Create an audio waveform image

What a waveform shows

A waveform plots loudness over time. Each thin bar is the peak level of a short slice of the recording, so loud passages are tall and quiet ones are short. It is the picture audio editors show along their timelines, and it makes the shape of a track visible at a glance: intros, drops, pauses and the overall level.

How to create a waveform image

Drop an audio file above. The file is decoded in your browser, its peaks are measured across 1400 columns and the waveform is drawn on a 1400 × 420 canvas in indigo on a light grey background. Press Download PNG to save it. Next to the image you also get the duration, sample rate, channels, file size, codec and bitrate of the file.

Uses for a waveform PNG

Put the image on a podcast episode page, a SoundCloud-style player mockup, a social post for a song release or a thumbnail for an audio file. Editors use waveforms to spot clipping, silence and level jumps before they start work, and teachers use them to show students how speech and music look.

Before you start

Input: MP3, WAV, FLAC, M4A, AAC, OGG, OPUS, WEBM, and AMR. Output: waveform PNG. The settings appear before anything runs, so you can check them first. Your original file is never changed.

Converting audio can change the codec, bitrate, channels, tags and length. Listen to the start and end of the result. Keep a lossless original if you may edit it again.

Keep the original until you have opened and checked the result. The work happens in this browser tab, so the size you can handle depends on your device's memory, your browser and the file itself.

How to create an audio waveform image

1. Drop audio to visualize.
2. Pick the settings you want.
3. Press the action button, then download the waveform PNG.