Does reversing lose any quality?

The reversal itself loses nothing — it is the same samples in the opposite order. Saving as MP3 compresses the result, as saving any MP3 does. Save as WAV and the operation is entirely lossless.

Why does reversed speech sound so strange?

Because the ear identifies sounds largely by their attack, and reversing puts the attack at the end. Consonants in particular stop being recognisable, which is why backwards speech is almost impossible to follow even though every sound is still present.

Can I reverse just part of a file?

Trim the part you want first, reverse that, and join it back to the rest with the Audio Joiner. Three tools, but each of them does one thing you can check.

How do I make reverse reverb?

Reverse the clip, add reverb to it in an editor, then reverse it back. The reverb tail now runs backwards and arrives before the note, which is the whole effect.

Reverse Audio

Play a recording backwards.

Everything runs inside your browser. Your files never leave your device.

Drop your file here

.mp3, .wav, .m4a, .aac, .ogg, .oga, .opus, .flac, .webm, .weba · they stay on this device

Ask about Reverse Audio

Questions about what this tool does, which option to pick, or what it can and cannot handle.

This is the one part of the site that uses a server. The question you type here is sent to an AI provider to be answered — your files and whatever you put in the tool above are not, and the assistant cannot see them. Answers are generated and can be wrong; the tool itself is not guessing.

About the Reverse Audio

Playing audio backwards is the simplest operation in this whole category and the one with the fewest caveats. Every sample is put in the opposite order. Nothing is stretched, filtered, resampled or reconstructed, and running the result through this tool a second time gives you back exactly what you started with, sample for sample — an automated check asserts precisely that on every build.

People come to this for three reasons. The first is the effect: reversed cymbals and reversed piano are staples of production, because a note that swells into its own attack is a sound that does not exist in nature. The second is curiosity about a record that is supposed to contain something backwards. The third is practical — reversing, applying an effect that behaves differently in time, and reversing back is how reverse reverb is made.

There is nothing to configure except the output format, because there is nothing to decide. The only judgement is MP3 or WAV, and for a reversed clip destined for an editor, WAV is the better answer: the reverse is lossless, and it seems a pity to add compression artefacts to an operation that added none.

Worth knowing about what reversal actually does to a sound. Notes have an attack at the front and a decay at the back; reversed, they gain a long swell and end abruptly. Speech becomes unintelligible almost immediately, because the ear identifies consonants largely by how they start. Rhythms survive better than melodies do. And any reverb in the recording becomes a pre-echo, arriving before the sound that caused it, which is the effect that made this a studio technique in the first place.

As with every tool here, the file is decoded, reversed and re-encoded in your browser, and never sent anywhere.

How to use it

1Drop in the recording.
2Choose MP3 to share it or WAV to keep working on it.
3Run it and download the result.
4Run the result through again if you want to check that it comes back unchanged — it will.

Questions

Does reversing lose any quality?: The reversal itself loses nothing — it is the same samples in the opposite order. Saving as MP3 compresses the result, as saving any MP3 does. Save as WAV and the operation is entirely lossless.
Why does reversed speech sound so strange?: Because the ear identifies sounds largely by their attack, and reversing puts the attack at the end. Consonants in particular stop being recognisable, which is why backwards speech is almost impossible to follow even though every sound is still present.
Can I reverse just part of a file?: Trim the part you want first, reverse that, and join it back to the rest with the Audio Joiner. Three tools, but each of them does one thing you can check.
How do I make reverse reverb?: Reverse the clip, add reverb to it in an editor, then reverse it back. The reverb tail now runs backwards and arrives before the note, which is the whole effect.