Anyone know of a way that I can record an audio track, then flip it end-for-end so that I can play it backwards in my DAW?

Sounds strange, but I got to thinking of how interesting it would be to try to set up rhyme schemes, etc. in this situation.

Why, you ask? Yeah, I'm asking myself that, too..

Free to use +++ Audacity +++ reverses audio. Highlight the audio > effect > reverse.

Which DAW? Most of them can do this, either a whole track or chunk. I can also do it in Pro Tools.

Another question...do you know if it's possible to take a mono audio file and flip it "horizontally"?

Do you mean vertically, where a high volume note becomes a low one and vice-versa? Playing the file backwards was to my thinking a horizontal flip.

Sorry… I meant a vertical flip of a mono track...where the audio is skewed to L or R instead of centered.

Wouldn't panning do that?

This is all in the definition of what you want to do. Are you sure you mean that it's a mono track? If so, left and right have no meaning. Do you mean you want sounds in a stereo track that are panned left to be instead on the right, and vice versa? Far left to far right etc.? That's a new one on me, unless you are the conductor of an orchestra that is seated 'wrong'.

If it's just a mono track and it's louder on the 'wrong' side in your system, then Mario is right, pan it. Or find out why one of your channels is louder than the other.

Unless I'm missing something here...

Or if it is indeed a stereo track most DAWs can split a stereo track to two MONO tracks, and then you can pan them any which way you want to.

Reverse the high and low points of a mono waveform by reversing the polarity of the mono track. Most DAWs and many mixers have a button to reverse track polarity. It often happens in a recording studio there is a need to reverse phase.

Here is one example that is easy to visualize: If you have two microphones on a snare drum one microphone is likely pointed at the top snare head and the second at the bottom snare head. When the top snare head is hit the head distorts downward into the drum body while the bottom snare head bulges outward and away from the drum body. Likewise the two microphones will react to sound waves that move in opposite direction from each other. Without a way to reverse signal polarity the two sounds cancel each other out.

Another example: Condenser microphone cables provide power to the condenser microphone and return the signal to the amplifier, console, recorder, audio interface or whatever. In the US condenser power is lead 2 is hot and lead 3 is ground. But it is easy to make the connections incorrectly so that wire 2 is ground and wire 3 is hot. When tht happens the microphone still works but the waveform is reversed.

One control can have two names and functions dependent on if the track is stereo or mono.

Stereo tracks use a balance control to raise or lower the signal level of the right and left channels of a track. One way to visualize this is to imagine two volume controls with each control mated to the other so that when one channel has maximum volume the opposing channel has minimum volume.

Mono tracks use a panning control to position the mono sound in a stereo space. As long as the mono track is played in a mono output, like the speaker for an am radio, the panning control has no affect on the sound.

The confusion is caused by each control occupying the same spot on a channel strip while the final output is a stereo mix.