Drop a recording and it is re-encoded smaller on your device — you pick the size/quality trade-off.
Drop a recording and it is re-encoded smaller on your device — you pick the size/quality trade-off.
Compress an audio file in your browser — shrink a bloated recording to email size or squeeze a long lecture onto limited storage. GhostAudio re-encodes the file at a lower bitrate on your device: you pick the size/quality trade-off, it does the math locally. Speech survives heavy compression remarkably well, so voice memos and meeting recordings often shrink dramatically with no practical loss. No upload, no signup.
Audio compression here means reducing file size by lowering the bitrate, not the dynamic-range compression an audio engineer means by the same word. Lower bitrate means fewer bits describing each second, so the encoder discards more detail. The right setting depends entirely on content: speech survives aggressive compression remarkably well, while music with cymbals, reverb tails, or wide stereo imaging shows artefacts much sooner.
Drop your audio
Drag in the file. It opens in the GhostAudio studio with Compress pre-selected.
Pick the target quality
Choose the bitrate — lower for speech, higher for music. The re-encode runs locally via ffmpeg.
Download the smaller file
Save it — often a small fraction of the original, ready to send or store.
Speech and music want different settings
A podcast or voice memo is usually fine at 64–96 kbps with the Mono box ticked. Music generally wants 192 kbps or above in stereo. Using a speech setting on music is the most common cause of disappointing results.
You can't undo it
Compression discards information permanently. Keep the original — recompressing a compressed file to recover quality is not possible, and re-encoding repeatedly makes it worse each time.
Mono halves the size
For a single speaker there is no useful stereo information, so the Mono option is often a bigger and cleaner saving than dropping the bitrate further.
Is my audio uploaded?
No — compression runs in your browser. Nothing is sent anywhere.
How small can speech go?
Very — spoken word stays intelligible at low bitrates, so hour-long recordings can shrink to a few megabytes.
What about music?
Music needs more bits — compress gently or you'll hear it. The preview-and-pick approach lets you find the floor for your file.
Does compressing twice make it worse?
Yes — each lossy re-encode discards more. Compress from the best source you have, once.
What format comes out?
MP3 — the most compatible choice for compressed audio; it plays on everything.
How small can I get a podcast episode?
An hour of speech at 64 kbps mono lands around 29 MB and is perfectly listenable. The same hour at 192 kbps stereo is roughly 86 MB with no benefit for spoken word.
Why does my music sound watery after compressing?
That's the classic low-bitrate artefact, most audible on cymbals and reverb. Raise the bitrate — it's the only fix, since the discarded detail cannot be recovered.
Every GhostAudio tool runs entirely in your browser. Your file is never uploaded — there's no upload endpoint to send it to.