Quick answer: Wave files (or AIFF) are bigger than MP3 files.
Long Answer:
When you download music, it's usually in the form of MP3 files these days, that are compressed files. And when making MP3 files, one can choose how much data they still consume: 128kbps, 160kbps, 192kbps...
But when these sounds are compressed, they actually lose some of their information. In computers, there's a difference between Lossy Compression and Non-Lossy Compression. The latter is used in ZIP files and so on, that must expand into the exact program or data. But in sound and video, there is generally some loss in quality. If you were to look at the sound from an MP3 file afterwards, on an oscilloscope, you would never recognize any actual waves, because they're different overall. Also, Jpeg images and most Video streams use lossy compression.
Yet, there are many people who can hear the loss to their sound, due to MP3 compression. So to avoid this loss, Arturia has programmed Storm always to store your music in a WAV or AIFF file, depending on whether you're Windows or Mac. These files are uncompressed and preserve each and every wave of sound.
It's normal for actual Wave Files to consume ~10MB /minute, while MP3s consume closer to 1MB /minute.
If you want to make your songs so that people can download them (why?), you need to export your Storm audio to an exact Wave file first, and then use some other program to compress them into MP3s.
Many musicians will insist that you should just burn them onto Auio CDs directly instead, and that you should also settle for 'only' the ~11 songs /disk that this gives you.
Caveat: If you tell Storm to compress your Waves as part of your Storm Project File, then you'll never get that ultimate quality of Wave Files back, arising from your Samples already having been compressed once. Yet, if you never compres them, you may end up saving huge .STM files.
P.S. I'd be happiest if I knew for a fact that Storm has a setting in which it will leave Samples compressed that were already compressed, and will not compress those, which were Dragged or Imported as (uncompressed) Wave files. Just NOT setting "Compress Waves" should do this, but I don't know if the exact wording of the Manual is Scripture on that question.
Dirk
