Introducing HERTZ

I have a problem with modern software. It’s either bloated legacy desktop apps that haven't changed since Windows XP, or "cloud tools" that steal your data.

For the last five years, whenever I needed to quickly polish a voiceover or trim a podcast clip, I opened Audacity. And every single time, I felt like I was driving a tank to the grocery store. It’s powerful, sure. But why do I need to click through four different sub-menus just to normalize a clip? Why does the UI look like it was designed by a Soviet engineer in 1995?

I looked for alternatives. Adobe Audition? I’m not renting software. Online audio editors? This is where it gets dark.

The Privacy Nightmare

Almost every Free Online MP3 Cutter works the same way: You upload your file to their server. They process it. You download it back.

Read that again. You upload your file.

If you are working on NDA material, personal voice notes, or journalism, that’s a non-starter. I don’t want my raw audio sitting in some random S3 bucket. I wanted the convenience of the web (no installs) but the privacy of a desktop app.

So I built HERTZ.

How It Works (The Technical Part)

Hertz is built on a "Zero-Server" architecture. It leverages WebAssembly and FFmpeg.wasm to run the encoding logic locally on your CPU.

When you drag a file into Hertz, the browser's AudioContext decodes the raw PCM data into memory. We use a SharedArrayBuffer to thread that data into a virtual environment running inside Chrome (or Firefox/Safari).

We then run a hardcoded DSP (Digital Signal Processing) chain that I’ve tuned specifically for vocals:

• High Pass (80Hz): Kills the air conditioner rumble.
• Compression (3:1): Smooths out the volume spikes.
• Normalization (-3dB): Brings it up to broadcast standards.

It happens in milliseconds. And crucially, if you disconnect your Wi-Fi, Hertz still works. No data leaves your machine.

Skin in the Game

I didn't build this to sell a subscription. I built it because I needed it. There are no cookies. No tracking pixels. No "Sign up to download."

The code is open source. You can audit it yourself. If you don't trust my hosted version, you can clone the repo and run it on localhost. That’s the beauty of shipping code instead of black boxes.

This is what the web was supposed to be: simple, powerful tools that just work.