WAV files are generally going to be much larger than other popular audio file types, like MP3, due to the fact they are typically uncompressed (compression is supported, though). This is a common method Windows uses for storing audio and video files- like AVI- but can be used for arbitrary data as well. WAV file formats use containers to contain the audio in raw and typically uncompressed “chunks” using the Resource Interchange File Format (RIFF). RELATED: What Lossless File Formats Are & Why You Shouldn't Convert Lossy to Lossless WAV files are uncompressed lossless audio and as such can take up quite a bit of space, coming in around 10 MB per minute with a maximum file size of 4 GB. The format uses containers to store audio data, track numbers, sample rate, and bit rate. A WAV file is a raw audio format created by Microsoft and IBM.
