.amr files
.amr file
Adaptive Multi-Rate Audio
The narrow-band speech codec behind old phone voice recordings and MMS messages.
What opens a .amr file
- Windows
- VLC, foobar2000
- macOS
- VLC, QuickTime Player (built in)
- Linux
- VLC, mpv
What a .amr file is
AMR was designed by 3GPP for GSM and UMTS voice calls, optimised for speech at very low bitrates. Older phones used it for voice memos and MMS attachments, so it turns up in exported message archives and voicemail files. The quality ceiling is low by design; VLC plays AMR on every platform, and converting to MP3 or WAV makes the file usable elsewhere without improving the sound.
Converting it
A .amr file is commonly converted to .mp3, .wav, .m4a or .ogg. It is a binary format, so a text editor will show unreadable characters rather than its contents.
Details
- Extension
- .amr
- Full name
- Adaptive Multi-Rate Audio
- Category
- Audio
- MIME type
- audio/AMR
- Created by
- 3GPP
- Format
- Binary
Common questions
- How do I open a .amr file?
- On Windows use VLC; on macOS use VLC; on Linux use VLC. The narrow-band speech codec behind old phone voice recordings and MMS messages.
- What is a .amr file?
- Adaptive Multi-Rate Audio. AMR was designed by 3GPP for GSM and UMTS voice calls, optimised for speech at very low bitrates. Older phones used it for voice memos and MMS attachments, so it turns up in exported message archives and voicemail files.
- Can I convert a .amr file?
- Yes. It is usually converted to .mp3, .wav, .m4a or .ogg, either by exporting from one of the programs listed above or with a format converter.
Related pages
- .mp3 — MPEG-1 Audio Layer III The lossy audio format that made digital music portable, and still plays on ever
- .wav — Waveform Audio File Uncompressed audio — perfect quality, very large files, universal support.
- .m4a — MPEG-4 Audio Audio in an MP4 container — what iTunes, Voice Memos and most modern recorders p
- .flac — Free Lossless Audio Codec Compressed audio that throws nothing away — about half the size of WAV, bit-for-
- .aac — Advanced Audio Coding The successor to MP3 — better sound per byte, used by YouTube, Apple and broadca
- .ogg — Ogg Vorbis Audio The open, patent-free audio format used by Spotify, Wikipedia and countless game
- .opus — Opus Audio The modern low-latency codec behind WhatsApp voice notes, Discord and web calls.
- .mid — MIDI Sequence Not audio at all — a list of notes and instructions for a synthesiser to perform
- .m3u — Media Playlist A plain-text list of tracks or stream URLs — it holds no audio itself.
- .wma — Windows Media Audio Microsoft's music format from the Windows XP years, now legacy.
- .aiff — Audio Interchange File Format Apple's uncompressed audio format — the Mac equivalent of WAV.
- .m4b — MPEG-4 Audiobook An audiobook file that remembers your place and supports chapters.
Sources
- Media Types Registry — IANA
- Official vendor product documentation — At One Place