Projects 01

In progressv0.1.0a2 · Analysis shipped · Reference mastering shipped

WPAudio Engine

An explainable audio analysis and mastering engine, written in modern Python.

Hear it · the pilot's first record, track 01

Version
0:00 / 0:15

Original
−14.0 LUFS
−4.3 dBTP
Master
−8.8 LUFS
−1.1 dBTP
Level-matched: the master plays 5.2 dB quieter, so switching compares the mastering, not the volume. Some mobile browsers fix media volume, and there the master plays at its full level.

What WPAudio Engine is

It is not an AI mastering black box.

Every decision WPAudio Engine makes answers three questions: what, why, and how. Not as a comment in the source, and not as a paragraph in a manual. Each answer carries the metric IDs it used, the thresholds it compared against, the confidence it had, and what it chose to protect at the cost of something else.

Mastering tools that work well tend to be either a cloud service you upload to and hope, or a chain of processors that will not tell you what they did. WPAudio Engine is an argument that an engine can make good decisions and account for them.

01

The pipeline

Five stages, with strict boundaries between them. Three are built, one is partly built, and one is an empty package with a name.

  1. 01Built

    Audio

    Immutable buffer, loader

  2. 02Built

    Analysis Engine

    Five analysers, 39 metrics

  3. 03Not yet built

    Decision Engine

    Milestone M2: an empty package

  4. 04Partially built

    DSP Engine

    Reference mastering only

  5. 05Built

    Report Engine

    HTML, JSON, CSV

One line through five stages. A built stage is a filled node joined by a solid segment; the partly built stage is a ring joined by a long dash; the planned stage is a quiet ring joined by a short dash. Each stage says its state in words above its name.

  • Analysis never modifies audio.
  • Decisions never analyze audio.
  • DSP never makes decisions.

Those are three of twelve rules the project holds itself to. The one that matters most for explainability is blunter: the “why” is not a comment. It is a test. A rule that cannot be asserted against a table of inputs and expected decisions does not ship.

02

Where it is today

Working
  • Five analysers: level, integrity, spectrum, loudness, stereo
  • True peak measurement with 4× oversampling, per ITU-R BS.1770-4 practice
  • Album-level analysis: cross-track statistics and outlier detection
  • Mastering verification: original against master, with delivery checks
  • Engineering reference masters from a deterministic, documented recipe
  • HTML, JSON and CSV engineering reports
  • A command line for a track, an album, a comparison or a master
Not yet built
  • The Decision Engine: mastering intent, with evidence and confidence
  • A general DSP graph; today there are primitives, not a node system
  • Intelligent mastering end to end: the targets are still an engineer’s
  • Any graphical interface or plugin format
Tests passing
395
Branch coverage
95.98%
Runtime dependencies
3
Internal decisions
8

Ruff and strict MyPy clean. Python 3.12 or later, on numpy, soundfile and pyloudnorm: three runtime dependencies, deliberately. Figures from a run on 20 August 2026.

03

The interface

Not a mockup: the engine running locally, mid-session, on a track from the pilot's first record. It analysed the file, mastered it to a stated target, then re-opened the written file from disk and checked its own work with a second, independent meter.

The WPAudio Engine interface after mastering a track: an independent verification
               panel reading VERIFIED, with integrated loudness and true peak checks both passing
               against their stated targets, beside the mastered file's measured loudness, true
               peak, loudness range, sample rate, bit depth and channel count.
Every number on screen is measured, not simulated, and the verification pass takes its readings from a meter that shares no code with the mastering path. Built for the Studio's own mastering workflow. It is not a hosted product, and nothing here asks for a signup.

WPAudio Engine identity

The WPAudio Engine product splash: the WP monogram over a waveform, ringed by
             illustrative analyser panels (spectrum, loudness, true peak, stereo image, dynamics
             and integrity) above the line Measure. Understand. Decide. Master.
The engine's identity graphic. The panels illustrate the measurement families the Analysis Engine covers; the readings shown in them are artwork, not output from a run. Real numbers from this engine are below, and in the mastering case study.

04

Proved on a real record

Album-level analysis exists because another Studio project needed it. The twelve-track Wings & Prayers record by The Little Blue Pilot was WPAudio Engine's first real production workload: thirty-three minutes of finished masters, analysed end to end in seventy-nine seconds. Those reference masters have since shipped. The album was released on streaming platforms on 11 August 2026, byte for byte from the files this engine verified.

Running a real record through it surfaced things a synthetic test signal never would. The clearest: silence was reporting an integrated loudness of 0.0 LUFS, maximal loudness, the worst possible sentinel a loudness metric could pick. It now reports negative infinity, and the JSON exporter serialises non-finite values as null rather than emitting invalid JSON.

One project's engine, mastering another project's music. That is the whole Studio thesis inside a single working directory.

Integrated loudness of all twelve tracks, original and reference masterTwelve pairs of bars from a floor of -20 LUFS to a ceiling of -8 LUFS. The originals arrived between −18.2 and −13.6 LUFS; the reference masters left between −12.9 and −10.2 LUFS, every one above the −14 LUFS the platforms normalise to. Each pair links to its song page, which carries the full measurement.
Original Reference master −14 LUFS, the level the platforms normalise toIntegrated loudness, original and reference master, all twelve tracks

A month after the first record, the same engine mastered the same songs again for the Second Flight record, to a different brief: one platform-reference level for every track, and every figure cross-checked by a meter from outside the project before it was published.

05

Not here yet

Architecture notes, benchmark results, a roadmap read from the repository rather than maintained twice, and documentation as the API settles. Each appears on this page when there is something real behind it, and not before. A hosted service is a later chapter, not a product and not a waitlist.

06

Engineering journal

WPAudio Engine

Publish only what you can measure

The mastering case study forced a decision about evidence: quote the private engineering reports, or measure the published files. Choosing the second changed what the page could honestly say, and became a standing rule.

  • DSP
  • Software Architecture
Read