OGG to AMR Converter

Convert OGG to AMR: What This Tutorial Covers

An .ogg file normally carries Vorbis — a full-bandwidth stereo music codec. .amr carries AMR, the 3GPP speech codec that GSM and 3G phone calls were built on, defined for file storage in IETF RFC 4867. Going from one to the other is a deliberate, very large downgrade, and it is worth doing only when something on the receiving end literally demands .amr: an IVR or voicemail platform, an MMS gateway, a feature phone, a dispatch recorder, or a telecom test harness.

This page walks through the two settings that actually matter here — Audio Codec and Quality Preset — including one control that looks useful and is not. If your goal is just a smaller file you can play and share, AMR is the wrong target; use OGG to MP3 instead.

How to Convert OGG to AMR

1. Upload Your OGG File: Drag the .ogg onto the page or click "Add Files" to browse. Several files can be queued and converted with the same settings in one batch.
2. Choose the Audio Codec: This page does not pre-select one, so pick deliberately. AMR Narrow Band is the 8 kHz codec every .amr decoder understands; AMR Wide Band is the 16 kHz variant, standardised by ITU-T as G.722.2, which only wideband-capable equipment reads.
3. Set the Quality Preset: Under File Compression, the Quality Preset dropdown is the control that reaches the encoder. It runs Highest, Very High, High, Medium, Low, Very Low and Lowest, and each maps onto one of the codec's fixed coding modes — see the table below.
4. Convert and Download: Click Convert and save the .amr. Files are uploaded over an encrypted connection, converted on our servers and deleted automatically after a few hours — no sign-up, no watermark.

Walk-through: Which Control Actually Changes the Output

AMR does not accept arbitrary bitrates. Every 20-millisecond frame must use one of the codec's defined modes, so any request is snapped to the nearest legal mode. That constraint is why the controls behave the way they do:

What Each Quality Preset Produces

The size column is arithmetic, not an estimate: AMR is constant-rate per mode, and RFC 4867 fixes the storage-format frame size for each mode at 50 frames per second, so one minute of audio is always the same number of bytes no matter what is being said.

AMR-NB has only eight modes and they bunch together at the top, which is why Very High and High both resolve to 10.20 kbps. For dictation, voicemail and IVR prompts, Highest is the usual choice: 12.20 kbps is the mode that matches GSM Enhanced Full Rate, which is what most telephony systems assume when they say "AMR". The rate ladder in the UI also labels 7.40 kbps "Toll Quality", the traditional shorthand for speech that is as intelligible as a landline call.

AMR Narrow Band vs AMR Wide Band

Common Errors and How to Fix Them

• "The Constant Bitrate list is empty" — Expected until you choose a codec, because the rate ladder is codec-specific. Pick AMR Narrow Band or AMR Wide Band and the list populates. Even then, prefer Quality Preset: the Constant Bitrate entries all resolve to the codec's top mode.
• "My music sounds thin and warbly" — AMR is working as designed. It is a CELP speech coder: rather than storing the waveform it fits a model of a human vocal tract to each frame, so drums, cymbals, strings and reverb tails have no representation in the model. Convert to OGG to MP3 or OGG to M4A if the content is music.
• "My stereo mix collapsed to one channel" — There is no stereo AMR in either variant. The downmix is unavoidable; nothing on the page preserves two channels.
• "The receiving system rejected the file" — Most likely it expects narrowband. Re-convert with Audio Codec set to AMR Narrow Band. You can confirm which one you produced by checking the first bytes in a hex viewer: 23 21 41 4D 52 0A is #!AMR\n, and 23 21 41 4D 52 2D 57 42 0A is #!AMR-WB\n.
• "My tags disappeared" — Correct. The RFC 4867 storage format is a magic header followed by speech frames, with no metadata area at all, so the .ogg file's Vorbis comments have nowhere to go.
• "The output is only ten seconds long" — The Trim duration field starts at 10 seconds. If you switch Trim on and leave that field alone, only the first ten seconds are encoded. Set the duration you want, or leave Trim off entirely.

When This Doesn't Work

AMR cannot be talked into being a music codec. If the .ogg is a song, a game soundtrack or layered ambience, the conversion will succeed and the result will be close to useless outside a telephony context — the narrowband filter and the vocal-tract model between them remove most of what made it sound like anything. Equally, if your .ogg turns out to contain Opus rather than Vorbis (some voice notes do), start from OPUS to AMR instead so nothing is mislabelled. And if you need to bring an existing .amr back to something general-purpose, the reverse tools are AMR to OGG and AMR to MP3 — neither recovers quality, but both give you a file that plays widely.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does the Constant Bitrate dropdown do nothing useful on this page?

Two separate reasons stack up. The dropdown is populated per codec, so it is empty until you choose AMR Narrow Band or AMR Wide Band. Once populated, the value you pick is not carried through to the encoder as a mode number — it is re-parsed as a plain kilobit figure, which lands far above the codec's ceiling and is then clamped back down to the maximum. The practical result is that every entry produces the top mode: 12.20 kbps for narrowband, 23.85 kbps for wideband. Quality Preset is the control that genuinely spans the range, which is why the how-to above sends you there.

Should I pick AMR Narrow Band or AMR Wide Band?

Match whatever the receiving system accepts, and default to Narrow Band when you do not know. Narrowband is the 8 kHz codec behind classic GSM/3G voicemail, MMS voice and most legacy IVR, and effectively every .amr decoder reads it. Wideband carries a 50–7,000 Hz band and sounds distinctly fuller, but plenty of telephony equipment and older phones will refuse the file outright. Both are mono, so neither preserves stereo.

Will a higher AMR bitrate make my OGG sound better?

Only within the codec's own band, and only up to its ceiling. Moving from 4.75 to 12.20 kbps on narrowband genuinely improves clarity for speech. But no AMR mode reaches above roughly 3,400 Hz on narrowband or 7,000 Hz on wideband, so no bitrate setting recovers the cymbals, air or stereo image the downmix removed. Choose the mode your destination expects; going higher only makes the file bigger.

How much smaller is the AMR than the original OGG?

Enormously smaller — typically well over 95% smaller for a music source. AMR-NB at 12.20 kbps is exactly 96 KB per minute of audio, because each 20 ms frame is 32 bytes in the RFC 4867 storage format and there are 50 of them per second. AMR-WB at 23.85 kbps is 183 KB per minute on the same arithmetic. Duration is the only variable; content complexity does not change the size at all.

Why is the output mono at 8 kHz when my OGG is 44.1 kHz stereo?

Because AMR-NB is defined as a single-channel 8 kHz codec — there is no stereo or high-rate variant to fall back on. Our pipeline downmixes and resamples so the result is a valid .amr that decoders will accept, rather than failing the conversion. Wide Band raises the rate to 16 kHz but is still mono. This is the format's design, not a limitation of the converter.

Can I convert the AMR back to OGG afterwards and recover quality?

You can convert it back with AMR to OGG, but the audio will not improve. Vorbis will faithfully re-encode whatever it is given, which by then is degraded narrowband mono speech, in a much larger file. Everything AMR removed is gone permanently. Keep the original .ogg as your master.

Which players actually open .amr files?

VLC, foobar2000, Audacity and most Android phones open .amr directly. Windows and macOS often will not play it with the stock media player, and Apple's own apps are inconsistent about it. That patchy desktop support is one of the better arguments against choosing AMR unless a specific system requires it — the format's home is telephony infrastructure, not general playback.

Can I convert only part of the recording?

Yes. Use Trim on this page to set a start time and a duration, in seconds or in HH:MM:SS.sss, and only that section is encoded. If you would rather cut first and convert afterwards, audio-cutter accepts .ogg files directly. Remember that the duration field opens at 10 seconds, so set it before converting.