Waveform renders the time-domain audio signal as a horizontal ripple across the canvas. It is the look you recognise from professional DAWs, broadcast graphics, and high-end music documentaries — direct, percussive, and effortlessly readable.
Where Spectrum Bars show frequency content, Waveform shows the raw shape of sound. Transients punch through visibly: a kick drum becomes a vertical spike, a sustained pad becomes a smooth sine ribbon, a snare becomes a sharp deflection. The scene reads like the audio itself.
Mirror it above the centre line for a stereo-style waveform, fill the area underneath for a solid sound bar, or add per-beat glitch jitter to give it punch. Combine with one of the 20 palettes and you get anything from clean minimal documentary aesthetics to gritty hip-hop trailers.
For lyric videos and quote-style YouTube content, Waveform is the default — it gives your text room to breathe at the top while the bottom of the frame pulses with the music.
What it does well
- Direct mapping of the audio time-domain buffer
- Optional mirror for stereo-style waveform
- Configurable fill alpha for solid sound bars
- Horizontal or vertical palette gradient
- Per-beat glitch jitter for emphasis
- Tunable temporal smoothing
Best for
- Genres
- Hip-hopEDMElectronicPopCinematic
- Formats
- YouTube 16:9Shorts 9:16TikTok 9:16
Key parameters
amplitude- Maximum height relative to the canvas
mirror- Reflect the wave above the centre line
fill- Solid fill under the wave (0–1)
glitchOnBeat- Vertical jitter triggered by beat detection
gradientMode- Horizontal, vertical or solid colour
Rendering
Canvas 2D renderer with sample-accurate audio sync via the Web Audio API analyser node.