Audio waveform generator, PNG and SVG.

An audio waveform shows how loud a sound is over time: tall where it is loud, flat where it is quiet. This audio waveform generator draws that shape from your own file and saves it as a picture. Use it for podcast and music artwork, a track page, a poster, a slide, a tattoo idea or the background of a video. You get a PNG at the size you type, or an SVG vector file, with no watermark and no sign-up.

How to make a waveform image

1. Drop an MP3, WAV, M4A, OGG or FLAC file on the box, or click it to choose one. A video file works too, and the picture shows its sound.
2. Pick a Style: Bars, from the middle is the classic voice-message look, Bars, from the bottom grows upward like a city skyline, Line traces the outline, and Filled wave is a solid shape.
3. Choose the Colour and the Background. Tick Transparent background to place the wave on top of your own artwork, and Fade into a second colour for a left to right gradient.
4. Set the Size in pixels from the list, or type a width and a height. The note under the preview shows the final size.
5. To draw only a chorus or a spoken line, type start and end seconds under From and To.
6. Press Download PNG or Download SVG. Copy PNG puts the picture on the clipboard so you can paste it straight into a document.

PNG or SVG, which one

Choosing the shape and the sizes

The number of bars follows the width and the bar settings. Each bar covers an equal slice of the part you chose, so a wide picture shows more detail. With a width of 1920 pixels, a bar width of 6 and a gap of 4, each bar takes 10 pixels, and the picture holds 192 bars: 1920 plus one gap of 4 is 1924, divided by 10 and rounded down. A thinner bar with a smaller gap draws a denser wave.

Shape follows decides what a bar measures. The loudest peaks shows the highest sample in each slice, the sharp look of a waveform in an editor. The average loudness shows the energy of the slice, which is smoother and closer to how loud it sounds. Voices usually look fuller with the average, drums with the peaks. Stretch the loudest part to full height scales the wave so its highest point reaches the top, which is why a quiet recording still gives a big picture. Untick it to see the real level instead.

Tips for a clean result

• For a thin strip under a headline, try 1920 by 200 or the 1000 by 200 preset, with thin bars.
• On a dark page use a bright colour and a transparent background. On a white page use a dark colour with the background set to white.
• A long file is drawn the same as a short one, because the page reduces it to a few thousand slices. For a song, the whole file is a good start; for a podcast, draw one minute to keep the shape readable.
• The picture is made from your file, so a silent start or end shows as flat dots. Set From and To to trim them.

Common problems

• The file could not be read as sound. Check it plays in your player. Files with only a video track, or protected files, have no sound to draw.
• The page runs out of memory. Very long files, such as several hours of audio, are decoded in full by the browser. Cut a part first with the audio cutter.
• The wave looks flat. Tick the stretch box, or raise the height of the wave.

Want the wave to move with the music? The audiogram maker makes a video of it, and the music visualizer turns a song into moving art. To look at the sound by pitch instead of loudness, open the spectrogram.