Workflows

Audio Workflow

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Settings are written to the URL as you change them. Nothing differs from the defaults yet.

Stack audio adjustments and effects into one ordered chain. The same chain drives live playback and the final render, so what you hear while dialling it in is what the exported file contains.

Order is the signal path

Steps run top to bottom, each one processing what the previous step produced. That ordering is a real creative control, not bookkeeping:

  • Echo before reverb sends discrete repeats into the room, so each repeat gets its own reflections.
  • Reverb before distortion drives the reverb tail into the shaper, which smears and thickens it.
  • EQ before distortion decides which frequencies get driven hardest, since the shaper responds to whatever arrives loudest.
  • Fade last shapes the finished result, including any reverb tail that earlier steps produced.

Drag a step by its grip to move it, or focus the grip and use the arrow keys.

Building a chain that raises the level

A chain that raises level needs somewhere for the peaks to go. On most material the order that works is repair, tone, dynamics, ceiling:

  • Cut before you lift. A high-pass at 30 Hz costs nothing audible and stops the shelf above it amplifying rumble into every step that follows.
  • EQ before the exciter. The harmonic generator responds to whatever arrives in its band, so the EQ decides what it works on.
  • Compressor before limiter. The compressor handles the average level over hundreds of milliseconds; the limiter catches the individual peaks the compressor let through.
  • Limiter last. Anything after it can push the signal back over the ceiling it just enforced.

A fade is the one exception, because it shapes the finished result including whatever the limiter produced.

Bypass keeps the settings

The toggle on each card stops a step processing without removing it from the chain. Its settings survive, so comparing the chain with and without one step costs nothing and loses nothing.

Which steps can be chained

The chain processes audio as a stream, one block of samples at a time, and no step is allowed to see the whole file. That constraint is what keeps a 45 minute recording from being decoded into memory, and it decides what can be a step.

Level, tone, dynamics, and time-based steps all qualify: gain and EQ, the compressor and limiter, the gate and de-esser, the exciter and transient shaper, and every reverb, echo, and modulation effect each produce their output block from the current input plus their own internal state. Trimming and format conversion change the structure or length of the file, and loudness normalization needs to measure the whole thing before it can decide on a gain. Those remain separate tools with their own runners.

Save stores the current chain in this browser under a name, and re-saving under an existing name updates that entry rather than adding a duplicate. Presets are held in localStorage on one device.

Copy link encodes the whole chain into the URL, including every setting that differs from its default. That link is the portable form: it survives being pasted anywhere, and opening it rebuilds the chain exactly.

Rendering

Export runs the chain over the source through a background worker, writing the result to browser disk storage rather than holding it in memory, which is what makes long files workable. Reverb and echo tails are rendered past the end of the source so the decay completes.

Selecting a range on the waveform and turning on Export selected range renders only that section, which is the fast way to audition a chain on a chorus before committing to the whole track.

Frequently Asked Questions

Yes. Each step processes the output of the one before it, so reverb before distortion drives the reverb tail into the shaper, while distortion before reverb puts a clean room around a dirty signal. Drag a step by its grip to move it, or focus the grip and use the arrow keys.

Yes. Playback runs the same chain live, and the Original button switches to the untouched source at the same position so you can compare. Match level holds both sides at the same loudness while you do. Moving a control while it plays updates the sound without restarting.

Usually because it is louder, and louder reads as better on a first pass. Match level turns down whichever side is ahead so Original and Processed play at the same short-term level, which is the only way to hear what the chain actually changed rather than how much level it added. It affects playback alone; the exported file carries the level the chain produced.

The chain produced a sample at or above full scale. Playback is floating point and survives it, but a PCM or lossy encoder does not, so the exported file will be distorted at that point. Lower the gain of the last step that raises level, or end the chain with a limiter set below 0 dB. Click the reading to clear it.

In this browser's localStorage on this device, so they do not sync between devices. Copy link puts the entire chain and its settings in the URL, which is the way to move one somewhere else.

The chain runs as a stream, one block of samples at a time, so every step has to work without knowing the whole file. Trimming, format conversion, and loudness normalization change the length or need a full-file analysis pass first, so they stay separate tools.

No. A bypassed step keeps its settings and stays in the chain, it just stops processing. That makes it easy to compare with and without a single step without losing what you dialled in.

Reverb and echo keep sounding after the input stops. The render continues past the end of the source until those tails fall below -60 dB, so the decay finishes instead of being cut off.

A limiter, with the ceiling at -1 dB or lower. Every step before it can push peaks past full scale, and the limiter is the only step that holds them under a fixed line without changing the level of everything else. A fade can follow it; nothing else should.

The equalizer's low shelf raises what is already there, so a file that rolls off at 60 Hz gains nothing below that. The bass booster generates an octave below the band instead, which puts content at frequencies the source never captured. Set Protect below above anything you do not want amplified before raising the shelf.

Yes, and that is the usual shape. Put the repair steps first so the notch, high-pass, or gate runs on the untouched signal, then the tone and dynamics steps, then the ceiling. Bypass toggles let you check either half on its own without unpicking the chain.

Every step is also a standalone tool

Audio Tools In This Workflow

28 steps