How do you make a Discord soundboard sound that fits the 5.2-second limit?
Short answer: Discord's developer documentation sets two limits for a soundboard sound: a maximum of 5.2 seconds and 512 KB, as an MP3 or OGG file. Open your song or recording in the audio cutter, type a start and an end that are 5.1 seconds or less apart, choose MP3 at 320 kbps, and download. In our tests a 5.2 s clip came out at 210,024 bytes at 320 kbps, which is 41% of the size limit, so the length is the only limit you have to work for.
- Do not type exactly 5.200 s. MP3 files are made of whole 26 ms frames plus a little encoder padding: our 5.200 s cut played back as 5.251 s, and FFprobe reported the same. A 5.100 s cut became a 5.146 s MP3, and 5.170 s was the longest cut that stayed under 5.2 s (5.198 s). We did not upload to Discord, so we don't know which length its check reads; 5.1 s is safe either way.
- Any bitrate fits. At 5.2 s the MP3 was 84,009 bytes at 128 kbps and 210,024 at 320 kbps. The size cap would only be reached at 12.8 s even at 320 kbps.
- Do not pick WAV. Discord accepts MP3 or OGG, and a 5.2 s stereo WAV is 917,324 bytes anyway.
- Too quiet? Discord's own volume setting goes from 0 to 1, so it can only turn a sound down. Export the clip as WAV instead, open it in the WAV to MP3 converter and set Volume to 200%: that added exactly 6.02 dB in our test.
What Discord allows
Discord's help article on the soundboard explains how to use and add sounds, and its developer documentation gives the numbers. From the two pages, read on 2026-10-24:
- Length and size: the developer documentation for creating a soundboard sound states a maximum file size of 512 KB and a maximum duration of 5.2 seconds (Discord Developer Documentation, Soundboard resource). The same page accepts the sound as MP3 or OGG data, a name of 2 to 32 characters, and a volume from 0 to 1 that defaults to 1.
- Slots: a server starts with 8 slots for sounds. Server Boost raises that to 24 at Tier 1, 36 at Tier 2 and 48 at Tier 3 (Discord Help Center, Discord Soundboard Guide).
- Where to upload: the help article says sounds can only be uploaded from the desktop app or a browser, with the Add Sound button in the soundboard panel. Adding a sound needs the Create Expressions permission; editing or removing one needs Manage Expressions. Existing sounds are managed under Server Settings, Soundboard.
The documentation writes the size limit as "512kb". We don't know whether Discord counts 512,000 or 524,288 bytes, so the table below shows both; at 5.2 s every bitrate is far under either.
How we tested
- Music: the same 30 s Mozart excerpt as our other guides (Symphony No. 40, first movement, Musopen Symphony, public domain on Wikimedia Commons), as 44.1 kHz 16-bit stereo WAV, as a mono WAV, as a copy turned down by 12 dB for the volume test, and as a 128 kbps MP3 made with this site's encoder.
- Browser: Chromium 153 driven by Playwright 1.63, opening a local copy of this site's audio cutter and WAV to MP3 converter. In the cutter we typed start 10 and ends from 15 to 15.3, and saved every region with the page's own Download button as WAV and as MP3 at 128, 192, 256 and 320 kbps. On the converter we used its own start and end fields, the mono option and the Volume slider.
- Reading back: FFmpeg 4.4.2 decoded every file and we counted samples, the peak level, clipped samples and the level of the last 100 ms. FFprobe gave the length a player would report. The byte counts were also reproduced outside the browser with the same lamejs encoder build the pages use, and matched to the byte.
Size of a 5.2 s clip at each bitrate
| Export | Bytes for 5.2 s | Share of 512,000 B | Clip length that would reach 512,000 B | Reach 524,288 B |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MP3 128 kbps | 84,009 | 16.4% | 31.97 s | 32.73 s |
| MP3 192 kbps | 126,014 | 24.6% | 21.29 s | 21.81 s |
| MP3 256 kbps | 168,019 | 32.8% | 15.96 s | 16.35 s |
| MP3 320 kbps | 210,024 | 41.0% | 12.77 s | 13.06 s |
| WAV 16-bit stereo | 917,324 | 179% | not accepted by Discord | |
Because the pages write constant-bitrate MP3, the size depends only on the length and the bitrate, not on the music or on mono versus stereo: the mono WAV, the stereo WAV and the 128 kbps MP3 source all produced a 126,014-byte file at 192 kbps. A 5.2 s file hits the size cap at no bitrate the cutter offers. That is why we recommend 320 kbps: the clip is re-encoded once, and we measured earlier that 320 kbps adds the least loss.
The WAV to MP3 converter offers lower bitrates for mono files, down to 64 kbps at 44.1 kHz, but with the size cap this far away there is no reason to go below 128.
How long the MP3 really is
The cutter cuts WAV to the sample: the 10.000 to 15.200 s region came back as exactly 229,320 samples, 5.200 s, and every sample matched the source to within 1 step of 16-bit rounding. MP3 cannot do that. An MPEG-1 Layer III frame holds 1,152 samples (26.1 ms at 44.1 kHz), the encoder starts with a short silence and ends by filling the last frame, so the file is always a whole number of frames and a little longer than what you typed.
| Region typed | MP3 192 kbps, bytes | Decoded samples | Length a player reports | Over 5.2 s? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5.000 s | 120,999 | 222,336 | 5.042 s | no |
| 5.100 s | 123,506 | 226,944 | 5.146 s | no |
| 5.150 s | 124,760 | 229,248 | 5.198 s | no |
| 5.170 s | 124,760 | 229,248 | 5.198 s | no |
| 5.200 s | 126,014 | 231,552 | 5.251 s | yes, by 51 ms |
| 5.250 s | 126,641 | 232,704 | 5.277 s | yes |
| 5.300 s | 127,895 | 235,008 | 5.329 s | yes |
The extra time is almost all silence. In the 5.200 s file at 192 kbps the first 288 samples (6.5 ms) and the last 725 samples (16.4 ms) were within 2 steps of zero, and the rest of the padding sits inside the final frame. It is inaudible, but a program that checks the length will count it. We did not upload any of these files to Discord, so we cannot say whether Discord reads the length from the decoded audio or from the file's frames; both come out over 5.2 s for a 5.200 s cut. Typing 5.1 s leaves 54 ms of room.
If your source is already an MP3, the cutter decodes it first, and an MP3 without a LAME header starts 25 ms late, so your typed times land 25 ms early in the music. The cut from our 128 kbps MP3 source was otherwise identical: 126,014 bytes and 5.251 s. We measured that offset separately.
Making it loud enough, and avoiding the click
Discord's volume field runs from 0 to 1, so a quiet clip stays quiet after upload. The audio cutter has no volume control, but the WAV to MP3 converter does, and it also has start and end fields of its own. For a WAV source you can do the whole job there; for anything else, export WAV from the cutter and drop it on the converter.
| Job on the WAV to MP3 converter | Peak before | Peak after | Clipped sample values |
|---|---|---|---|
| Quiet clip (Mozart turned down 12 dB), Volume 200%, WAV out | −14.96 dBFS | −8.94 dBFS | 0 |
| Same, MP3 192 kbps out | −14.96 dBFS | −9.24 dBFS | 0 |
| Normal-level Mozart, Volume 200%, WAV out | −2.96 dBFS | 0.00 dBFS | 662 |
| Normal-level Mozart, Volume 100%, trimmed 10 to 15.2 s on the page, MP3 192 kbps | −2.96 dBFS | −3.27 dBFS | 0 |
Use 200% only on a clip whose peak is below −6 dBFS, or the loud parts clip: our normal-level excerpt hit full scale 662 times. The page warns "Above 100%, loud parts can clip." when you move the slider past 100. The trimmed MP3 from the converter was 126,337 bytes, 323 more than the cutter's, because the converter copies the WAV's title and artist tags into the file.
A cut that ends in the middle of a note clicks. The cutter's shortest fade is 0.1 s; with Fade out at 0.1 s the last 100 ms of our clip peaked at −11.88 dBFS instead of −7.42 dBFS, the size stayed at 126,014 bytes and the length at 5.251 s. How long a fade removes the click is measured in its own guide.
Step by step
- Open the audio cutter and drop in the song or recording the sound comes from. MP3, WAV, M4A, OGG, Opus and FLAC files open, and so does the sound track of an MP4 or MOV file.
- Find the moment on the waveform and type the start time. Type an end time at most 5.1 s later; the Length field shows the difference.
- Optional: set Fade out to 0.1 s if the clip ends mid-sound.
- Choose MP3 and 320 kbps, press Download. If the clip is quiet, choose WAV instead, then open that WAV in the WAV to MP3 converter, set Volume to 150 or 200%, pick 320 kbps and convert.
- In Discord, from the desktop app or a browser, open the soundboard panel in a voice call, press Add Sound, pick the MP3 and give it a name of 2 to 32 characters. You need the Create Expressions permission in that server.
Questions
Can I cut several sounds from one file at once?
Yes. Press "+ Add region" in the cutter for each sound; every region downloads as its own file with the same format and fade settings. Keep each region at 5.1 s or less.
Does mono make the file smaller?
Not in the cutter: constant-bitrate MP3 has the same size in mono and stereo, 126,014 bytes for 5.2 s at 192 kbps in both our runs. The WAV to MP3 converter lists 64 and 96 kbps for mono files, which would be smaller, but at 5.2 s even 320 kbps stereo uses 41% of the limit, so there is nothing to gain.
Can I upload a WAV or an OGG from this site?
Discord accepts MP3 or OGG, and this site exports MP3 or WAV, so use MP3. The pages do not write OGG.