WAV and Opus explained
WAV stores uncompressed PCM audio — the raw samples, exactly as captured. A stereo CD-quality minute is roughly 10 MB, which is the price of having no compression whatsoever.
Opus is the current state of the art for lossy audio, and the codec behind most voice calls you make over the internet. It performs well across an unusually wide range, from 6 kbps speech to transparent music.
- Where WAV files come from
- Recording sessions, sample libraries and audio editing.
- Where Opus is used
- Voice and video calls, modern podcast pipelines and WebRTC.