Written by
Anna Yuan
Summary: This post tells how to compress audio files on Mac in 2 ways, including using iBoysoft MagicMenu and QuickTime Player. In addition, it tells how audio compression works.
Sometimes, when you upload audio as an E-mail attachment, it may pop up an error message showing that the audio is too large and can't be uploaded. In this situation, you need to reduce the audio file size to meet the E-mail uploading requirements.
In addition to this, when lots of uncompressed audio files are stored on your Mac, your Mac will soon run out of storage, which may result in your Mac running slow. You can make the audio size smaller by compressing it to free up space.
To compress audio files on a Mac to make its size smaller, you can use an audio compressor to help you. In this post, we'll use the iBoysoft MagicMenu app to compress audio files, just keep reading.
How to compress audio files on Mac using iBoysoft MagicMenu
As mentioned above, the best way to compress an audio file on Mac is to use a professional and neat audio compressor to help you. There are many of the best audio compressors for Mac in the market, here we will use iBoysoft MagicMenu.
iBoysoft MagicMenu is capable of compressing audio, videos, and photos on Mac in a simple way. It supports compressing various formats of audio, including mp3, wav, aac, AIFF, etc. Besides, it can compress videos on Mac with different file formats. This app is compatible with Intel Macs and Apple Silicon Macs.
Before starting compressing audio files on Mac
Before starting to compress audio files on Mac, you'll have some preparation work to do in order to have a smooth compression process. Simply prepare the below things:
- A Mac or MacBook that can boot up normally
- Stable internet service or Wi_Fi service
- Enough storage space for downloading iBoysoft MagicMenu
How to compress audio files on Mac with iBoysoft MagicMenu
If you've finished the preparation work, follow the below step-by-step guide to make your audio file smaller on Mac:
- Make your Mac or MacBook connect to the internet or Wi-Fi,
- On your Mac or MacBook, free download, install and launch iBoysoft MagicMenu.
- Go to Mac Finder, and open the file folder which contains the audio files you want to compress.
- Right-click on this audio and choose Compress "XXX" from the context menu. Here XXX is the name of your audio files.
- Wait a moment, a new zip file should appear in the same folder, this is the compression file of your audio file. This zip file should be smaller than the original. Now, you can delete the original audio file to free up more space on Mac storage. When you need to use the audio file one day, you only need to unzip the zip file on Mac.
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How to compress an audio file on Mac via QuickTime Player
Another way to compress audio files on Mac is to use QuickTime Player, a media player that comes bundled with macOS. You must have used it to play various audio files or video files. In addition, it's also an audio file compressor to reduce an audio file size.
To compress audio files on Mac using the QuickTime Player, simply do the following:
- Open Launchpad, find QuickTime Player, and open it on your Mac. A new window will pop up.
- In the pop-up, go through the folder that contains the audio you want to compress, select it, and click Open.
- Select File in the menu bar, select Export As, and choose Audio Only.
- In the export window, name this file, select the folder where you want to export it, and hit Save.
- QuickTime Player will begin to export the audio file. Once it's finished exporting, you'll have your compressed file in the .m4a file format, which should be four times smaller than the original one.
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Bonus: how does audio compression work
To learn how audio compression works, the very first thing is to learn about the audio how audio files classify. Audio files come with three major categories:
- The first category is uncompressed audio, which are real sound waves that have been digitized but have not been altered any further. As a result, they require a lot of storage space. They include files with the extensions PCM, WAV, and AIFF.
- The second audio category is audio with lossy compress techniques. With lossy compress, the audio quality decreases over time as the data is continually encoded and decoded for compression, encryption, transmission, storage, and other purposes. Common lossy audio files are with MP3, WMA, AAC, and OGC extensions.
- The last category for audio is audio with lossless compression. These formats don't eliminate any data while they shrink in size. However, they do not reduce very far in size. Common audio file formats utilizing lossless compress include FLAC, ALAC, and WMA Lossless.
To compress an audio file on Mac, you can choose to convert uncompressed audio into lossy compressed audio or lossless compressed audio to make the original audio file size smaller. Alternatively, you can choose to convert it into a zip/rar file, just like iBoysoft MagicMenu does.
Final thoughts
Hopefully, this article has clarified the process of how to reduce an audio file size on a Mac. Just like mentioned above, the best way to compress the audio files on Mac is to use iBoysoft MagicMenu to help you. Just free download and use it now.
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