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WAV
What is a WAV file?
Uncompressed audio. Perfect quality, enormous files — the working format in every studio.
What WAV is
WAV is a container: a wrapper that holds streams encoded by something else. It is used for editing and archiving.
The extension is .wav, and the full name is Waveform Audio. Both matter less than what the file can hold, which is what the rest of this page is about.
Where WAV came from
Microsoft published it in 1991. The specification is RIFF WAVE.
A format that has been readable for that long is a format worth trusting with something you want back in ten years.
The specification is published, but by its owner
It is written down and implementable, though the vendor decides what the next version looks like. In practice that is enough for the file to keep opening; it is not enough to be sure of it.
Nothing is thrown away
WAV stores its content exactly. Saving it again changes nothing, so it can be opened, edited and re-saved as often as you like without accumulating damage — which is what makes it a working format rather than a delivery one.
Colour it can describe
Up to 32 bits per channel.
More than eight bits per channel is what stops a gradient from stepping when it is edited, which is why it matters in a working file and rarely in a finished one.
WAV is a box, and the codec is what is in it
It usually holds PCM. This is the distinction behind most "why will this not play" questions: two files with the same extension can contain entirely different encodings, and a player that refuses one may be perfectly happy with the other.
It also explains why changing container is often fast and lossless while changing codec is neither. Moving the same stream into a different box rewrites the box; re-encoding rewrites the picture.
How many audio channels
Up to 18. Two covers stereo and is what almost everything is; more than two is surround, and it is the part most likely to be folded down when converting to a format that does not define it.
What opens WAV
Audacity, Adobe Audition and Reaper read it, and so do most programs of the same kind.
If a file will not open, the format is rarely the problem — it is more often that the program predates it. Converting to something older is the reliable way past that, and it is what the rest of this site is for.
Opening it in a browser
Every current browser reads it.
That makes it a safe thing to put on a page or attach to a message without wondering what the other end has installed.
What it can carry besides the content
WAV can hold document properties.
Whether any of it survives a conversion depends entirely on the target, and the honest answer is usually "some of it".
It is a working format
WAV is meant to be opened and changed. Keep the file in this format for as long as the work is going on, and export from it whenever a finished copy is needed.
What goes wrong with it
The recurring complaints: the files are large for what they contain.
None of these is a reason to avoid the format. They are the things worth knowing before you are surprised by one, which is a different claim and a more useful one.
The facts, in one place
| Extension | .wav, .wave |
|---|---|
| Media type | audio/wav, audio/x-wav |
| Published by | Microsoft |
| First published | 1991 |
| Specification | RIFF WAVE |