WAV files can be opened by almost all audio programs, mainly because they’ve been around for over thirty years and because they’re so widely respected.Īn MP4, sometimes known as an MPEG4, is a multimedia file that is used to store video or audio data. Unsurprisingly, WAV files tend to be large in size because they’ve not been compressed in any way - they are typically over ten times the size of an MP3 file. WAV files are used by musicians to record music, with this format providing a much richer sound than other compressed file formats. WAV uses PCM (Pulse Code Modulation) to encode the audio data by segmenting it into small pieces, and does so without any compression this means the process doesn’t impact the audio quality in any way. Part of the appeal of WAV files is that they’re exceptionally high quality because they are uncompressed and lossless. Despite being developed in 1991, it is still a popular file format today.

The WAV file is one of the oldest types of audio file in existence today and was developed by Microsoft and IBM. It's important to note that macOS does not ship with an MP3 encoder by default, and hence you might face some difficulties while converting mp3 files from the Terminal window without a third-party encoder.A WAV file also goes by the name of a WAVE or Waveform audio file. This converted my WAV file 'Original.wav' into an MP4 file 'Converted.mp4'. If you omit the -o option, afconvert will automatically pick a name and extension based on the other inputs.Īn example of this command in use is as follows: afconvert -f M4AF -d LEI32 Original. It is necessary to specify both the file format and the codec. The general format for the afconvert command is as follows: afconvert -f FORMAT -d CODEC SOURCEFILE Control-click on the main folder and select New Terminal at Folder. To do this the easy way, open up the folder which contains the file you want to convert. Related: Fun and Cool Mac Terminal Commands to Try They are many complicated uses of this command, but we'll be focusing on simply converting one audio file format to another. The afconvert command allows you to do this. Audio files can also be converted from one format to another from within Terminal.

Wav to mp4 mac