Waveform Editor

The Waveform Editor shows one audio file at full size, for quick editing and cleanup without building a session. Open it from Window > Waveform Editor, with the Wave button at the right of the menu bar, or the Wave tab on a phone.

Starting, and File > New

Audio opens in the Waveform Editor, one file at full size, and stays in it until you choose another window with the Waveform / Multitrack / Mix buttons at the right of the menu bar (or the tabs at the bottom on a phone).

File > New... asks what to create:

• Audio File: a new, silent audio file of the length you give, with a name, sample rate (44.1, 48, 96 kHz and more), channels (mono or stereo) and bit depth. It opens in the Waveform Editor, ready to record into, paste into or generate sound in.
• Multitrack Session: an empty session that opens in the multitrack view.

Opening a file

Use Open... (or drop an audio file on the page). The file becomes a track in the session, and the editor works on the selected audio track (a track menu appears when there are several).

The display

• Wave shows the waveform, Spectral the spectral frequency display, Both stacks them.
• The spectral display is a spectrogram: time runs left to right, frequency bottom to top on a logarithmic scale (30 Hz to the top of the audible range), and the level is the colour, from dark blue through red and orange to white for the loudest. It fills in a moment after the file opens.
• Drag to select a range, click to place the cursor, double-click to select everything. Hand makes a drag pan the view instead. -, +, Fit and Sel zoom; the scroll wheel and a two-finger pinch also zoom around the pointer.

Spectral lanes in the Edit window

Any audio track in the Edit window can show its spectrum instead of its waveform: open the track's view menu (the waveform button in its header) and choose spectral. Several tracks can do it at once; make the track taller to see more detail.

Spectral selection and repair

Turn on Box, then drag in the spectral display: the box is a stretch of time and a band of frequencies. Then, from Restore:

• Spectral Repair glides the box's levels from just before it to just after it, so a cough, a chirp, a squeak or a phone ring in the middle of a sound disappears. It works best on short, narrow boxes.
• Attenuate Band... turns the box down (-60 dB or more removes it).
• Clear Box (or Esc) forgets the frequency band; the time selection stays.

The box must be shorter than 40 seconds. It is the wave.spectral command.

Effects

Every effect runs on the selection, or on the whole file when nothing is selected. Each is one undo step.

• Effects: Amplify, Normalize, Reverse, Invert, and every built-in processor (EQ, dynamics, reverb, delay, pitch shift and more).
• Fade In, Fade Out, Silence and Normalize are buttons in the toolbar.
• Restore:
  • Noise Reduction: learns the noise from the quietest half second of the file (or from a stretch you select and capture with Capture Noise Print) and takes it out of the selection.
  • DeClick: repairs clicks and pops, from a single sample to a few milliseconds, in music as well as speech: it models the sound, marks what the model cannot predict, and rebuilds those samples.
  • DeHiss: lowers steady hiss without a noise print, learning it from the quiet gaps in the file.
  • Hum Removal: notches at 50 or 60 Hz and its harmonics.
  • Clean Up Voice: hum, rumble filter, noise reduction and loudness matching in one step. Clean Voice in the toolbar applies it with the usual settings (rumble below 80 Hz, 12 dB of noise reduction, -16 LUFS).
  • Match Loudness: sets the integrated loudness to -23, -16 or -14 LUFS (or any target), without clipping.

Essential Sound

Essential opens a panel in the style of a professional audio editor's: pick what the audio is (Dialogue, Music, SFX or Ambience) and each tag loads its own settings, then adjust and press Apply.

• Loudness: the integrated loudness to reach (-26 to -14 LUFS).
• Repair: hum (50/60 Hz), rumble filter and noise reduction (the noise is learned from the quietest half second), and de-essing for dialogue.
• Clarity: dynamics (compression) and tone: warmth, presence and air.

Everything runs in one step on the selection (or the whole file) and is one undo.

Batch

Batch... in the Essential panel applies the same settings to many files: choose them in the browser's file picker and each one is processed and downloaded as <name>-clean.wav (24-bit, at the file's own sample rate). Batch runs in the web app.

The same effects are commands, for the command line, MCP and scripts: wave.process, wave.spectral and wave.cleanup_voice (see audio-cli describe wave.process).