k2k audio This tutorial gives you the keys to the house. By the end, you’ll know where everything is, how to load audio, and how to read what the scopes are telling you. No processing yet — just orientation.
What you’ll need
- k2k installed and running
- An audio file — any WAV, AIFF, or FLAC. A drum loop, a vocal stem, a field recording. Something you know the sound of, so you can match what you see to what you hear.
The two modes
k2k has two main screens:
- Editor — where you load audio, build processing chains with nodes, and see the results through scopes. This is the laboratory.
- Player — where you perform with processed sounds on pads and a step sequencer. This is the stage.
They connect: sounds you create in the Editor flow into the Player’s memory slots. For now, we’re staying in the Editor.
Loading audio
- The Editor opens with an empty node graph — a blank canvas.
- Add a Load Audio node. It appears with an empty drop zone.
- Drag your audio file onto the drop zone, or click it to browse.
- The node analyzes the file and shows outputs — one for mono, two (Left/Right) for stereo.
Leave the defaults for now:
- FFT Size: 4096 — a good balance between frequency detail and time resolution.
- Normalize: Off — unless your file is very quiet.
You now have audio loaded into k2k. Click the node to select it — the scopes light up.
Reading the scopes
The scopes sit alongside the node graph. They show the output of whichever node is currently selected. Four views of the same audio:
Waveform
The classic view — amplitude over time. You’ll see the shape of your audio: where the loud parts are, where the transients spike, where it’s quiet. If you loaded a drum loop, you can count the hits.
Spectrum
Frequency content as bars or a curve — low frequencies on the left, high on the right. This tells you the tonal balance: is your sound bass-heavy? Bright? Where does the energy sit?
2D Spectrogram
A heatmap: time runs left to right, frequency runs bottom to top, brightness shows loudness. This is where patterns emerge — harmonic lines, noise floors, the shape of attacks and decays over time.
3D Spectral Terrain
The spectrogram lifted into a landscape you can orbit and zoom. Peaks are loud, valleys are quiet. Orbit with left-click drag, zoom with scroll wheel.
Try this: Switch between all four scopes with your audio loaded. Each one highlights something different about the same sound. The waveform shows timing. The spectrum shows frequency balance. The spectrogram shows how both change together. The terrain gives you a physical feel for the structure.
Color modes — your first lens
The spectrogram and terrain views are colored by the active color mode. By default, that’s Amplitude — brightness equals loudness.
Switch the color mode to Frequency Bands. Now bass, mid, and high regions are painted in distinct colors. You can instantly see which frequencies dominate at each moment.
Try Pitch Class — every frequency is colored by its musical note. If your audio has clear pitch (a vocal, a bass line), you’ll see the notes light up.
You don’t need to learn all 18 color modes now. Just know they exist, and that switching between them is like putting on different glasses — the same sound, seen through a different lens. The Lexique has the full reference.
Playback
Press Space to play the loaded audio. The playhead moves through the scopes in real time. Press Space again to stop.
You’re hearing the output of the selected node. Right now there’s only one node (Load Audio), so you hear the original file. As you add processing nodes later, selecting different nodes lets you hear — and see — the audio at different stages of the chain.
Navigating the graph
The node graph is your workspace:
- Pan the view by dragging on empty space
- Zoom with the scroll wheel
- Select a node by clicking it — the scopes update to show that node’s output
- Move a node by dragging it
Right now you have one node. In the next tutorial, you’ll connect several into a processing chain and hear the results.
What you’ve learned
- k2k has two modes: Editor (process) and Player (perform)
- Load Audio brings files into the node graph
- Four scopes show the same audio from different angles
- Color modes re-paint the scopes to reveal different features
- Selecting a node shows its output in the scopes
- Space plays and stops
Next: E2 — Your First Graph — connect nodes, hear the result.