It is well-known that WAV files are widely supported, almost any audio player can play a WAV file. Usually, a WAV file is available on a news site offering sound clips of interviews, a website specializing in high-quality audios or sound effects, and a blog or a website offering TV and movie clips. When you prefer to listen to a WAV file offline, you need to download WAV files to your computer or portable devices. Then the question arises, how could we find these high-quality WAV audio files? To figure out how to download WAV files, read on this post to find the best way.

Part 1: What is WAV? Pros & Cons

Download-WAV-Files

WAV is a common file format that is generally used to back up the audio information resources, and it’s broadly supported by the Windows system as well as many audio players such as Windows Media Player, VLC, iTunes, Groove Music, Clementine, and other popular media player applications. It is a kind of format that is generally used on Windows systems for raw and typically uncompressed audio. Furthermore, WAV file can contain both compressed audio and uncompressed audio. Since the most common WAV files are uncompressed, WAV is frequently regarded as a lossless audio format which retains high sound quality.

Pros Cons
  • Uncompressed WAV files have lossless audio quality.
  • Supported on both Windows and Macintosh OS.
  • Not require any encoding or decoding when editing and manipulating WAV files.
    • Large size may be a concern if there is no enough space on your device.
    • WAV files are impractical for portable devices or streaming due to the file size.

    Part 2: Top 8 Websites to Download WAV Files

    Compared with MP3 audio file format, WAV audio file format provides higher audio quality but occupies more space. In order to download WAV files for lossless quality, there are 8 popular websites are recommended for you. You could download high quality WAV audio files from these sites to experience the high audio quality playback.

    1. HDtracks

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    File formats: WMA/WAV, AIFF, FLAC, ALAC

    Highest resolution: 24-bit/192kHz

    For the amazing listening experience, HDtracks would be recommended to you. As a matter of fact, HDtracks has one of the most extensive collections of high-resolution pop, rock, classical, and jazz music on the web. As a popular and high-resolution music platform for music lovers, HDtracks enables you to download your favorite tracks in master studio quality. To download wav files from HDtracks, you might log in and pay for per download.

    2. iTrax

    iTrax-2

    File formats: FLAC, WAV

    Highest resolution: 24-bit/96 kHz

    iTrax claims that it is the world’s first high-resolution digital music download website. iTrax offers both high definition audio and video downloads with surround sound, and every album and track available here was recorded using high-resolution equipment and delivered to you without conversion. If you want the songs and other audios you play sound as awesome as the artist originally intended, you can build your music library on iTrax and download what you like for offline playback.

    3. Bandcamp

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    File formats: MP3, FLAC, ALAC (Apple Lossless), AAC, Ogg Vorbis, WAV and AIFF

    Highest resolution: 24-bit/44.1 kHz

    It is known that Bandcamp is a music community platform, a hub for artists to sell and advertise their music, merch, and concerts. Bandcamp is a streaming service and music store, and an artist payment service all rolled into one. It empowers artists to upload their music, and enables others to purchase it, and only collects a 10-15% revenue share for all sales made through the service.

    4. Bleep

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    File formats: MP3, WAV and FLAC

    Highest resolution: 24-bit/44.1 kHz

    Bleep is an online independent recordshop that mainly showcases music from independent artists and labels. You can spend a few pounds to get high quality tracks on Bleep. It specializes in the less usual genres, including UK Funky, House, Techno, Electronic, Dubstep, Grime and more.

    5. Acoustic Sounds

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    File formats: FLAC, ALAC, DSD, WAV

    Highest resolution: 24-bit/192kHz

    Acoustic Sounds is an online music store that offers a bevy of pop and rock selections from familiar artists, such as Norah Jones, Aerosmith, Steely Dan, Depeche Mode, and Eric Clapton, as well as more indie stuff like The Civil Wars. On this website, you can bolster your selection of quality radio hits and classic recordings.

    6. File Examples

    Files-Examples

    File formats: MP3, WAV, OGG

    Highest resolution: 16-bit/44.1kHz

    File Examples is a service designed for developers, designers, testers. Download files in many resolution or size for test or demo use. If you need example files for testing or demo and presentation purpose, this website is a great place for you. This website offers you WAV file examples in different file sizes and different bit rate, but it only provides several examples of WAV file format to you.

    7. Free Wave Samples

    Free-Wave-Samples

    File formats: WAV

    Highest resolution: 16-bit/44.1kHz

    Free Wave Samples is a website that provides high-quality WAV files free for use in audio projects, covering various sample WAV files on different instruments like bass, cymbais, drums, guitar, loops, etc. for you to listen to and download. This site also provides a direct download link on each WAV sample page.

    8. SampleSwap

    SampleSwap

    File formats: WAV

    Highest resolution: 16-bit/44.1kHz

    SampleSwap offers free sounds including techno, hiphop, rap, trance, drum, beats, loops, sound effects, instrument sounds, vocal samples, acapellas and more in WAV file format. All of the music on this site may be downloaded for free. Each track has an accompanying license which describes whether it may be remixed, used in commercial productions, etc. You can also download the entire collections at once.

    Part 3: How to Download WAV Files for Free with Chrome Extension?

    audio-downloader-prime

    Except for downloading WAV files from the popular websites, you can also download WAV files for free using Chrome Extension. Chrome extensions require no download and installation, thus no hard drive storage will be required. Meanwhile, ease of use is the general feature for all Chrome extensions. What’s more, they are all totally free to use. Audio Downloader Prime, a Chrome extension that helps you quickly download popular Audio formats right from your browser's toolbar (via a toolbar-popup UI). This Add-on is specifically designed and tailored for downloading Audio contents only. The following steps would show you how to download WAV audio online with Audio Downloader Prime extension:

    Steps:

    1. Install it to your Chrome browser from the Chrome Web Store.
    2. Go to the target audio-only page.
    3. On the extension area, Audio Downloader Prime will automatically detect audios available for downloading and shows up with number.
    4. Click the extension icon to view all available audio files for downloading. Then click the download icon next to the WAV audio file you want to download.
    5. On the pop-up “Save As” window to set output directory and name the output file. After that, click the “Save” button.

    It should be noted that this WAV audio downloader extension doesn’t work with YouTube website or any other YouTube videos/audios embedded in other websites due to Google, YouTube and Chrome store policies and restrictions. Since you can not use this extension to download WAV from YouTube or iTunes, a third-party program will be helpful on this occasion to make it.

    Part 4: How to Download WAV Files from Other Sources?

    Using Audio Downloader Prime extension is the easiest and most effective solution to directly download WAV file from many websites. However, you may fail to download WAV files sometimes. If you download music purchased from iTunes store, the tracks are AAC format which is DRM-protected, and you can’t change the format to WAV. While YouTube, a popular video sharing website, many downloaders can only download it into MP3 files. Therefore, if you want to download WAV files from YouTube or iTunes, you need to find the new way.

    In such these occasions, a third-party program supposed to jump out to solve the problems. Leawo Music Recorder is a powerful WAV file downloader that could record any audio and save them on computer in either MP3 or WAV format. It is a big help for users to directly download or record WAV audio or music online. It enables you to download and record any audio from YouTube or iTunes and other video or audio websites in MP3 or WAV format. The highlight of the program lies in customizing audio/music recordings for better enjoyment. The program is not only powerful, but also easy to use for even a novice. Here comes the simple guide below.

    Step 1. Download and install Leawo Music Recorder

    Free download Leawo Music Recorder that could also work as YouTube WAV file downloader on the official website. Install this WAV file downloader on your computer and launch it to start the WAV file downloading process.

    • music-recorder
    • Leawo Music Recorder

      - Record any sound from computer stream audio and built-in input audio.
      - Record music from 1000+ music sites like YouTube, Facebook, Veoh, VEVO, etc.
      - Schedule music recording via the internal recording task scheduler.
      - Automatically/manually add and complete music tags like artist, album, cover, genre, etc.
      - Save recorded musicfiles into either WAV or MP3 format for wide uses.

    Step 2. Proceed to select the appropriate audio source

    If you want to download WAV sound/music online, run the program. When you enter into the main interface of the program, you may need to click the “Audio Source” button as shown in the illustration and then choose “Record Computer Audio”.

    Music-Recorder-audio-source-setting-8

    Step 3. Set output format

    Switch to “Format”, you need to open the “Output” tab and then select WAV audio as output format in the “Output Format” box. Some other optional properties like bit rate are also supported or could be set.

    download-wav-audio-via-music-recorder-set-output-format-08

    Step 4. Set output directory

    Open the “General” tab and set output directory in the “Output” box to save the recorded audio files.

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    Step 5. Start to Record and download WAV files

    When all of your desired settings are ready, play the source video or music and then click the big red “Start” button to get on with your recording. You may need a couple of minutes to get the recording results. And you finally download WAV files and find the downloaded files in the output directory that you’ve chosen before.

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    Note

      If you need, you could also make use of the Task Scheduler for recording. To make it, you can click the “Recording task scheduler” icon on the bottom-left corner to call out the Task Scheduler panel, where you could set the start time and duration of the source audio or video.