Hello everybody
I have used a lot of wave editing programs and most of them have a reverse 'effect'.

The reversals sound good to me and I assume that it is playing the samples in reverse order. But I want to know if the actual samples themselves are each being played in reverse as well.

Maybe there are some wave programs that will play the samples themselves in reverse as well as playing them in reversed order, while others only play the samples in reverse order without reversing each of them

Can anyone enlighten me on this?
Currently I use Audacity 1.20 and I was mainly using Creative Wave studio and Encounter 2000 previously.

I would really like to know if I am hearing a true full reversal or not, and if not whether there are any wave programs that would do this, thanks.

[edit]oops I noticed an typo error in the title can't change it

Play the samples in reverse order? Do you mean bit-wise? That would most likely sound VERY strange (probably pure noise). I just created a small program that does this and it transforms a normal audio file into almost perfect white noise.

I just read your post about a dozen times, and I don't know what the heck you're talking about.

In digital audio, a sample is simply a numerical value -- it is the "atom" (in the classical sense of the word). There is no reversing it, it just exists.

Unless of course you're talking about breaking down the 16-bit sample into the binary 1's and 0's and then reversing that order. If that happens, you'll end up with noise and garbage. (Then you're no longer dealing with samples, you're dealing with bits.)

If you're talking about samples in the sense that Logic Audio or Cubase deals with samples, then that's a different use of the word. They're using "sample" as meaning "a small recording of an individual note (or tone) being played live". Once all these "samples" are sequenced into a song, they are overlapping and you can't isolate them anymore. The song is all one big sound as far as the computer is concerned.