Effects
Invert
Flip the selected audio upside down, reversing its polarity.
Invert turns every sample in the selection into its negative, flipping the waveform about the centre line. On its own it makes no audible difference — the sound is identical played back by itself. What changes is how it combines with other audio, which is what the effect is for.
Where to find it
Effect → Special → Invert, with audio selected. There is no dialog: the effect applies as soon as you choose it.
Notes
Two common uses. If a stereo recording sounds thin and hollow because one channel was wired backwards, inverting that channel alone restores it. And if you have two copies of the same material, inverting one and mixing them cancels everything they share, leaving only what differs — the basis of several subtraction techniques.
Inverting a whole mix, or both channels of a stereo track together, changes nothing you can hear. Polarity only matters relative to something else.
Applying Invert twice returns the audio exactly to where it started.
Last updated