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Convert · AUP3 to WAV · lossless

Convert .aup3 to WAV online

Take an Audacity 3 project straight to an uncompressed WAV, in the browser, with no encoder in the path and nothing uploaded.

Drop your project here
or click to choose · parsed locally in this tab
AUP3AUP4WAV 16-bit
Ready — 0 bytes uploadedFile API · Web Worker · SQLite in WebAssembly
Direct answer

How do I convert an .aup3 file to WAV?

Drop the .aup3 file on this page. An Audacity 3 project is an SQLite database that stores audio as raw sample blocks rather than as a stream, so the page reads those blocks, lays the clips out on their tracks exactly as Audacity saved them, mixes the tracks to stereo, and writes a RIFF/WAVE file at the project's own sample rate — as 16-bit PCM or 32-bit float, with no encoder in the path. Nothing is uploaded and Audacity does not need to be installed. If Audacity is on the machine, its own Export Audio command does the same job with realtime effects rendered.

STEP 01

Drop the .aup3 project.

STEP 02

Confirm the tracks and play the mix.

STEP 03

Choose 16-bit PCM or 32-bit float and download the WAV.

STEP 04

Pro exports each track as its own WAV in a single ZIP.

Why it matters

Convert .aup3 to WAV online

Use WAV when the audio has somewhere else to go: another editor, a mastering engineer, a podcast host that re-encodes anyway, or an archive that should not carry a lossy generation. Because Audacity keeps most projects in 32-bit float internally, a float WAV is a byte-faithful handover of what the project holds; 16-bit PCM is the universally playable version of the same mix.

On a Mac? Audacity's own recovery utility only gained a macOS build in January 2026, and it is still a terminal program that asks for about four times the project's size in free space. Everything on this page runs in the browser instead, on any operating system.

The format itself

What survives the conversion, and what does not

Everything that shapes the samples themselves is carried over: clip positions and trims, amplitude envelopes, track volume and pan, mute and solo, and the sample format each block was stored in. Multi-clip tracks are rendered with the gaps between clips as silence, exactly as Audacity plays them.

What is not carried over is anything that is not part of the stored audio: realtime and master-track effect chains, label tracks, and time tracks. Those live in the project as instructions to be applied at playback, and rendering them would mean reimplementing Audacity's effect engine. The page reports how many effects a project has when it opens, so you know whether the export is the whole story.

Time-stretched clips are the one approximation. Audacity 3.4 added per-clip stretching, and a stretched clip is written here across its stretched span without resampling. The number of stretched clips is reported after a mix so you can check them.

16-bit output is rounded, not dithered, with the same 32768 scale Audacity reads and writes 16-bit blocks with, so a project recorded at 16-bit comes back bit for bit. Audacity's own export dithers — shaped, by default — as soon as an envelope, a volume change, a mixdown or a 32-bit float block alters the samples; the AUP4 to WAV page sets out when that happens and why the two files then differ in their last bit.

Carried over
Clip offsets, trims, envelopes, track volume, pan, mute, solo
Dither
None — rounded with Audacity's 32768 scale; Audacity's export dithers (shaped) once a mix changes the samples
Not rendered
Realtime effects, master-track effects, time tracks
Approximated
Per-clip time stretching (3.4+) — reported after each mix
Output
RIFF/WAVE, 16-bit PCM or 32-bit float, project sample rate
Multi-clip tracks
Gaps between clips are written as silence

New to the format? What an .aup4 file is, table by table — and how it differs from .aup3.

Sources

Where the facts on this page were checked. Audacity's code is cited at the tagged release it was read from.

  • Dither.cpp, Audacity 3.7.9 16-bit conversion uses one constant both ways, CONVERT_DIV16 = 1 << 15: an integer is read as n / 32768, and a float is stored as lrintf(f × 32768) clipped to −32768…32767. The two dither settings default to none (real-time) and shaped (high-quality).
  • SampleFormat.cpp, Audacity 3.7.9 gHighQualityDither starts as shaped and gLowQualityDither as none; InitDitherers() reloads both from the preferences.
  • Mix.cpp, Audacity 3.7.9 NeedsDither() decides once per mix: dither is skipped only when no resampling, mixdown to fewer channels, fractional volume, envelope or effect touches the samples and no source's effective format is wider than the output; otherwise a high-quality mixer applies the high-quality dither choice.
  • ExportPluginHelpers.cpp, Audacity 3.7.9 Every export creates its mixer with highQuality set to true, so an export that needs dither uses the high-quality choice — shaped unless the preference was changed.
Questions

Converting this file

Q. Which should I choose, 16-bit or 32-bit float?

16-bit PCM unless the file is going back into an editor. Float keeps the project's precision and any peaks above full scale, which 16-bit must clamp.

Q. Does my recording really stay private?

Yes. The project is opened with the browser's File API and parsed in a Web Worker on your own machine. Nothing about it is sent anywhere — you can disconnect from the network after the page loads and keep working.

Q. Will the audio match what I hear in Audacity?

For an unprocessed project, yes: the same samples, clip positions, trims, volume, pan and amplitude envelopes Audacity saved are used. Realtime effects and master-track effects are not rendered, so a project whose sound depends on them should be exported from Audacity instead. The page tells you how many effects a project has as soon as it opens.

Q. My project is several gigabytes. Will it work?

Any project the browser tab can hold opens and plays; exporting one larger than 256 MB is part of Pro. There is no streaming reader: the whole project is read into the tab's memory — the file bytes plus SQLite's own copy, so roughly twice the file size — with the rendered mix on top. A project of a few gigabytes therefore needs a 64-bit browser with that much memory to spare, and one the browser cannot hold fails at the open step with a message saying so; nothing opens partially.

Free to open, play and export the stereo mix for projects up to 256 MB; larger projects still open and play free. Recovery, downgrading, per-track stems and exports above that size are a one-time $19 license — no subscription, no recurring fees.

See what Pro addsGet Pro — $19