MusicReasonLocal Audio Analysis and Recognition
What is this file's peak and RMS level?
Choose a local audio file. This tool measures its peak and RMS amplitude entirely in your browser, using a simple equal-power downmix, and never reports LUFS or perceived loudness.
Answer
Your audio file is analyzed locally and never uploaded, cached, or included in analytics.
Want to learn more? Why Audio Recognition Is Ambiguous
Understand
Peak tells you the single loudest sample; RMS tells you the average energy across the whole measurement window. A signal can have a high peak but a much lower RMS, which is exactly what a dynamic (uncompressed) recording looks like compared to a heavily limited one. Neither number is a loudness (LUFS) measurement, which weights frequencies the way human hearing does.
Worked example
A full-scale sine wave (a pure tone using the entire available range) measures a peak of approximately 0 dBFS and an RMS of approximately -3.01 dBFS, a well-known relationship for any pure sine tone regardless of its frequency.
Method and limitations
The file is decoded locally, downmixed to mono using an equal-power average across channels, and measured for peak absolute sample value and root-mean-square level across the whole file, both converted to dBFS. Multi-channel material's individual channel differences are not preserved in this downmixed measurement, which the tool discloses rather than silently hiding.
Why peak and RMS tell different stories
A wide gap between peak and RMS usually means a dynamic, uncompressed recording with real transient headroom, while a narrow gap usually means heavy limiting or compression has already flattened the dynamics. Neither number alone says whether that is good or bad for a given piece of music; it depends entirely on the intended style and how the file will actually be used downstream.