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SpecView - Audio Spectrogram Viewer for VS Code

A VS Code extension for viewing audio spectrograms with playback, auto-grouping for A/B comparison, and ML-powered audio classification.

Co-developed with SpecView by Heinrich, with VS Code extension and feature enhancements by xingws.

Features

Spectrogram Visualization

Open any audio file to see its spectrogram rendered with a hot-metal colormap. Frequency labels and time rulers are displayed alongside the spectrogram for easy reference.

Supported formats: WAV, MP3, OGG, FLAC, M4A, AAC, WebM, WMA, AIFF, Opus — plus .tar / .tar.gz / .tgz archives containing audio files.

Audio Playback

• Play / Pause / Stop controls in the toolbar
• Click on spectrogram to seek to any position (preserves playback state)
• Volume control slider
• Real-time playhead tracking with time display
• Auto-pause: Playback automatically pauses when you switch to another VS Code panel or tab

Time-Domain Waveform Display

Toggle the waveform view via the Waveform checkbox in the toolbar to display the time-domain amplitude envelope above each spectrogram.

• Amplitude labels (-1.0, 0, 1.0) are displayed on the left Y-axis
• The waveform canvas is time-aligned with the spectrogram; click, zoom, and seek operations work on both simultaneously
• Shows amplitude envelope as min/max vertical bars per pixel column
• Synced playhead with the spectrogram view
• Ctrl+wheel and Shift+drag work on both the waveform and spectrogram

Lazy Loading

For large file sets, tracks are decoded on scroll for fast initial loading. A "Load More" button appears at the bottom of the track list to load the next batch of files on demand.

Time Axis Zoom

Zoom into any region of the spectrogram for detailed inspection:

• Ctrl + Mouse Wheel: Zoom in/out centered on mouse position
• Mouse Wheel (when zoomed): Horizontal scroll to pan the visible region
• Shift + Drag: Select a time region to zoom into (box selection)
• Toolbar + / – / Fit: Zoom in, zoom out, or reset to full view
• Keyboard: Shift+Up (zoom in), Shift+Down (zoom out), Shift+Left (fit all)
• Group sync: All tracks in a diff group zoom and scroll together
• Playhead hides automatically when outside the visible region
• STFT is computed once and cached; zoom/scroll operations are instant

Auto-Grouping for A/B Comparison

Files with matching base names and recognized tag suffixes are automatically grouped side-by-side for easy comparison. Use Shift + Space to instantly switch between tracks in a group while maintaining playback position.

Recognized Grouping Tags

The following tags trigger automatic grouping when used as a suffix (e.g., file1_pred.wav) or prefix (e.g., pred_file1.wav) with _ or - separators:

Grouping Examples

Grouping Rules

• Tags are matched case-insensitively, longest match first
• Both suffix (stem_tag) and prefix (tag_stem) patterns are supported
• A group forms when 2+ files share the same stem with 2+ distinct tags (empty tag counts as one)
• Same-name files from different directories are auto-grouped; the tag displays as the parent folder name
• Duplicate files (same path) are automatically skipped

ML Audio Classification

Click Analyze to run on-device audio classification using the CED-tiny ONNX model, which recognizes 527 AudioSet sound categories.

Three levels of analysis:

The model is downloaded once on first use (~20MB) and cached for subsequent analyses. Detection results are displayed as colored tags below each spectrogram, showing detected sound categories, time ranges, and confidence levels.

Cross-Directory Support

When comparing files from different directories, display names automatically show the relative path from their common parent directory for clear identification.

Example: files from /project/exp1/file1.wav and /project/exp2/file1_pred.wav display as exp1/file1.wav and exp2/file1_pred.wav.

Files with the same name from different directories are automatically grouped, with the parent folder name displayed as the tag.

Usage

Opening Files

Track Management

• Delete track: Press Delete key or click the × button on the card header to remove a standalone track
• Remove lane from group: Click the × button on any lane label within a diff group to remove just that lane
  • If only 2 lanes remain, removing one converts the other to a standalone track
  • Cards maintain their position in the list when lanes are removed or groups are restructured
• Re-add removed files: Files that have been removed can be re-added normally

Keyboard Shortcuts

Requirements

• VS Code 1.85.0 or later
• Internet connection for first-time ML model download (~20MB from HuggingFace)

License

Apache-2.0

Credits

• Based on SpecView by Heinrich
• Audio classification powered by CED-tiny (ONNX Runtime Web)