Why Do This in Your Browser?
Most audio compression questions are size-driven: a podcast episode that's 200MB needs to fit a hosting plan's bitrate budget; an audiobook chapter sits at twice the size it should be because the original was recorded uncompressed; a voice memo needs to ship under a 25MB email cap. The compression math is decades old, and every desktop audio tool wraps the same encoders this browser tool does — LAME for MP3, FAAC for AAC, Opus for Opus.
FFmpeg.wasm bundles all three encoders. The tool runs the same bitrate/VBR/quality math as desktop FFmpeg, locally, without uploads. Pick a target — typical voice content lands at 64–96kbps mono in Opus or 96–128kbps stereo MP3 — and the compression runs in seconds for typical files.
How It Works
Three output formats with sensible defaults. MP3 (LAME via FFmpeg): bitrate-based, VBR with quality 0–9 or fixed bitrate 32–320kbps. AAC: similar bitrate range, slightly more efficient than MP3 at low bitrates, defaults to MP4 container. Opus: most efficient at low bitrates (32–96kbps for voice), defaults to OGG container. Each format exposes either 'pick a bitrate' or 'pick a quality preset' modes.
Presets handle the common cases: Podcast Voice (64kbps mono Opus), Podcast Music (128kbps stereo MP3), Audiobook (96kbps mono MP3), Music Stream (192kbps stereo MP3), Hi-Quality (320kbps stereo MP3), Voice Memo (32kbps mono Opus). Custom mode exposes the underlying knobs.
Tip: If you need to extract audio from a video first, the Audio Extractor tool pulls the audio track without re-encoding when possible. For format conversion without a bitrate change, use the Audio Converter instead.
Common Use Cases
How We Compare
Honest read on free, paid, and self-hosted options for this kind of job: