Why WAV is the gold standard for transcription

WAV files contain the original PCM audio waveform without any compression artefacts. For a transcription engine, that means: no compression noise that could be misheard as sibilants, no missing high frequencies that consonants depend on, no codec ringing around plosives. If you have the choice between a WAV and an MP3 of the same recording, WAV will produce a cleaner transcript every time. The difference is small for clean studio audio (already easy to transcribe) and larger for noisy field recordings (where every artefact-free decibel of signal-to-noise helps).

Studio and broadcast workflows

Radio stations, podcast studios, audiobook producers, and field journalists record to WAV by default. The workflow is: capture raw to WAV, edit the WAV in a DAW, and export a final MP3 only for distribution. MDisBetter accepts WAV directly so you can transcribe before the lossy export step happens — useful when you want a transcript of the unedited material (for journalist use: every word the source actually said) rather than the polished cut.

Structured Markdown output

The output structure is the same as for any other format: # H1 for the recording title, ## H2 at topic shifts, **Speaker N:** labels at voice changes, [HH:MM:SS] timestamps at speaker turns. The transcription engine doesn't care that the input was WAV vs MP3; the structural pass that produces the Markdown runs the same way regardless of source format.