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25 MB of wavs strung together creates 512 MB file. Why?

Community Beginner ,
Sep 01, 2022 Sep 01, 2022

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I have 24 low-quality wav files from an emergency-dispatch system. They each have a sample rate of 8,000 Hz and show up in Audition as 32-bit floating. All of the files together amount to 25.4 MB.  That's the size of the folder housing them. That tells you how low the original quality is.

I need to simply string them together into a single file. No problem. There's a bunch of ways to do it. But every method I use creates a wav file that is 513 MB, which is 20 times the size folder containing the individual clips. No filters applied, no overlaps, no multitracking... just 24 wav files back-to-back-to-back. Couldn't be easier.

My question is, why does this create a single file that is 20 times larger than the sum of the original files individually? What is the technicality involved there and is there a way to create a single wav file that is closer to the sum of the individual files?

It's worth mentioning, any conversion to mp3 immediately exploits how low the original quality is to begin with, so I'm hoping to avoid that conversion.

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Export , FAQ , How to

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Community Expert ,
Sep 01, 2022 Sep 01, 2022

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Audition has to process any file it opens into its internal working format - which is 32-bit Floating Point, generally at the same sample rate. This preserves the quality during any edits. There is, obviously, no choice about this. If you make a note of the original file spec, and use Save As using this, you should be able to resave your 24 concatenated files with no quality degredation and end up with a single file the size you expect it to be.

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