AudioKit

Reverse audio

Flip a song, a voice note or a sound effect and hear it backwards. Handy for the reverse-singing challenge, sound design and backmasking experiments.

  • Runs on your device
  • No upload
  • No sign-up
  • Free

Open any audio or video to play it backwards

Stays on this device: nothing is uploaded. You can also drag a file here or paste it.

What reversing actually does

A digital recording is a list of tens of thousands of numbers per second. Reversing just reads that list from the end. The frequencies stay the same, so a note keeps its pitch, but everything shaped over time flips: drum hits swell instead of snapping, and echoes play before the sound that made them.

Sound designers use this for the “reverse cymbal” swell before a chorus and for eerie voices in films. For the viral reverse challenge: record yourself singing a phrase backwards with the voice recorder, reverse it here, and see how close it comes to the real thing.

Questions people ask

How do I reverse an audio file?

Open it above. The reversed version appears straight away under the original; press Play reversed to hear it and Export to save it as MP3, WAV or another format.

Can I reverse just part of a file?

Yes, in the audio editor: select the part on the waveform and press Reverse.

Why does reversed speech sound so strange?

Speech sounds have a sharp start (the consonant attack) and a slow decay. Reversed, every syllable swells up and stops dead, and reverb arrives before the sound that caused it. Our ears aren’t used to hearing that envelope.

Are there hidden messages in songs played backwards?

Some artists added deliberate backmasked parts, such as The Beatles on “Rain”. Most claimed “hidden messages” are pareidolia: the brain finding words in random sound once it’s told what to listen for. Try it: you’ll hear what you expect to hear.

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