How to reverse audio online
- Upload an MP3, WAV, M4A or the audio of a video, or press Record your voice and say or sing something.
- Press Play reversed to hear it backwards. Play original lets you compare.
- To flip only part of the file, choose Reverse one section and drag the start and end points.
- Press Download reversed WAV to save the result.
What reversing audio actually does
Digital audio is a long list of numbers, one for every tiny slice of time; a song has about 44,100 of them per second for each speaker. Reversing simply reads that list from the end to the start. Nothing is lost or added, so if you reverse a reversed file you get the original back exactly.
What changes is how the sound unfolds. A piano note normally hits hard and fades away; backwards it swells out of nothing and stops dead. Speech turns into a strange, sucking language. Reverb and echo become a rising whoosh in front of each sound. Those three effects are why reversed audio sounds so dreamlike, and why musicians keep using it.
Ways musicians use a reverse audio effect
- Reverse cymbal or riser: take one cymbal hit, reverse it and place it so it ends right on the downbeat of a chorus. The rising swell pulls the listener into the next section.
- Reverse reverb vocal: reverse a word, add a long reverb, reverse it back. The echo now leads into the word instead of following it, a classic ghostly intro.
- Reversed guitar or piano: a melody played backwards keeps its notes but loses its attack, which gives psychedelic and lo-fi tracks their floating feel.
- Transitions and drops: reverse the last bar before a drop, or one drum fill, to make the moment stand out without adding new sounds.
For these, the Reverse one section mode is the useful one: flip only the part you need and keep the timing of everything around it.
The reverse audio game: the reverse singing challenge
The challenge that keeps going around TikTok is simple and surprisingly hard. Record a line of a song and reverse it. Listen a few times, then record yourself copying the backwards version as closely as you can. Reverse that second recording: if you nailed the sounds, it comes back as the original line. Most people get something halfway between a song and a spell. Keep the line short, three to five seconds, and pick words with clear consonants.
How to reverse audio for CapCut, TikTok or your iPhone
Video apps are built around clips, so reversing only the sound can be awkward inside them. The simplest route is to reverse the audio here and bring the finished file into the app:
- CapCut: reverse the audio here, download the WAV, then import it into your CapCut project as an audio track and line it up with your clip.
- TikTok and Reels: add the reversed WAV to your video in an editor such as CapCut before posting, or turn it into a video on its own with a picture (see below).
- iPhone and Android: this page works in Safari and Chrome on your phone, including recording with the microphone, so you do not need a separate reverse audio app. The download lands in your Files or Downloads folder.
Tips for clean reversed audio
- Trim silence at the end of the original first. Reversed, it becomes silence at the start.
- Cut sections on a beat if you plan to drop them back into a track. Our BPM & Key Finder gives you the tempo; one bar in 4/4 lasts 240 divided by the BPM, in seconds.
- Short, percussive sounds reverse into the most obvious swells. Long pads and held notes barely change.
- Pair it with other edits: a reversed intro into a slowed + reverb version makes an instant alternative take for social media.
From a sound to a video
A reversed clip on its own is hard to share. Turn the WAV into an MP4 with a picture or an audio visualizer using the free Audio to Video converter, ready for YouTube, TikTok or Reels. If it is your own song and you want a full music video, AIMusicVideoGen takes the track and one photo of the singer and makes a lip-synced video cut to the beat.