How to reverse audio
- Drop a sample, a vocal or a whole song onto the tool, or press to choose the file.
- Pick Reverse to flip it as it is, or Reverse reverb swell to build a swell into it. Drag the trim handles first if you only want part of the file.
- Press Reverse it (or Make the swell), play the result, then download the WAV.
How do you make a reverse reverb swell?
The studio way takes four steps: reverse the sound, put a reverb on it, print only the reverb, then reverse that print back. The reverb's tail, which normally fades out after a hit, now fades in before it, so it rises and lands exactly on the first hit. The swell mode does all four steps for you. Add the dry sound after the swell if you want one file that rises straight into the original.
Use it to lead into something: a vocal entry, the first snare of a section, a drop. Place the swell so its peak sits on the downbeat. The space sets how long the rise is:
- Room: about 1.4 seconds of swell, a quick pickup into a word or a snare.
- Plate: about 3.5 seconds, bright and dense, good on vocals.
- Hall: about 5.8 seconds, a long wash into a drop or a new section.
To fit a swell to the song's tempo, the reverb calculator gives pre-delay and decay times at any BPM. In your own session, Halo Reverb lets you shape the tail before you print it.
Reverse a song, a vocal or a sample: what changes
Reversing keeps every sample and only changes their order, so the pitch, the tempo and the length stay the same. What changes is the shape of each sound. A drum hit starts at its peak and dies away; reversed, it creeps in and stops dead. A piano note swells instead of decaying, and a cymbal becomes the classic reverse crash that sucks into the next bar.
A reversed vocal keeps its pitch and rhythm but its words turn inside out: consonants arrive at the end of each syllable and vowels open backwards. That is why reversed vocals sound like a language you almost know, the effect people call backmasking. A whole song reversed is mostly useful for listening or for finding a texture to sample, not as a finished track.
What is in the WAV download?
A 16-bit WAV at your file's own sample rate and channel count (a surround file is mixed to stereo for the swell). A plain reverse keeps its level and is only turned down if it would cross the ceiling; a swell is brought up to it, because a reverb's level depends on the space. The ceiling is -1 dBFS sample peak, and the conversion to 16 bits uses TPDF dither. The file is made in your browser; nothing is uploaded.
Questions
How do I reverse a song?
Drop the song onto the tool, leave the mode on Reverse and press Reverse it. Play the result to check it, then download the WAV. Trim first if you only want part of it.
Can I reverse an MP3?
Yes. The tool reads MP3, WAV, AIFF, FLAC and M4A (AAC) files, and Ogg or Opus where your browser can decode them, up to 12 minutes long. The download is always a WAV, at the same sample rate and channel count as your file.
Does it upload my audio?
No. The file is decoded, reversed and reverberated inside this browser tab, and the WAV is made there too. Nothing is sent anywhere.
What is a reverse reverb?
A reverb that rises into a sound instead of trailing after it. In the studio you reverse the sound, print its reverb, then reverse that reverb back, so the tail becomes a swell that peaks on the first hit. The swell mode here does exactly that with Halo Reverb spaces.
Will reversing change the pitch or tempo?
No. A reversed file has the same samples in the opposite order, so its pitch, tempo and length stay the same. The sound changes because attacks become fades and decays become rises.
Is the audio reverser free?
Yes. It runs in your browser, needs no account, and the WAV download has no watermark.
Link to this reverser
Showing someone how to reverse a sample in a lesson, a forum answer or an article? Here is a plain link with a credit line, ready to paste. It is ordinary HTML: no embed and no script.
<a href="https://vitricaudio.com/tools/reverse-audio">Free audio reverser</a> by Vitric Audio