Reverse voice and speech

Reverse your voice in three steps

1. Press Start recording and speak a short phrase, or choose a voice memo.
2. Leave the range at the whole clip, or enter start and end seconds to reverse a section.
3. Press Reverse section, play the preview, and download the MP3.

What reversed speech sounds like

Reversing a voice flips the order of the sound, so a word begins with its decay and ends with its attack. Consonants like p and t that start sharply now end with a soft swell, and vowels sound smeared. Speech becomes an uncanny stream of unfamiliar syllables. The effect is the basis of backmasking, of reverse-vocal intros in pop and film trailers, and of party games where you try to imitate the reversed sound to guess a phrase.

Tricks that make reversed voice better

To create the classic game, record a short sentence, reverse it, then listen to the backwards audio and record yourself imitating it, then reverse that imitation to hear the original sentence. For music, reverse a vocal tail and place it before the line it came from. For sound design, reverse a single word or breath. Use the start and end fields to isolate a section instead of flipping the whole recording.

Why record in a quiet space

Reversal turns room noise into a swell, too. A quiet room gives a cleaner effect than a noisy cafe. Speak close to the microphone and avoid clipping. If the recording has long silence at the start, it ends up at the end of the reversed clip; trim it with the silence remover first.

Formats and limits

Recordings from your microphone are saved as WEBM or M4A by the browser and decoded locally. You can also upload MP3, WAV, OGG, M4A, or video files. Long files use plenty of memory, so keep phone recordings short.