How to Convert TS to AMR Online
- Upload Your TS File: Drag and drop or click "+ Add Files" to select MPEG Transport Stream (.ts) recordings — captures from DVB/ATSC tuners, IPTV PVRs, or Blu-ray BDAV exports. Batch uploads are supported, and Files are uploaded over an encrypted connection, processed on our servers, and deleted automatically after a few hours — no sign-up, no watermark, never shared.
- Pick Constant Bitrate (Recommended for AMR): AMR doesn't use Quality Presets or percentage-based File Compression the way MP3 does — pick Constant Bitrate and choose an AMR-NB rate from 4.75 kbps (lowest, "AMR-NB Low") up to 12.2 kbps ("AMR-NB Max"), or switch the Audio Codec to AMR Wide Band for the 6.60–23.85 kbps AMR-WB ladder. Toll-quality speech starts at 7.4 kbps for AMR-NB and 12.65 kbps for AMR-WB.
- Set Audio Channel, Sample Rate, and Trim (Optional): AMR is fixed at mono (1.0) and 8000 Hz for AMR-NB or 16000 Hz for AMR-WB — the page defaults match. Use Trim to clip the broadcast leader/trailer or extract a single voice segment (default start 0, duration 10 seconds; both accept HH:MM:SS).
- Convert and Download: Click Convert. Files process server-side via FFmpeg's OpenCORE-AMR encoder — no sign-up, no watermark, no install.
Why Convert TS to AMR?
A TS (MPEG Transport Stream) file is an ISO/IEC 13818-1 container released in July 1995 for broadcast television (DVB, ATSC) and Blu-ray BDAV recording — typically carrying AC3, AAC, or MP2 audio along with H.264/MPEG-2 video. AMR (Adaptive Multi-Rate), standardised by 3GPP in the late 1990s, is the opposite of broadcast audio: a speech-only codec that drops to 4.75 kbps and runs in narrow 200–3400 Hz mono. Converting between them strips a multi-megabit broadcast capture down to a few kilobytes per second of intelligible voice.
- Dialogue or commentary clips for MMS and SMS — AMR is the canonical MMS audio attachment; carriers and older handsets accept it where MP3 or AAC may be silently transcoded or rejected. A one-minute clip at 12.2 kbps lands around 90 KB, well inside typical MMS payload limits.
- Voice notes for older Android and feature phones — Android's stock voice recorder writes
.amrby default on many OEM ROMs; pre-loading dialogue from a TS capture in the same codec avoids a second re-encode and keeps everything natively playable in Files, Messages, and Music apps. - Voicemail and IVR prompts for GSM/UMTS systems — Carrier voicemail platforms and IVR engines (Asterisk, FreeSWITCH) expect 8 kHz mono AMR-NB; converting a TS broadcast snippet at 7.40 kbps "Toll Quality" or 12.2 kbps "Max" matches the network's native codec with no transcoding penalty.
- Bandwidth-constrained archival of speech tracks — A 30-minute broadcast interview that runs 200+ MB as TS shrinks to under 3 MB as AMR-NB at 12.2 kbps. Useful for field researchers, oral-history projects, and journalists offloading interviews over patchy mobile data.
- Cross-platform compatibility with VLC, QuickTime, and Audacity — Both AMR-NB and AMR-WB play in VLC, QuickTime, MPC-HC, and Audacity (with FFmpeg). The format is decoded everywhere; encoders are scarcer, which makes a clean web-based converter genuinely useful.
TS vs AMR — Format Comparison
| Property | TS (MPEG Transport Stream) | AMR (Adaptive Multi-Rate) |
|---|---|---|
| Type | Video/audio container | Speech audio codec + file format |
| Standard | ISO/IEC 13818-1 (1995, latest 2022) | 3GPP TS 26.071 (AMR-NB, late 1990s); 3GPP TS 26.190 (AMR-WB, 2002) |
| Typical use | Broadcast TV, IPTV, Blu-ray (BDAV) | Mobile voice calls, voicemail, MMS, voice memos |
| Audio codecs carried | AAC, AC3, MP2, E-AC3, DTS | Self-contained (not a container) |
| Sample rate | Depends on inner audio (48 kHz typical) | 8 kHz (AMR-NB) or 16 kHz (AMR-WB) |
| Frequency range | Full audio band per inner codec | 200–3400 Hz (NB), 50–7000 Hz (WB) |
| Channels | Up to 5.1+ surround | Mono only |
| Bitrate | Multi-Mbps including video | 4.75–12.2 kbps (NB), 6.60–23.85 kbps (WB) |
| 1-minute size | 5–80 MB (with video) | ~36 KB at 4.75 kbps; ~90 KB at 12.2 kbps |
| Music suitability | Yes (full-band audio) | No — speech only |
AMR Bitrate Mode Guide
AMR's adaptive bitrate ladder is unusual — every mode is a published standard the network can switch to mid-call. Pick by intended use:
| Mode | Bitrate | Codec | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4.75 KBPS | 4.75 kbps | AMR-NB Low | Worst-case GSM, archival of very long speech |
| 7.40 KBPS | 7.40 kbps | AMR-NB Toll Quality | Voicemail, IVR — "toll quality" threshold |
| 12.2 KBPS | 12.2 kbps | AMR-NB Max | Highest-quality narrowband; default for many Android recorders |
| 6.60 KBPS | 6.60 kbps | AMR-WB Low | Low-bandwidth wideband (HD voice fallback) |
| 12.65 KBPS | 12.65 kbps | AMR-WB | Anchor bitrate for VoLTE/3G HD voice |
| 23.85 KBPS | 23.85 kbps | AMR-WB Max | Best AMR-WB quality; 6400–7000 Hz extension active |
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does my AMR file sound muffled compared to the original TS audio?
AMR-NB band-limits everything to 200–3400 Hz (the classic GSM telephone band), so cymbals, sibilants, music, and background ambience all disappear by design. That's the codec doing its job — fitting speech into ~12 kbps. If the muffling is unacceptable, switch the Audio Codec dropdown to AMR Wide Band for 50–7000 Hz coverage, or convert to TS to MP3 or TS to AAC instead.
Should I pick AMR-NB or AMR-WB?
AMR-NB (4.75–12.2 kbps, 8 kHz) is the safe pick for MMS, voicemail, and pre-2010 handsets — every GSM phone supports it. AMR-WB (6.60–23.85 kbps, 16 kHz), also known as ITU-T G.722.2, is the "HD Voice" codec used by VoLTE and modern carrier voicemail; it sounds noticeably clearer but isn't universally accepted by legacy hardware or older messaging gateways. Pick NB for compatibility, WB for quality.
What's the smallest usable bitrate?
For intelligible single-speaker speech, 7.40 kbps AMR-NB (the "Toll Quality" mode) is the published threshold — anything lower will start to introduce noticeable warbling on consonants. The 4.75 kbps mode exists for worst-case cellular conditions and is recommended only when storage or bandwidth is critical.
Why is bitrate the only compression knob available?
AMR's encoder doesn't expose a VBR/quality-preset interface the way MP3 (LAME) or AAC do — the codec is defined by a fixed set of nine NB and nine WB constant bitrates, and the network or app picks one. The xconvert page hides the Quality Preset, File Size Percentage, and File Size Specific options for AMR output because they don't map to anything the encoder accepts. Constant Bitrate is the correct (and only) choice.
Will my multi-channel TS surround mix be preserved?
No — AMR is mono-only. Stereo or 5.1 surround tracks from a TS broadcast are downmixed to a single channel before encoding. If you need stereo, convert to TS to MP3, TS to WAV, or TS to AAC; if you need surround preserved, keep TS to MP4 and re-encode the audio to AAC or AC3.
Can I extract just the voice from a long broadcast TS file?
Yes — use the Trim controls in Advanced Options. Set Start (HH:MM:SS) and Duration to clip the segment you want before encoding; the trim happens on the decoded PCM stream so there's no quality penalty from picking weird boundaries. For multi-clip cutting it's faster to use the dedicated Audio Cutter after a one-pass TS→AMR conversion.
Which players and apps open AMR files?
VLC, QuickTime Player, MPC-HC, Audacity (with FFmpeg installed), and most Android voice-memo apps decode .amr natively. iOS handles AMR inside Messages attachments but doesn't expose it in the Files preview universally. On Windows, Groove and the stock Media Player do not support AMR — VLC or Audacity is the reliable choice.
What's the difference between this and converting to MP3 first?
Going TS → MP3 → AMR adds a generation loss (lossy → lossy transcoding), so artifacts compound. A direct TS → AMR conversion decodes the source audio once and re-encodes it once. If you already have an MP3 and need AMR for a specific device, the reverse-direction MP3 to AMR page does the single-step encode; for shrinking a long AMR or other audio file, the Audio Compressor handles same-format size reduction.