Building Protonic Wave Reversal

Bleep This

I have a Bleep-ing problem.

Not a bad problem, really. More of a refusal to compromise on audio quality. High-resolution audio files from artists like Autechre and Aphex Twin, gathered from Bleep or ripped from CDs, all living in my meticulously organized Plexamp library.

Because if you’re going to listen to electronic music, you might as well hear every nuance intended. At 44.1kHz/24-bit or greater. Like a reasonable person.

There’s just one problem: WAV files don’t support metadata.

No artist names. No album info. No album art. Just artist-01-track.wav through artist-12-track.wav sitting in a folder, mocking my organizational instincts.

Bleep includes MP3 or FLAC files with proper tags alongside the high-resolution WAVs, which is useful to some. But manually copying metadata to hundreds of converted files? That’s the kind of soul-crushing busywork that makes you reconsider your commitment to audio fidelity.

Almost. Not quite. But almost.

Initial Solution

I wrote a Python script to help with the drudgery.

Nothing fancy. Point it at a folder of WAVs and their metadata companions, and it would convert everything to Apple Lossless (ALAC) while transferring all the tags and album art. Preserved the original sample rates. Saved disk space and my Plexamp library in good shape.

It worked perfectly. For me, in the terminal with the right folder structure and no typos in the file paths.

Not exactly user-friendly. But functional.

Moving to an Application

I lived with that script for a while. But every time I bought a new album and had to fire up the terminal, type out paths, and hope I didn’t mess up the syntax… it felt like there should be a better way.

I wanted a real application. Drag and drop. Simple. Something I could actually share with other people who have this same oddly specific problem.

I had been using Claude Code for small-scale web development tasks, but never to build a full-blown macOS application. The closest to a true application I have built were Max for Live plugins, Mapa (for Bradley Fish) and Retake. I figured it was time to see what it took to convert a script into a polished application.

Building the Application

I described what I had and what I wanted: a single-screen application with drag-and-drop zones for the files, format options, something that felt clean and didn’t require reading documentation.

The first few iterations didn’t build successfully and the UI it created was atrocious. The initial builds were over 300MB in size, but it worked! I was ready to stop there, but after sitting on it for a few weeks I felt it could be improved in terms of size and aesthetics.

The first breakthrough was getting the size down to 30MB, but it was terribly slow to launch. Next, we tried using nuitka to build the app, which dramatically improved launch times. The size settled at an acceptable 90MB.

Sketching something up in Figma and using the Figma MCP server got the final UI just right.

The best part? When it worked, it really worked and plenty of edge cases were caught. I could finally process new Bleep purchases without thinking about terminal commands. Just drop, convert, done.

Naming It

The name came late. I needed something that captured the slightly absurd specificity of the tool. A name that was unique and playful.

Based upon the name Spectral Run with its audio and ghost connotations Ghostbusters came to mind. In the movie, crossing the streams causes a “total protonic reversal.” Basically, don’t do it or everything explodes. But this tool is all about safely crossing streams. Taking audio data from one format, metadata from another, and combining them without catastrophic failure. It matched the whole theme of the site.

Plus it sounds cooler than “Bleep HiRes Converter.”

Ready for Use

I built Protonic Wave Reversal because I needed it. Because high-resolution audio files need proper metadata, and the manual process was driving me crazy. I still long for Bleep to release high-resolution ALAC or FLAC files like Bandcamp, but for now this will do.

Because really owning your music library, with proper files and proper tags, shouldn’t require a computer science degree or infinite patience.

And because sometimes the best tools are the ones you build for yourself, even if they only solve a problem that affects you and maybe a dozen other audio nerds with similar Plexamp obsessions.

If you’re one of those people, the tools are available here. Cross the streams. Your music library will thank you.