BPM Detector & Tap Tempo
Find the tempo of any track — tap along, or drop an audio file and let it analyse the beat. Includes a metronome and a delay-time table for producers.
Keeps the last 12 taps, so drifting early on does not spoil the result. Stops after 3 seconds of silence.
A beat at 90 BPM and one at 180 look identical to a detector — this says which octave you meant. If the answer feels half or double, switch range.
Ranked by how many beat gaps agreed. Pick another if the top one sounds wrong.
| Note | Straight | Dotted | Triplet |
|---|
How to use
Two ways to find a tempo. Tap tempo is the quick one — play the track and tap the pad, or the spacebar, on every beat. The reading settles after about eight taps and keeps the most recent twelve, so a shaky start does not drag the answer off. The steadiness figure tells you how consistent your tapping was; if it says "loose", tap a few more.
Analyse a file does it for you. Drop in an audio file and it is decoded in your browser, run through a 200 Hz low-pass filter so the kick drum dominates, and the gaps between the loudest hits are measured and tallied. The gap that shows up most often is the beat. You get ranked alternatives too, because a detector genuinely cannot tell 85 BPM from 170 — they are the same pattern counted differently.
That is also why the tempo range buttons matter. If a result comes back at half or double what you expect, switch range rather than assuming it failed. The ÷2 and ×2 buttons do the same thing by hand.
Delay times
Once you have a tempo, the table gives the delay and effect times that lock to it. Straight is the plain note value, dotted is one and a half times as long — the classic wide slapback — and triplet is two thirds, for a rolling swung feel. Type the milliseconds straight into a delay plugin — and for an LFO or tremolo rate in hertz, divide 1000 by the figure in the table.
How accurate is it?
Very good on anything with a clear, steady kick — house, techno, pop, hip-hop. Less good on live drumming that breathes, on orchestral or ambient music with no percussion, and on tracks that change tempo partway through. Bass music is its own case: when the sub is louder than the kick, as in dubstep, riddim and neurofunk, the low-pass follows the bassline rather than the drums. A wobble on straight eighths still gives the right answer, but one on triplets tends to report about three-quarters of the real tempo — if the number looks like that, tap the first bar instead. It analyses a window from the middle of the file rather than the intro, since intros are often sparse. When the confidence is low, the honest answer is to tap it yourself.