June 30, 2025/ Published by Zak Ozbourne / , / Leave your thoughts

🎙 WAV vs MP3 for Podcasts – The Truth Behind the Upload Drama

So you’re uploading your podcast and suddenly it feels like you’ve hit a brick wall. Maybe your platform’s throwing errors, maybe the upload takes longer than your last existential crisis. Nine times out of ten, the problem isn’t the platform — it’s that you’re trying to upload a chunky, full-fat WAV file.

Let’s clear the air: WAVs aren’t the villain, but they aren’t your podcast’s best friend either — especially once it hits Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever your show lives.

🥊 WAV vs MP3: The Punch-Up

WAV

  • 🎛 Uncompressed, lossless audio
  • 🧱 Huge file sizes (600MB+ for 1 hour)
  • 🎙 Great for editing and mastering
  • 🚫 Not practical for distribution

MP3

  • 📦 Compressed, lossy format (but smartly so)
  • 💾 Tiny file sizes (~50–100MB for 1 hour)
  • 🚀 Perfect for upload and streaming
  • 👂 Virtually no audible difference when exported properly

🎧 But I Want the Best Quality, Bro

You should start with WAV files when recording and editing — that’s your raw, high-res material. But once it’s done, your goal isn’t to upload an audiophile’s dream — it’s to make it streamable.

Here’s the kicker:

Platforms like Spotify compress everything anyway.
Whether you upload a pristine WAV or a clean 320kbps MP3, it gets transcoded into 128–192kbps AAC, optimized for streaming.

You won’t win the audio quality battle uploading WAVs — you’ll just make the war harder on yourself (and your bandwidth).

💬 “But I Can Hear the Difference…”

No, you can’t.
Not after compression, platform processing, and whatever $29 Bluetooth speaker your audience is listening on.

Even if you think you can, the reality is:

  • A properly exported 320kbps MP3 sounds nearly identical to a WAV file once it’s streamed.
  • The bottleneck isn’t your export — it’s the platform and your guest’s mic quality.

🎙 Remote Guests Make It Worse

If your guest is remote and recorded through a web call (Zoom, Skype, etc.), you’re already starting behind the quality line:

  • Web calls are heavily compressed
  • Noise reduction and echo filters mess with audio fidelity
  • You’re capturing low-quality sound — even if you save it in WAV

To level up your sound, try a double-ender setup: each speaker records locally, then you merge them in post. That’s when WAV makes sense. Otherwise? Waste of upload space.

✅ TL;DR: What You Should Be Doing

  • ✅ Record/edit in WAV
  • ✅ Export final mix to 320kbps MP3
  • ✅ Upload that MP3
  • ✅ Let Spotify do its compression thing
  • ✅ Sleep easy knowing nobody can tell the difference

🎧 Want to Hear It Done Right?

Looking for a podcast in the adult industry that nails the sound and the substance?

Check out Adult Site Broker Talk — hosted by industry veteran Bruce Friedman, this podcast features interviews with the movers, shakers, and mischief-makers behind the adult biz.

Insightful, consistent, and a great example of how to do remote podcasting right (even if Bruce sometimes forgets to switch to MP3 😅).

🎙 Visit Adult Site Broker Talk