Reducing WAV sound file size, without losing quality

Question

My application needs to play sound files. The only cross-platform file format I can use is WAVE (I'm using QSound of the Qt framework).

The file sizes of these sounds are quite large and I'd like to know if there is a way to reduce it, without losing (too much) quality.

I need the file to be stereo.

Answer 1

The only way to reduce the size of a wav file is to resample it to a lower bit rate or use less bits per sample. Wav files don't have compression capabilities like mp3 or ogg.

If you are using a 16 bit 44 khz file you can cut the file size in half by going to a 22khz sample rate, and all you will lose is some of the high frequencies.

Answer 2

You can zip them (using zlib or similar), then uncompress them on demand. If you've got many minutes of continuous wav it may be worth looking into audio-specific lossless compression algorithms like FLAC.

Answer 3

Why not use FLAC? It's the best way to do lossless compression of WAV without sacrificing any quality at all.

Answer 4

You probably should have a look into the Phonon Module of Qt. It's cross-platform and supports the native formats of the different platforms. I think you can assume MP3 support for most of the OSes.