AJAX Requests Using MooTools 1.2

    AJAX has become a huge part of the modern web and that wont change in the foreseeable future. MooTools has made AJAX so simple that a rookie developer can get their dynamic pages working in no time. Step 1: The XHTML Here we define two links...

  • By
    CSS calc

    CSS is a complete conundrum; we all appreciate CSS because of its simplicity but always yearn for the language to do just a bit more. CSS has evolved to accommodate placeholders, animations, and even click events. One problem we always thought...

Discussion

  1. Mark Progano

    If you’re on a mac and you want to do it on your machine, after installing X-Code,type in brew install ffmpeg

  2. If you also want to edit your audio first, Audacity has been a trusty companion for years now. Looks like arse, works like a charm. http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

  3. MaxArt

    Back in the days, the best mp3 converter was LAME.
    I don’t know if something better came out in the meanwhile, but it’s a highly customizable multiplatform tool.

    It looks like ffmpeg can use the libmp3lame audio codec, I guess it would be nice to know how to use it.

  4. yes, LAME pretty much was the bee’s knees.

  5. Kimomat

    Great tool! A gulp package is also available: https://github.com/cab/gulp-ffmpeg

  6. I have usef ffmpeg for converting images to video. very useful for that.

  7. No joke.. 5 years ago, it would have been such a savior.

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!