Learn how to split and merge audio & music files using Audacity on your Windows PC. Audacity is a free audio editing software for Windows 11/10.

Then I figured out that this was because Audacity was converting my 16-bit, 44.1 Hz WAV audio files to 32-bit float when I imported them.

Audacity provides an effective, minimally destructive way to lower the bit rate of an audio file. Lowering the bit rate lessens the quality of the audio file, but also decreases the file size.