Sample WAV Files — Download Uncompressed PCM Test Audio (16/24-bit)
Waveform Audio File Format (PCM) · .wav · MIME type audio/wav
Download a sample WAV file — uncompressed PCM audio in the exact configuration you need: CD-quality 16-bit 44.1 kHz stereo (3, 10 and 30 seconds), studio-style 24-bit 48 kHz, and an 8-bit 8 kHz mono file that mimics telephony and IVR recordings. Because WAV is uncompressed, sizes are predictable: 44.1 kHz 16-bit stereo is exactly 176,400 bytes per second.
WAV is the raw material of audio work — DAWs, speech-recognition APIs, waveform visualisers and DSP unit tests all prefer it because there is nothing to decode. It is also the format that reveals whether an upload handler enforces size limits, since a 30-second clip is already over 5 MB.
Download sample WAV files
| File | Details | Size | Download |
|---|---|---|---|
sample-audio-10s-8khz-mono.wav | 10 s · PCM_U8 · 64 kbps · 8 kHz · mono | 80 KB | |
sample-audio-3s-16bit-44khz.wav | 3 s · PCM_S16LE · 1411 kbps · 44.1 kHz · stereo | 529 KB | |
sample-audio-5s-24bit-48khz.wav | 5 s · PCM_S24LE · 2304 kbps · 48 kHz · stereo | 1.4 MB | |
sample-audio-10s-16bit-44khz.wav | 10 s · PCM_S16LE · 1411 kbps · 44.1 kHz · stereo | 1.8 MB | |
sample-audio-30s-16bit-44khz.wav | 30 s · PCM_S16LE · 1411 kbps · 44.1 kHz · stereo | 5.3 MB |
Need one of every audio format? Download the audio sample pack (1.7 MB, one small file of every audio format (9 files)).
Use these files from the command line or CI
Every URL is stable and CORS-open. Pin the SHA-256 in your test and you will know the moment a fixture changes.
# Download one file curl -O https://pnb-website-bucket.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/samples/audio/wav/sample-audio-10s-8khz-mono.wav # Verify it (SHA-256 is listed for every file above) shasum -a 256 sample-audio-10s-8khz-mono.wav # Machine-readable index of every sample file curl https://pnb-website-bucket.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/samples/index.json | jq '.files[] | select(.format=="wav")'
WAV format at a glance
| Full name | Waveform Audio File Format (PCM) |
|---|---|
| Extensions | .wav |
| MIME type | audio/wav |
| Introduced | Microsoft & IBM, 1991 |
| Container | RIFF |
| Encoding | Linear PCM (uncompressed) |
| Bit depths here | 8-bit unsigned, 16-bit, 24-bit |
| Sample rates here | 8 kHz, 44.1 kHz, 48 kHz |
| Magic bytes | 52 49 46 46 … 57 41 56 45 (RIFF…WAVE) |
What people test with sample WAV files
- Speech-to-text API input (most require 16 kHz or 8 kHz mono PCM)
- Waveform rendering and audio analysis
- Bit-depth and sample-rate handling in converters
- Upload-limit tests with predictable sizes
Frequently asked questions
How big is a WAV file per minute?
Sample rate × bit depth × channels ÷ 8 bytes per second. CD quality (44.1 kHz, 16-bit, stereo) is 176.4 KB/s, about 10.6 MB per minute. 24-bit 48 kHz stereo is 288 KB/s, about 17.3 MB per minute. 8 kHz 8-bit mono telephony is only 8 KB/s.
Is WAV better quality than FLAC?
No — FLAC is lossless, so it decodes to exactly the same samples as the WAV it came from, at roughly half the size. WAV's only advantages are zero decoding cost and universal support in professional tools.
Are these WAV files safe to download?
Yes. Every file is generated by our own open script from scratch — nothing is scraped or user-uploaded — and contains no scripts, macros or executables. The SHA-256 of each file is published on this page so you can verify what you received.
Can I use the sample WAV files commercially?
Yes. They are free for any purpose, including commercial products, test suites, demos and redistribution, with no attribution required. There is nothing to license and no one to ask.
Can I hotlink these files or use them in CI?
Yes. Every link is a stable direct URL over HTTPS with Access-Control-Allow-Origin: * and long cache headers, so curl, wget, fetch() and test runners can pull them directly. A JSON index of every file is linked from each page (see the command-line section).
Related sample files
Testing a file pipeline? We build them.
Uploads, conversions, previews, document processing and media workflows are the kind of production systems Pine & Birch designs and runs for clients — which is why we needed these files in the first place.
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