WavRead
How WavRead works
Audio goes in. Measurements come out, in language rather than meters. Nothing about your music leaves the machine, and nothing is presented as more certain than the analysis allows.
The path a track takes
Bring your music in
| A finished track | Drop a file. You get whole-track measurements, structure, chords, melody and lyrics. |
|---|---|
| Stems you exported | Drop a folder from your DAW. Every part is measured separately — the most detailed read WavRead can produce. |
| A mix, split by your own tool | WavRead does not separate audio. Point it at a separation tool you already have and it will read what that tool writes — the document says the stems were estimated, because real parts always beat guessed ones. |
Measured, detected, estimated
These are three different kinds of claim and WavRead labels every number with which one it is. That labelling is the product, as much as the numbers are.
Measured
Arithmetic on the samples: loudness, true peak, crest factor, clipping, spectrum, stereo width. Two runs agree exactly.
Detected
Found by an algorithm with a defined method: tempo, section boundaries, onsets. Reliable, occasionally wrong at half or double the tempo.
Estimated
Inferred by a model: key, chords, melody, lyrics. A good first draft, carrying a confidence where one exists.
And a fourth state that matters just as much: unavailable. A dash never means zero. If a window was too short, a take had no quiet gap, or an analysis predates a measurement, the document says which — a number that isn't there beats one that's wrong.
Measurement standards
| Integrated loudness | ITU-R BS.1770, in LUFS. |
|---|---|
| Loudness range | EBU Tech 3342, in LU. |
| True peak | BS.1770 Annex 2 — 4× oversampled, so inter-sample peaks a sample meter misses are caught. Reported in dBTP and marked as the estimate the standard says it is. |
| Sample peak and clipping | Measured across the real channels. A mono fold-down understates a peak living in one channel by up to 6 dB — a bug WavRead shipped once, and now has a regression test against. |
| Spectrum | 1/3-octave bands, grouped into named regions and reported as a share of measured energy. |
Over time, not just averages
One number for a whole song hides the song. WavRead measures loudness, stereo width and mono compatibility across the track, so it can tell you the second chorus is quieter than the first, or that the intro collapses in mono while the rest survives it. Section comparison answers the smaller question: how this part differs from that one, in numbers.
It never edits your audio
WavRead has no processors, and that is a deliberate boundary rather than a missing feature. It will show you where your mix sits against a reference, and let you hear the two level-matched — so the louder one doesn't simply sound better — but it never suggests a curve or a setting, and the file it writes is a document, never a new mix. Your DAW does the editing.
Give it to an AI, or don't
Assistants can't hear audio, but they read Markdown well. The Track Document holds everything one would need to talk about your mix specifically rather than generically. That is optional — the built-in Feedback Report is written by rules, not by a model, and works with the network cable out.
What produced a measurement
Every analysis records the engine that produced it, and at which
version, in the document's provenance line. A measurement is only
reproducible if you know what made it. The components WavRead is built
on keep their own licences, reproduced in full in the
THIRD_PARTY_LICENSES file that ships inside the app.