Audio to MIDI Converter

Different instruments and sources behave differently, so the converter includes presets tuned for common cases. Pick the closest match to your source, or switch to Custom and adjust the detection yourself.

Balanced

A general-purpose starting point that works reasonably well across most recordings before you fine-tune anything.

Piano & keys

Uses the full keyboard range with settings suited to faster passages. Dense polyphonic chords are still the hardest case for any automatic transcription, so results improve if you isolate the part first.

Vocal & lead

Tuned for a single vocal or lead instrument line, favoring sustained notes over rapid note changes.

Bass

Focuses detection on the lower register to reduce interference from higher-frequency instruments in the mix.

Guitar

A starting point for single-note guitar lines and passages across the instrument's typical range.

Arps & fast runs

More sensitive onset detection to capture short, rapidly changing notes — at the cost of potentially picking up extra false notes from noise.

1. Upload an audio file. MP3, WAV, FLAC, M4A, AAC, OGG, AIFF, Opus, or WebM, from 1 second up to 10 minutes.
2. Choose a preset. Match it to your source, or adjust the detection manually.
3. Generate the MIDI. The converter analyzes the recording for note onsets and pitch and builds MIDI note data from it.
4. Download and edit. Open the .mid file in your DAW to edit, reassign, or quantize the transcribed notes.

An audio to MIDI converter analyzes a finished recording and reconstructs the note-and-timing information behind it — which pitches were played, when they started, and how long they lasted — as a standard MIDI file. Unlike converting between two audio formats, this isn't a straightforward re-encode: it has to detect musical notes from a waveform that never had that information attached to begin with.

AudioForges analyzes the uploaded recording for note onsets and pitch and builds a standard .mid file you can edit, rearrange, or reassign to a different instrument in a DAW. If you want to understand exactly how note detection, onset detection, and frequency filtering work, see our guide to How Audio to MIDI Transcription Works.

Upload an MP3 directly — there's no need to convert it to another format first. Because MP3 is a lossy format, very heavily compressed files can lose some of the detail the detector relies on for accurate pitch detection, so a cleaner-source MP3 will generally transcribe more reliably than a heavily compressed one.

WAV files upload the same way, with no extra step. Since WAV is uncompressed, a WAV export straight from a DAW or a sample library generally gives the detector the cleanest possible signal to work from — useful if you're transcribing your own recordings rather than a finished, already-compressed track.

Producers use this to pull a melody or bassline from a reference track and rebuild it with a different instrument; songwriters turn a hummed or sung idea into editable note data; students use a rough transcription as a head start on sheet music. A few common cases:

Vocal to MIDI

A sung or hummed melody, using the Vocal & lead preset.

Piano to MIDI

Keyboard recordings — single lines transcribe more reliably than dense chords.

Guitar to MIDI

Clean single-note lines are a simpler target than heavily processed or chord-heavy parts.

Bass to MIDI

The Bass preset focuses detection on the lower register.

Audio-to-MIDI conversion is an estimation process, not a direct extraction of MIDI data, and the quality of the result depends heavily on the recording. A clean, isolated melody or vocal line is generally easier to transcribe than a dense full-band recording with several overlapping instruments. Background noise, reverb, distortion, and other instruments sharing the same frequency range can all cause missing or extra notes. For a deeper look at why isolated melodies transcribe more reliably than dense mixes, see How Audio to MIDI Transcription Works.

The standard converter returns every note it detected in a single track. High accuracy picks a stronger engine for what you upload: it follows a sung melody, a vocal line or a lead instrument far more closely, catching notes the standard detector misses and holding pitch through sustained passages. Guitar riffs, chords and arpeggios route to an engine tuned for guitar, which strips the string harmonics and doubled attacks that usually turn a clean riff into a cloud of stray notes.

On material with several instruments playing at once it also separates the performance — a bass line, a piano part and a drum pattern arrive as three tracks, each with a General MIDI program already assigned, so they land on the right instruments the moment you open the file in a DAW.

It is worth being straight about when this helps. On a solo guitar recording, a hummed melody, or a short clip, the model often returns a single track — there is only one instrument to find. The difference shows on real multi-instrument material: a full arrangement, a band recording, a loop with drums and bass playing together. If your source is one instrument, the free converter is the right tool and costs nothing.

High accuracy runs on GPU time that costs real money per job, so it uses a credit — with free runs every month and nothing recurring. Standard transcription stays free and unlimited. See what credits cost.

• Use a clean, isolated recording where possible.
• Prefer WAV over MP3 if you have the original file.
• For a full song, isolate the part you want first.
• Try the matching preset before adjusting settings manually.
• Narrow the frequency range to cut out unrelated instruments.
• Raise minimum note length if you're getting lots of tiny false notes.

Presets are a starting point — the underlying controls are available directly if you want to fine-tune the transcription yourself.

Onset sensitivity

Controls how easily the converter registers a new note attack. Higher sensitivity catches more note onsets but can also pick up extra notes from noise or artifacts.

Frame sensitivity

Controls how easily a detected note is judged to be continuing. Adjusting this can help preserve sustained notes or stop notes from ringing on longer than they should.

Minimum note length

Filters out very short detected notes. Raising it reduces false positives and noise; lowering it preserves fast musical passages.

Frequency range

Limits detection to a chosen pitch range — useful for cutting low-frequency rumble or high-frequency interference when you're targeting a specific instrument.

The downloaded .mid file imports into any MIDI-compatible music software. Open it to edit the notes, change the instrument, adjust timing, quantize the performance, or use the transcription as a starting point for a new arrangement — including Ableton Live, FL Studio, Logic Pro, GarageBand, Cubase, Studio One, Reaper.

FL Studio

Drag the .mid straight onto the playlist, or use File → Import → MIDI file. Each track lands on its own pattern, ready to point at a channel.

Ableton Live

Drag the .mid into a MIDI track in Session or Arrangement view. Live creates one clip per track and keeps the original tempo mapping.

Logic Pro

File → Import → MIDI File, or drag it into the tracks area. Logic offers to create a software instrument track per MIDI track.

GarageBand, Cubase, Studio One and Reaper

All accept a standard .mid by drag and drop. The file carries note, timing and program data, so nothing needs converting first.