Free, nothing to install
Reverse Audio
Reverse audio in one click: drop in a song, a voice note or a video, or record yourself, and hear it backwards at once. Reverse just one part, or add a reverse reverb that swells into the sound. Practise a backwards phrase at half speed with the pitch kept, then take the reverse singing challenge: two takes, each turned round and scored. WAV comes back bit for bit, MP3 at its own bitrate. It all runs in your browser.
The reverse challenge: “I love pizza”
52/ 100
One of our voices says the phrase; backwards it sounds like “Uh steep vuh lie”. The same voice reads that, and turned round it comes back close to the phrase: the studio scores it 52.
The phrase
Backwards
Your take, as recorded
Turned round
100 is about as close as the same voice saying it again; another voice saying it perfectly gets about 60 to 70.
- no sign-up, nothing to install
- Free
- WAV reversed exactly, twice is the original
- Bit for bit
- joined smoothly at both edges
- A part or all
- slowed down, pitch kept, looping
- 0.5× and 0.75×
- a score for every challenge take
- 0 to 100
- the four parts of a challenge, to share
- One MP3
How do I reverse audio?
To reverse audio, open the studio and drop in the file, or press Record and say something. It plays backwards at once: press Play, or switch to Original to compare. To reverse only a part, choose “A part” and drag across the waveform. Then press Make the file and download it, as the same kind of file or as MP3 or WAV.
Reverse audio in three steps
Play audio backwards on a phone or a computer, in any current browser, with any audio or video file the browser can read, or a recording made on the spot.
Drop in a file or record
A song, a voice note, a sound effect or a video; or press Record and use the microphone.
Choose what to reverse
All of it, or a part you drag across on the waveform; a plain reverse or a reverse reverb. It plays straight away.
Make the file and download
The same kind of file as the original, at its own quality, or MP3 or WAV.
Play audio backwards, and do more with it
A reverse audio tool for the fun of it and for real work: the challenge, practice, parts, swells, and files that keep their quality.
The reverse singing challenge, with a score
Record a phrase and hear it backwards. Copy what you hear in two takes, one for each player if you like; each take is turned round, so if you copied it well it sounds like the phrase. A score from 0 to 100 says how close each came, and the closer one wins.
Practise backwards phrases slowly
Play at 0.75× or 0.5× and the pitch stays where it is, so every syllable is easier to catch. Pick a stretch on the waveform and loop it until you have it.
Reverse one part, keep the rest
Drag across one word, one cymbal hit or one bar of a song and only that plays backwards. Short crossfades join it smoothly to what is around it.
Reverse reverb in one step
The sound plays forwards with its own echo reversed in front of it: a swell that rises into a word, a vocal entry or a beat. Choose a swell from half a second to four, and how strong it is.
Reversed exactly, at its own quality
A WAV is reversed sample by sample at its own bit depth and sample rate; reverse the result again and you have the original back, bit for bit. An MP3 comes back as an MP3 at its own bitrate with its title, artist and cover.
Reverse a song or any file the browser reads
Reverse a song as MP3, WAV, M4A, OGG, WebM or FLAC, or the sound of an MP4, MOV or other video. Each comes back as the same kind of file where the browser can write it, or as MP3 or WAV if you prefer. An MP3, M4A or OGG reverse song keeps its title, artist and cover.
Reverse voice recordings in one take
To reverse voice recordings, press Record, say something and stop: your voice plays backwards straight away, ready to loop, slow down, download or use as the phrase of a challenge. A reverse voice clip is also a quick way to hear how your words are built.
Reverse audio samples: before and after
Each sound was reversed by this tool’s own code from the site’s AI songs and voices. The challenge’s take is one of our voices reading the phrase’s sounds in the other order, as a player does. Each opens in the studio with its settings.
Reverse audio guide: what backwards sounds like
What reverse audio does to a sound
Reversing plays the samples of a recording in the other order, from the last to the first. Nothing else changes: the same pitches, the same voice, the same length. What changes is the shape of every sound in time.
A drum hit or a plucked string starts sharply and fades; backwards, it swells and stops dead. A room’s echo, which trails after each note, comes before it. Speech keeps its vowels, which sound much the same either way, but its consonants and the order of its sounds turn round, so words become a strange new language in the same voice.
How to win the reverse singing challenge
The challenge works because reversing twice gives back the original. If you copy the backwards sound closely and your copy is reversed, it turns into the original phrase, a little blurred.
- 1Pick something short: a name, three or four words, a line of a song.
- 2Listen to it backwards at 0.75× or 0.5×, looping a few syllables at a time.
- 3Write down what you hear, as it sounds, not as it should be spelled: “I love pizza” backwards sounds like “uh steep vuh lie”.
- 4Say it at the speed of the original, with its rise and fall.
- 5Record two takes, turn them round, and keep the one with the higher score.
Copy the vowels first, then the hiss of each “s” and the pop of each “p”: those are what bring the words back when the take is turned round.
How the score is worked out
The studio compares your take, turned round, with the phrase. Both are cut into 25-millisecond frames, and each frame’s sound is described by its mel-frequency cepstral coefficients, the measures speech recognisers use for what a sound is regardless of how loud it is. Dynamic time warping then lines the two up, so a take that is a little faster or slower in places still matches.
The distance along that best line is set against how far the phrase is from its own reversal. 0 means no closer than playing the phrase backwards; 100 is about as close as the same voice saying it again. Someone else’s voice saying the phrase perfectly lands around 60 to 70, so for two players, the higher score is the closer copy.
Reverse reverb, and when to use it
Reverse reverb is made in three steps: the sound is reversed, a reverb is added, and the result is reversed back. The reverb’s tail, which normally trails after the sound, now rises before it, so the sound seems to arrive out of its own echo.
A swell of about one second suits a single word or a snare hit; two to three seconds suit a vocal entry or the start of a track; four seconds make a long, dreamy rise. Leave a little silence before the sound, or the studio adds it in front so the swell has room.
Reverse audio at its own quality
A WAV keeps every sample: a whole reverse only moves them, so the file comes back at its own bit depth and sample rate, and reversing it again gives back the original bit for bit.
An MP3, M4A or Opus file is decoded, reversed and encoded once more at its own bitrate, which loses about as little as any re-encoding at the same quality. For audio you will edit further, choose WAV; to share, choose MP3, which is about a tenth of the size.
What people use reverse audio for
From party games to sound design, reverse audio finds a use wherever a sound is more interesting backwards.
A reverse song party game
Friends take turns: one records a line, the other copies it backwards, and the score settles who was closer.
Learning a song backwards
Loop a line of the reverse song at half speed until it sticks, then sing the whole verse backwards and turn it round.
Swells and risers for video
A reversed bar or cymbal turns into a riser that pulls into the next beat, a title or a cut.
Listening for hidden messages
Play a song backwards and hear what is really there, slowed down if a part is hard to make out.
A vocal entry that swells in
A reverse reverb lifts the first word of a cover or a demo, so the voice seems to rise out of its own echo.
Strange voices for stories
A line read backwards becomes a mysterious language for a game, a podcast or a spooky story.
Reverse audio FAQ
More audio tools
Open reverse audio
Drop in a file or record yourself, hear it backwards at once, and take the reverse challenge.