How long conversion usually takes
Typical timing for a single file:
- Short track (under 2 MB): 1–3 seconds total — most of which is the round-trip to the server.
- Medium audio (2–10 MB): 3–7 seconds.
- Large file (10–50 MB): 8–20 seconds.
- Multi-track podcast → MP3 batch: roughly 1–2 seconds per track.
Times include upload, processing and download. The actual encoder step is usually a fraction of the total — the network is the slowest part for small files, and the CPU for large ones.
What makes it slower
- Slow upload connection. A 30 MB file on a 10 Mbps line takes ~24 seconds just to upload.
- Very high bitrate (e.g. 24-bit/192kHz studio master WAVs). Decoding and re-encoding scales roughly linearly with sample rate and bit depth.
- Free-tier queue depth. When the cluster is under load, free jobs queue behind premium ones. Premium and Pro Plus get priority workers — that's the main paid-tier speed difference.
- Multi-step pipelines (e.g. FLAC → MP3 with loudness normalization presets, or multi-track podcast → MP3). Each step adds a few seconds.
How to make it faster
- Trim or adjust the bitrate before uploading if you don't need the full sample rate.
- Convert in batches — uploading 10 files at once saves 9 round-trip handshakes vs. one-at-a-time.
- For huge files, consider compressing first then converting (e.g. compress MP3 to 5 MB, then convert to WAV — much faster than converting a 30 MB MP3 to WAV directly).
- If you do this every day, a Premium plan removes both the daily cap and the queue priority delay.