Questions

How do I reach a human?

support@wavread.com — that address reaches a real inbox and a real person. Sign-in links and receipts arrive from noreply@wavread.com, which is a sending address only; replies to it go nowhere. If you own a build, the dashboard's feedback form works too and has the advantage of showing you the status of what you sent.

Does it change my audio?

No. WavRead never writes to your files and never processes your mix. It measures and explains; your DAW does the editing. The capture plugin passes audio through untouched — the buffer that arrives is the buffer that leaves.

Does anything get uploaded?

No audio, no analysis, no measurements, ever. The app's own requests are a once-a-day version check you can switch off, the update you press the button for, and one-time model downloads if you use separation or lyrics. From 1.4.37 there is one more, and it is off by default: problem reports, which send a scrubbed crash record only after you turn them on. Privacy lists every request and every field. Everything else runs offline, and the app works with the network cable out.

Is there an account or a subscription?

There is a price but no subscription: WavRead's Early Launch costs $5, once, and nothing renews. Nothing is free. The desktop app itself still has no account, sign-in, or licence server — the account lives on this website, where you download builds and see your reports. The final 1.0 release will be $49 as its own purchase, and testers whose reports helped keep it for the $5 they already paid.

What does the $5 buy, and do I pay again?

Five dollars buys WavRead and every build published while the Early Launch runs — each on your dashboard, verified by SHA-256. You do not pay again during Early Launch. The final 1.0 release is a separate $49 purchase when it arrives, with one exception: if you send reports that genuinely help, it stays yours for the five dollars you already paid. That is decided by someone reading your reports, not by counting them, so filing twenty empty ones earns nothing. Refunds: ask within 14 days from your account email. Details and checkout.

Do crash reports mean WavRead is watching what I do?

No. With reports off — the default — the app sends nothing. With reports on, it sends a record only when something actually fails, and the record is scrubbed before it exists: no audio, no track names, no username, no measurements. Every record is kept on your machine where you can read it, including after it was sent. Privacy lists the exact fields.

Will macOS warn me when I open it?

Once, benignly. WavRead is signed with an Apple Developer ID and notarised by Apple, with the ticket stapled to both the app and the disk image, so it works even on a Mac that is offline. The first launch still shows the ordinary "downloaded from the Internet — are you sure you want to open it?" confirmation that macOS shows for any downloaded program. That box also says Apple checked the app and found nothing malicious. Click Open; it will not ask again.

What you will not see is the refusal — "cannot be opened because Apple cannot check it for malicious software", with no Open button. That is what builds before 1.4.37 did, and it needed a trip through System Settings → Privacy & Security. That part is over. The install guide shows both, side by side.

Will it run on my Intel Mac?

No. The build is Apple Silicon only. See requirements for the full picture.

How accurate are the loudness and peak numbers?

Integrated loudness follows ITU-R BS.1770, loudness range follows EBU Tech 3342, and true peak is estimated by 4× oversampling as BS.1770 Annex 2 describes. Peak and clipping are measured across the real channels — a mono fold-down understates a peak living in one channel by up to 6 dB, which is a bug WavRead shipped once and now has a regression test against.

Are the chords, key, melody and lyrics reliable?

They are estimates and the documents label them as such. Chords and key come from pitch-class analysis, melody from a note-detection model, lyrics from speech recognition on the vocal part. Treat them as a good first draft, not a transcription you would print.

Can it tell me what reverb or compressor was used?

No, and it will not pretend to. What it can do — when you capture your master alongside the individual parts — is measure the difference between them: delay times in milliseconds, how long the added tail takes to decay, and the tone change through the bus. That is measurement, not identification. It reports "a repeat at 375 ms", never "this is a Space Designer".

Do I need the plugin on every track?

Only if you want every track measured separately. One instance on your master gives you the finished mix. Busses are the sensible middle ground — five instances instead of forty. And if you would rather not use the plugin at all, export your tracks as audio files and drop the folder in: WavRead takes a folder of stems directly.

Where do my files live?

In one folder you choose, with everything in it: analyses, documents, captures and copies of your audio. Settings shows you where it is, how big it is, and moves it to another drive if you want — copying everything first and removing the original only once the copy is complete.

What happens to my old analyses when WavRead updates?

They stay readable. Documents carry the version and measurement schema that produced them, and when a measurement changes in a way that makes old and new numbers incomparable, WavRead says so instead of mixing them silently. You can reanalyze anything whose original audio is still where it was.

Why does a number sometimes say "unavailable"?

Because it could not be measured — the analysis predates the measurement, the file is too short for that window, or the take has no quiet gap to measure a decay in. A dash never means zero. A number that isn't there is more useful than one that's wrong.

Can I give the documents to ChatGPT or Claude?

That is what they are written for. The Track Document is plain Markdown containing measurements and no audio. Sharing it is your decision — WavRead never sends it anywhere itself.

Does it update itself?

Only when you press the button. Update now downloads the release, checks it against the checksum published in the release notes, confirms the app inside is the version it claims to be, and swaps it in — moving your current app aside first and putting it back if anything fails. The updater checks public GitHub releases; sign-in-protected tester builds must be downloaded manually from the tester dashboard.