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.
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.
Drop the .aup3 project.
Confirm the tracks and play the mix.
Choose 16-bit PCM or 32-bit float and download the WAV.
Pro exports each track as its own WAV in a single ZIP.
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.
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.
- QualitySettings.cpp, Audacity 3.7.9 — The default sample format setting offers 16-bit, 24-bit and 32-bit float and defaults to choice 2, floatSample, so a new project stores its audio as 32-bit float unless the preference was changed; the default sample rate is the audio device's optimal rate rather than a fixed value.
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. What format is an .aup3 file?
Not an audio format: an .aup3 is an SQLite 3 database. One table holds the saved project document, another the audio as blocks of raw samples — 16-bit, 24-bit or 32-bit float, with 32-bit float the default for a new project — each block up to about 1 MB. Because the samples are already uncompressed, turning a project into a WAV involves no decoding: the blocks are read, placed on the timeline, mixed, and written out behind a WAV header.
Q. My .aup3 says it is corrupted. Can I still get a WAV out of it?
Often, yes. If the project document cannot be decoded here, the page says so and shows what the recovery report can still reach. On the recovery page the surviving audio plays and exports to WAV or MP3 for free, for projects up to 256 MB: it falls back to the autosave copy when the saved document is unreadable, and blocks that were never written become silence, with the report saying where. Rebuilding a project file Audacity opens again is the Pro step.
Free to open, play and export the stereo mix for projects up to 256 MB; larger projects still open and play free, and downgrading to .aup3 is free up to the same size. Recovery, per-track stems, and exports or downgrades above that size are a one-time $19 license — no subscription, no recurring fees.
Every job an Audacity project needs
Same local-first engine, one page per task.