MP4 to WAV Converter

The sound in an MP4 is almost always compressed, usually as AAC. When you want to work on that sound, for example to clean up the voice in a screen recording, to edit an interview, to add music under it or to give it to a transcription service, an uncompressed WAV is the safest starting point: every editor opens it, and editing does not add another layer of compression. Video editors and audio editors such as Audacity, Adobe Audition, Premiere, DaVinci Resolve, Final Cut and GarageBand all accept it.

For a video project, keep the original sample rate or choose 48 kHz, the standard rate in film and video, so the audio lines up with the picture without resampling. For speech, such as meetings, lectures, voice notes and interviews, choose 16 kHz and mono: transcription and subtitle services expect it, and the file becomes much smaller, about 1.9 MB per minute. Music videos sound best kept in stereo at their own rate.

WAV keeps the sound uncompressed, which makes it the right choice for editing and for services that ask for it, but it is large: about 10.6 MB per minute at 44.1 kHz stereo. If you only want to listen to the audio of a video, or send it to someone, MP4 to MP3 gives a far smaller file of similar quality for listening.