Audio-Peek for MacOS

Mission Control Guide

🎹 The Hero Section

Audio-Peek

See Beneath the Waveform with Audio-Peek.

The native, studio-grade audio specification analyzer and side-by-side A-B diff comparator engineered exclusively for macOS.
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📖 The Product Story

Why we built Audio-Peek

If you work with sound—whether you are a mastering engineer, sound designer, podcaster, or high-resolution audiophile—you encounter a constant frustration: audio metadata tools are broken.

  • Command-line utilities like ffprobe are powerful, but memorizing terminal flags and parsing dense text walls halts creative momentum.
  • Legacy tag editors focus only on artist and album text, completely ignoring the structural reality of the bitstream: Audio Stream Basic Descriptions (ASBD), true quantization bit depths, pre-skip encoder delays, and uncompressed channel maps.
  • Cross-platform Electron utilities lag, consume gigabytes of RAM, and take seconds just to launch.

We asked a simple question: What if you had a blazing-fast, visually pristine Mac app that reveals the complete DNA of any audio file in under 200 milliseconds?

Audio-Peek was created at Tara Design Studio to answer that need. Built from the ground up in 100% native Swift and SwiftUI, Audio-Peek taps directly into Apple’s low-level CoreAudio, AudioToolbox, and CryptoKit engines. No web runtimes. No memory bloat. Just pure, instant audio intelligence.

⚡ Key Features

🔍 Deep Bitstream Demuxing

Inspect true hardware sample rates, bit depths (16/24/32-bit), channel configurations, MPEG versions, VBR/CBR modes, and container atoms without decoding raw audio into RAM.

⚖️ Side-by-Side A-B Audio Comparator

Compare two audio files simultaneously. Audio-Peek aligns property keys and instantly highlights format mismatches, sample rate conversions, and missing metadata tags.

⏱️ Sub-Millisecond Drift Detection

Detect encoder latency, leading silence padding, and pre-skip sample offsets (down to 0.1ms) between mastering masters and lossy transcode exports.

🛡️ Hardware-Accelerated SHA-256

Stream massive multi-gigabyte DSD or WAV master files in 64 KB binary chunks through Apple Silicon’s hardware cryptographic engine without memory spikes.

🔤 Scoped Report Font Zoom

Adjust the reporting table’s typography independently (A- / A+ / ↺ Reset). Scale the specification tree without breaking your window layout or toolbar chrome.

💾 Sandbox-Safe JSON & Clipboard Export

Export single-file or comparative A-B diff reports to formatted JSON with one click using native asynchronous, AppKit-friendly save sheets.

🎯 Universal Format Support

Audio-Peek parses both uncompressed studio masters and modern web formats:

Format Category Supported Codecs & Containers
Lossless Studio Masters FLAC (16/24/32-bit), WAV / Broadcast WAV (Linear PCM), AIFF / AIFC (Apple PCM)
Apple Ecosystem M4A / MP4 (Apple Lossless ALAC, AAC-LC, HE-AAC, Audiobooks)
Modern Streaming & Web Ogg Opus (48kHz synthesis, pre-skip framing), Ogg Vorbis (Nominal/Target Bitrates)
Audiophile & Archival DSD / SACD (Direct Stream Digital .dsf, .dff at DSD64 to DSD512), WavPack (.wv)
Legacy Media MP3 (MPEG-1/2/2.5 Layers I, II, III with CBR/VBR & LAME encoder tags)

🏆 Why Audio-Peek is Different

Most diagnostic utilities are bloated ports. Audio-Peek is built exclusively for macOS:

Capability / Metric Audio-Peek Electron Tag Editors ffprobe (CLI)
Native Architecture ✅ 100% Swift / CoreAudio ❌ Chromium / Node.js ⚠️ C Utility
Launch Time ⚡ < 10 ms (Instant) 🐢 1,500+ ms ⚡ Fast
Memory Footprint 🪶 ~ 20 MB 🐘 400 MB – 1 GB 🪶 ~ 15 MB
Visual A-B Diff Mode ✅ Built-in Split-Table ❌ None ❌ Manual diff
Time Drift Detection ✅ Sub-Millisecond (Δt) ❌ None ❌ Manual math
120Hz ProMotion UI ✅ Liquid Smooth ❌ Frame drops ❌ Terminal only
Hardware SHA-256 ✅ CryptoKit NEON Engine ⚠️ Slow JS Pipe ⚠️ Separate tool

✨ User Experience Highlights

1. Dual-Drop Compare Mode

Select two tracks in Finder (like your Master WAV and your Spotify MP3 upload) and drag them together onto Audio-Peek. The window instantly transitions into a two-column comparative diff table, highlighting mismatches in bold amber and identical parameters in calm green.

2. Zero Wait Time on Massive Files

Thanks to non-blocking stream demuxing, dropping a 15 GB DSD256 orchestra master takes the exact same fraction of a second as opening a 3 MB MP3 voice memo.

3. Native Mac Ergonomics

  • Full support for macOS Dark and Light modes.
  • Universal keyboard shortcuts (⌘O to open, ⌘E to export, ⌘C to copy, ⌘+ to scale text, ⇧⌘L to view logs).
  • Multi-column search bar that filters keys and values instantly as you type.

🚀 Elevate Your Audio Workflow

Stop guessing what is inside your audio containers. Verify bit depths, confirm sample rate conversions, and validate release metadata with precision.

💬 Help & Support

Frequently Asked Questions

💡 Click any question below to expand the answer.

Does Audio-Peek alter or modify my audio files? + View Answer ▾
No. Audio-Peek operates strictly in read-only mode. It inspects container headers and bitstreams without modifying a single byte of your audio data.
Where are diagnostic logs stored? + View Answer ▾
Audio-Peek maintains rolling daily logs formatted as audio-peek-YYYY-MM-DD.log. You can reveal your log folder directly in Finder anytime by pressing ⇧ + ⌘ + L (or via Help → Show Logs in Finder).
Is Audio-Peek private? + View Answer ▾
Yes. Audio-Peek is 100% secure. It contains zero analytics, no telemetry, no tracking, and never makes unauthorized network connections.
Can Audio-Peek verify true Hi-Res Lossless formats, bit depths, and multichannel channel layouts? + View Answer ▾
Yes. Audio-Peek introspects container headers to verify true quantization bit depth (16-bit, 24-bit, or 32-bit floating point), native sampling rates (44.1 kHz up to 192+ kHz), bitrates (CBR vs. VBR), and channel layouts (Mono, Stereo, 5.1 Surround, 7.1.2/7.1.4 Spatial Audio beds) across FLAC, ALAC, WAV, AIFF, AAC, and MP3 without audio decoding or playback latency.
How do I report a bug or request a new codec? + View Answer ▾
You can open an issue or start a discussion on our official Issue Tracker.


© 2026 Santak Das, Tara Design Studio. All rights reserved.