To join audio clips in DaVinci Resolve, place the clips on the same audio track in the Edit page so their edges touch, select the touching clips, and use the timeline Join command (also reachable through the Edit menu) to splice them into one continuous clip you can move, trim, and export as a single audio file. The Join action removes the boundary between two adjacent clips so the underlying media behaves like one longer recording, which is different from simply sliding two clips end-to-end on the timeline. You can join more than two clips at once by selecting a longer range first, but only clips that already touch on the timeline can be merged in a single pass. Many editors ask this question because they want either a single combined media file they can move around the project without seams, or a single WAV to hand off to a collaborator. Both outcomes are reachable inside Resolve, and there is also a separate browser-based path that produces a combined WAV outside of the project before it ever reaches the Media Pool.
What "joining" audio clips means in a Resolve project
Joining audio clips inside DaVinci Resolve is a timeline operation, not a media-pool operation. You are combining the edit decisions that hold two clips in a specific order on a track. The original source files stay separate on disk and in your project folder; Resolve simply treats the joined result as one clip with one start point, one set of handles, and one set of in/out ranges. That distinction matters because re-linking, replacing, or re-importing the source files still works on the joined clip's underlying media.
Several related terms get used for the same idea, and knowing the difference helps when you read Resolve menus or follow tutorial videos:
- Join: fuses the boundaries of two touching clips into one clip on the same track. The result keeps the in-points and out-points of both original clips in their original order.
- Overwrite or Insert edit: places a source clip at the playhead or in a selected range. These do not merge clips; they place new ones.
- Compound clip: nests one or more clips into a single container. Useful when you want to treat a section as one block, but not the same as splicing audio edge to edge.
- Render and export: outputs the joined section to a single file on disk, which is the closest equivalent to "joining files" outside of Resolve.
Joining audio clips directly on the DaVinci Resolve timeline
This is the path to take when both source clips are already imported into the project and you want a single editable clip on the timeline.
- Open the Edit page and drop both audio files from the Media Pool onto the same audio track, snapping their edges so the end of clip A touches the start of clip B.
- If the clips are not perfectly touching, drag the second clip so its in-point is at the same frame as the first clip's out-point. The snap indicator turns red when the edges align.
- Click the first clip to select it, then Shift-click the second clip so both are highlighted. You can also drag a selection box around both clips if more than two need to be joined at once.
- Use one of these commands to perform the join:
- Edit > Join Clips from the top menu.
- The keyboard shortcut associated with Join Clips; Resolve's default shortcut appears in the Keyboard Customization panel under the Edit category.
- Resolve collapses the boundary and the two clips become one. The clip name in the timeline shows the original names joined by a hyphen, for example Intro-music.mp3 — Voiceover.wav.
- To extend the join across more clips, select the entire range that contains all of them, then run the same Join command. Resolve joins every adjacent boundary inside the selection in one pass.
After the join, you can trim, slip, slide, add fades, apply Fairlight effects, and export the combined section exactly as you would a single clip. If you need the joined audio as a standalone file, jump to the Deliver page, pick an audio-only format (such as WAV), and choose the joined range as the render selection.
When you need a single combined file outside the timeline
The timeline Join command is the right tool when you are still editing. It is the wrong tool when the question is really about producing one WAV that you can move between projects, send to a client, drop into another editor, or use as a master without dragging files into a Resolve timeline first. Common cases include:
- You have two or three audio recordings (voice takes, music stems, ambient beds) and you want them as one file before importing into any editor.
- You are working on a machine without Resolve installed but still want a Resolve-friendly WAV.
- You want to combine clips without touching your Resolve project, for example because the master project is locked but a collaborator needs a single delivery file.
- You need a quick, gap-free combination to test an edit offline before committing to the timeline.
For these cases a browser-based joiner that runs entirely in your current tab is a faster path than opening Resolve, importing files, snapping clips, and exporting. If you also need to combine that combined WAV with a video track, a separate workflow such as Add Audio to Video Without Losing Quality: Merge Tracks covers the merge step.
Join the clips with the Audio Joiner
The Audio Joiner combines 2 to 10 browser-decodable audio files into one PCM16 WAV in the exact order shown in the file list. Decoding, channel concatenation, and WAV encoding all run locally in your current tab, so the source files are not uploaded to a server. Decoding uses the Web Audio API as documented by MDN's decodeAudioData reference, and every file in one selection is decoded through the same AudioContext.
- Open the Audio Joiner in your browser and click the file picker. The picker recognizes common MP3, WAV, M4A, AAC, Ogg, WebM, and FLAC file names and MIME types, though a recognized extension does not guarantee that every codec variant decodes successfully in Safari, Chrome, Firefox, or another browser.
- Select 2 to 10 files together. Each file must be no larger than 25 MiB (26,214,400 bytes) and the full selection must be no larger than 100 MiB (104,857,600 bytes). Files outside those ranges are rejected with a specific message rather than silently truncated.
- Wait while each file is decoded through the same AudioContext. Decoded audio may not exceed 30 minutes in total, eight channels, 192 kHz, or 30 million channel-samples counted across every channel; a high-rate or multichannel selection can reach the sample budget before the duration limit.
- Use the per-track preview to confirm each decoded track, then click Move up or Move down until the list reflects the order you want in the final file. Reordering changes both the decoded-buffer array and the visible list together and clears any older WAV, so a stale result cannot claim a previous order.
- Click Join in this order. The output is a newly encoded RIFF/WAVE file with interleaved, little-endian, signed 16-bit PCM samples at the decoded sample rate and channel count of the source files.
- Preview the resulting PCM16 WAV, then download it. Because PCM16 WAV is uncompressed, the download can be much larger than the original compressed MP3, AAC, Opus, Vorbis, or FLAC files; this is expected and does not indicate a quality problem.
All files in the selection must decode to the same channel count. A mono and stereo mixture is rejected rather than being silently duplicated, dropped, averaged, or remapped. If your sources are mixed, convert them to a single channel layout first with a dedicated editor that supports channel conversion.
Limits and behaviors to know before downloading
| Limit or behavior | Value or effect |
|---|---|
| Number of files per join | 2 to 10 |
| Per-file size cap | 25 MiB (26,214,400 bytes) |
| Total selection size cap | 100 MiB (104,857,600 bytes) |
| Maximum total duration | 30 minutes across all files |
| Maximum channel count | 8 channels |
| Maximum sample rate | 192 kHz |
| Maximum channel-samples | 30,000,000 across every channel |
| Channel-count mixing | Rejected if tracks have different channel counts |
| Gap, fade, or crossfade | None inserted; samples concatenated directly |
| Output sample rate | The shared AudioContext working rate, not original file rates |
| Output container | RIFF/WAVE, PCM format tag, signed 16-bit little-endian |
| Metadata preserved | None (no tags, album art, chapters, cue points, or loudness fields) |
The Web Audio API may resample sources to one working sample rate on decode, so the rate displayed for the decoded tracks and result can differ from the rates stored in the original files. The output does not preserve independent source sample rates. Float samples are clipped to the range from -1 through 1 before being written as signed PCM16, with negative full scale mapping to -32768, positive full scale to 32767, and non-finite values written as silence.
Keep the source files and confirm the downloaded duration, order, joins, channel playback, and file size before deleting any original. The join has no inserted silence, overlap, crossfade, normalization, transition, or automatic trimming; the last sample frame of one decoded track is followed immediately by the first sample frame of the next track in the output channel arrays.
Verify the combined file before importing it into Resolve
Once you have a combined WAV, drop it into the Media Pool on the Edit page and drag it onto an audio track to confirm playback. Three checks catch almost every join issue:
- Duration check. Compare the new file's duration with the sum of the source durations. Mismatches usually point to a sample-rate conversion or a channel-count rejection that the joiner reported but you missed.
- Order check. Listen at each original boundary. There should be no gap and no abrupt click unless the source material itself contains one. The joiner does not smooth boundaries, so a click at the seam indicates an unmatched edit in the original recording.
- Channel check. Solo left and right channels in the Fairlight page. If you hear audio in the wrong channel or one channel is silent, the original sources were stereo but the joiner received mono, or vice versa. Resolve the channel-count mismatch and re-run the join.
If the join produced a file at a different sample rate than your Resolve timeline (for example, 44.1 kHz sources on a 48 kHz project), Resolve will resample on import to match the timeline. For a lossless round trip, set your project timeline rate to match the decoded working rate the joiner displayed, or render the timeline at the rate you need. If you ever need a time range rather than a full track, or if you want fades, loudness matching, channel conversion, compressed output, metadata preservation, or sample-level repair, the Audio Joiner is not the right tool. Reach for a dedicated editor or the Audio Cutter for trim-only workflows.