Waveform prints · 12 × 12 to 40 × 60 in
The sound you can't keep, kept.
A voicemail, a first word, a laugh, a heartbeat. Bring a few seconds of it and your browser draws its waveform, measured from the file and set to its own timecode. We print that.
The sound stays on this device; only its outline leaves.
MP3, WAV, M4A or any audio this browser opens, up to 25 MB and ten minutes. The microphone is asked for only when you press Record.
On the wall: A440, synthesised. A tuning fork struck once, made by this page.
The studio
The Sound, then the Colour
The method
How the Print Is Drawn
- 0:01
Your browser opens the file
It decodes the sound at 22,050 samples a second and mixes it to one channel. Nothing is uploaded to do this.
- 0:02
The silence is trimmed
The loudest moment is set at −1 dB. Anything quieter than 50 dB under it, at either end, is cut.
- 0:03
Two thousand peaks
The sound is cut into 2,000 equal slices and each keeps its highest and lowest point: the amplitude envelope, how loud it was moment by moment.
- 0:04
The ruler goes beneath
Five timecodes, from 0:00 to the sound's own length. Without the ruler it's a pattern; with it, it's a measurement of this sound, this long.
What it can't do: two different sounds can draw nearly the same shape, and a waveform can't tell you whose voice it was. The words you set beneath it can. And a format this browser can't open can't be printed here yet; the studio says so before anything is charged.
Privacy, by construction
Where the Sound Goes
Nowhere. Your browser does the reading, so the recording never leaves this device, and there is no copy of it to play back, lose or sell.
| What | Where it is | How long |
|---|---|---|
| The audio itself | In this tab's memory, on this device | Until the tab closes or reloads. Never uploaded, never stored. |
| Its 2,000 peaks and its length | In this tab; sent to our server only when you order, to draw the print | 5,336 characters. Kept as the drawn print file, not as sound. |
| Your title, caption and lines | In the page address, and set on the print | For as long as the print file is kept, as the privacy notice says. |
| Name, email and address | Stripe at checkout, and the printer that makes it | As the privacy notice says. No cookies, no analytics. |
To scale
On Four Walls
The print you set, to scale over an 84 in sofa. It redraws as you choose.