Chain Audio Edits and Run Them in One Pass

How to Chain Audio Edits and Run Them in One Pass

  1. 1

    Drop your files in

    One file or a batch. Everything after this point runs over all of them at once, so a chain built for one take is a chain built for twenty.

  2. 2

    Add the blocks you need

    Combine, Remove Silence, Remove Noise, Spectrogram, Normalize and Fade. Click one to add it at the end, or drag it into the chain where you want it. The same block can appear more than once.

  3. 3

    Put them in the order you want

    Order changes the result: normalizing before you join matches the takes to each other, normalizing after it levels the finished thing. Drag to reorder, or switch to the network view and wire the blocks up by hand.

  4. 4

    Listen to any block before you commit

    Every block will play you what comes out of it, so you can hear where a threshold is cutting too much without running the whole chain and exporting it first.

  5. 5

    See what a block actually did

    A Spectrogram block does not change the sound — it writes a picture of whatever reaches it and lets the audio carry on. Put one either side of a block to see the difference it made.

  6. 6

    Run it and download

    One pass over the batch, then each result comes back as WAV or MP3 at the bitrate you picked.

What this is

Finishing a recording is rarely one edit. It is levelling the takes, cutting the dead air, joining them, and fading the ends — the same four things, in the same order, on every file, every time. Doing that as four separate passes means exporting and re-importing three times for no reason. This lets you build the sequence once and run it over the whole batch in a single pass, so the audio is decoded once, worked on in memory, and written out once at the end. You can arrange the sequence as a guided list, or as a node network you place and wire yourself, and you can play back what comes out of any block in the chain before you commit to the whole thing.

How it works

Every block is the same signal processing the single-purpose tool of the same name runs — the loudness measurement is ITU-R BS.1770-4 with true-peak detection, the silence detection is short-window RMS against a threshold you set, the fades are equal-power or linear gain ramps, and joining is an offline render at the highest sample rate in the set. None of it is a re-implementation, which is what stops a chained edit and a single-tool edit disagreeing about what the same settings mean. The chain itself is a wiring: a map of what feeds what, walked from the source to the output, so blocks that are not wired through simply do not run. Streams stay as decoded audio buffers the whole way down and are only encoded once, at the end, because converting part-way through would mean decoding the result again for the next block and, for MP3, spending a generation of quality to do it.

Supported formats

WAV, MP3, M4A, AAC, OGG and FLAC. Files are decoded by your browser, so anything it can play will work here. Output is exported as WAV, or as MP3 at 128, 192, 256 or 320 kbps.

Frequently asked questions

Is my audio uploaded anywhere?
+Is my audio uploaded anywhere?
No. Everything runs inside your browser using the Web Audio API, so the file never leaves your device. You can prove it: load the page, turn off your Wi-Fi, and the tool still works.
Does the order of the blocks matter?
+Does the order of the blocks matter?
Yes, and often a lot. Normalize before Combine measures each file separately and matches them to each other; Normalize after Combine measures the joined file once and levels the whole thing, leaving the takes as mismatched as they arrived. Remove Silence before a Fade means the fade lands on audio rather than on a gap. The tool shows you how many streams are in flight between every pair of blocks, which is where that difference becomes visible.
What is the difference between the guided view and the network view?
+What is the difference between the guided view and the network view?
They edit the same chain and run identically — it is only how you arrange it. The guided view is a list you drag blocks into, where a block can only land somewhere valid. The network view puts the blocks on a canvas you position and wire yourself, which lets you leave a block unwired while you decide, and lets you cut a connection rather than only redirect it.
Can a chain branch into two different outputs?
+Can a chain branch into two different outputs?
Not currently. A chain has one set of inputs and one output, so every arrangement of it is a single path. Producing two different versions of the same source means running the chain twice with different settings.
Does running five blocks use five times my daily allowance?
+Does running five blocks use five times my daily allowance?
No. A chain is charged once per file against that file’s duration, however many blocks are in it. It is one pass over the audio from your side, and billing it per block would make adding a fade cost more than running the whole thing twice.
Is it free?
+Is it free?
Yes. Every tool on this page is free to use, with a daily limit on total audio processed. There is no watermark and no trial period.
Do I need an account?
+Do I need an account?
No. The free tools work straight away with no sign-up, up to 15 minutes of audio per tool per day. An account is only needed if you subscribe to remove the limit.

Other free audio tools