// the find
joshwcomeau/waveforms
An interactive, explorable explanation about the peculiar magic of sound waves.
An interactive explainer about sound waves and the physics of audio — frequency, amplitude, waveform shapes, and how simple waves combine into complex tones. It's a finished educational piece, not a library or tool. The target audience is curious non-engineers or developers who never studied audio DSP.
The SVG/Canvas dual-rendering architecture on the Waveform component is a genuinely clever decision — lets you swap renderers per-context without rewriting logic. Spring physics on every state transition (including mid-play waveform morphing) is technically non-trivial and they pulled it off. Storybook coverage on nearly every component makes the individual pieces inspectable without running the full app. IntersectionObserver for scroll-driven state with a fallback listener is the right call for 2018 and still holds up.
Last commit is February 2018 — React and styled-components have both had multiple major versions since then; running this locally today means fighting peer dependency conflicts before you see anything. It's a single linear tutorial with no branching — the ambitious future plans (FFT, FM synthesis, envelope generators) were never built and the README admits they probably won't be. No audio on the actual wave diagrams beyond the toggle; you can't hear what you're manipulating, which undercuts the point of an audio explainer. The surge.sh deploy URL likely no longer works, so the live demo the README points to is probably dead.