Convert AMR voice memos to MP3, in your browser

What is an AMR file?

AMR is the format many phones use for voice memos and call recordings: tiny files, tuned for speech, and famously awkward, because browsers and most players cannot open them. TidyAudio carries its own AMR decoder, the same opencore codec phones use, compiled to run in your browser. No installing anything, and your recording is not sent anywhere.

How to convert AMR to MP3

1. Open the editor and drop the .amr file in. Its real length shows immediately.
2. Press play to hear it. Browsers cannot play AMR natively, so TidyAudio decodes it for you.
3. Optional but worthwhile: run noise cleanup and volume levelling. Phone memos are usually quiet and hissy, and both fixes are one press each.
4. In the Save panel pick MP3 (or WAV), then export.

Good to know

• AMR is 8000 Hz mono by nature. It will sound like the phone call it was; conversion cannot add what was never recorded.
• The common narrowband .amr is supported. The rare wideband .awb variant is refused with a clear message rather than a silent failure.
• The decoder loads once (about half a megabyte) and is then cached.

Where .amr files come from

If you have one, it almost certainly arrived from one of these:

• Android call recorders. Many, including several built into manufacturer dialers, still write AMR because it was designed for exactly this: speech, over a phone, in as few bytes as possible.
• Older phone voice memo apps, particularly on Android and on feature phones.
• Voicemail exports from carriers and PBX systems.
• MMS and messaging audio from an era when message size limits were brutal.

They are tiny, often under 100 KB a minute, which is exactly why the format persists in places where storage or bandwidth is tight. The price of that is quality, and the reason it is awkward is that AMR is a licensed telephony codec rather than a web one, so browsers and most desktop players never shipped a decoder.

What to expect from the result

An AMR file is 8000 Hz, mono, and heavily compressed for voice. Converting it does not undo any of that. The MP3 or WAV you get will sound like the phone recording it came from: intelligible speech, no sparkle, no depth. Anyone promising to make a call recording sound like a studio microphone is selling something.

What genuinely improves it, in this order:

1. Clean the noise first, while the file is still at its original level. Phone recordings usually carry constant line hiss, which is precisely the steady kind a noise filter handles well.
2. Level the volume second. Call recordings are notoriously quiet and uneven, especially when one speaker is on speakerphone and the other is not.
3. Trim the dead air at the start and end, which on call recordings is often thirty seconds of ringing and fumbling.
4. Then convert. MP3 at 96 to 128 kbps mono is plenty for 8000 Hz speech; anything higher is storing the limitations in greater detail.

If your file will not open

Two causes account for nearly all of it. If the file is .awb rather than .amr, that is AMR wideband, a different codec, and TidyAudio will tell you so plainly rather than failing mysteriously. If the extension says .amr but the file was renamed from something else, the editor reads the actual file signature rather than the name, so it will simply open it as whatever it really is.

A note on the recordings themselves: laws about recording calls differ sharply by country and by state, and consent requirements are not something a converter can advise you on. Handling the file entirely on your own device at least means no third party gains a copy in the process.

Common questions