Audio waveform not showing visually

SOLVED: Go to Preferences > Timeline > Check 'render audio when rendering video'

After that just select the clip and go to Sequence > Render selection.

Hope this works for you as well.

Well none of that worked for me-- resetting, etc... What did was first opening the file in Audition and making sub clips there.  At least for the audio only files. 

For what its worth I had a simmilar problem and adobe helped find a fix for me. I layed out the steps on my post here.

https://community.adobe.com/t5/Premiere-Pro/Audio-Waveforms-not-appearing-despite-sound/td-p/10647846

🙂 

The "correct" answer here is not.  At least not always.

In my case, the sequnce stopped showing audio waveform after I'd done manual work in the multicam it sources from.  (I manually edit my multicams a lot.  Usually, things behave fine.  But in today's case, the "no waveform" bug occurred.  Oddly, I could not then recreate it in new test sequences, right afterwards, by following the same steps.  So it's more nearly random.)

None of these fixes worked:

1. Edit > Preferences > Audio: Check "Automatic audio waveform generation" 
2. Select clip in Program Panel, then frommenu: Clip > "Generate Audio Waveform"
3. Delete media cache database (even manaully outside PrP0; close PrP; reboot PC. 

(I also unsuccessfully tried a number of things not listed in this thread, which I'll omit for brevity.)

Which leaves me with THIS WORK-AROUND:

1. Select audio track in sequence (not in multicam).
2. Right-click, Render & Replace.   (Creates/imports/replaces with a file of same name + " Extracted".)
3. In Project panel, go to audio file that you want the sequence to use, and manually add it to your sequence (not to the multicam) under the rendered-replaced audio track, and then sync manually (visually, using a sharp peak of the waveforms; but cross-check by ear to ensure no echo).
4. Delete the rendered-replaced audio track, leaving just the desired audio track.
5. PRO: Any future changes to the manually placed audio file (in the sequence) such as refinements made in Audition will show up in the sequence.  Minor CON/FYI: but changes to the audio in the multicam source are now of course being ignored wrt your sequence.

Sometimes, this solution doesn't work. It didn't for me. But then I found another, simple method. tl;dr below. Hope it helps people.

So I have found that you can trick Premiere into make a new .pek file without much effort.

1. Make sure this checkbox is checked: "Premiere Pro > Preferences > Audio > Automatic audio waveform generation"
2. In the Premiere timeline, on the clip in question, right-click > Reveal In Finder
3. In Finder, move the audio clip up in the Finder folder hierarchy
4. Return to Premiere
5. The clip should have lost its link to the file and the Link Media dialog box should automatically appear (if it doesn't, right-click > Link Media)
6. Relink the clip to where it is in its new location

That should be it. Look at the bottom right of your Premiere windows to see if it's automatically generating new waveforms (generally a blue status bar). Wait till that bar is complete and tada: waveforms. They should show up immediately and automatically. I think what's happening is that this process disrupts Premiere's link between that file and any previously generated waveform information. So the incomplete or corrupt waveforms are ignored, and new ones are generated for the file in its new location. Moving the files up (as opposed to down or into a new folder in the same place) seems essential to confusing Premiere's automatic relinking process. If you've moved it sideways or down, when you click back over to Premiere from Finder, Premiere seems to be able to find it, and so nothing really happens.

A couple notes from experimentation:

1. Seems okay to make a new folder, just has to be higher up
2. This can be done in batches (batch move in Finder, batch relink in Premiere)
3. Seems also to solve the problem of not being able to see Waveform information up through Multicams

tl;dr

Move the associated audio files in Finder to a higher folder in the hierarchy, then relink in Premiere.

The same problem here. I can't see the waveforms not only for audio files but for all files. And part of my project files have them and part not.

I tried to move my cache delete it, enable "place cache files next to original", re-render project. re-render waveforms. Nothing helped me, only zoom in the sequence window show waveforms but when you zoom out you can't see the waveforms again.

Really stupid bug and it's sad that Adobe isn't fixing this fast.

We have had this same issue on and off for the past couple of years. Deleting the .pek and .cfa doesn't work reliably. What does work for us is to delete or move the media cache database. Then close Premiere and reopen. For us, this works every time.

Another work around is Render & Replace the audio clips that you are using in the timeline.  Not the best solution, but it does get you a waveform...

Is Adobe working on this?  I just got off of tech support and they suggested rendering my audio files, which is something I've never done before.  It will take me at least 2 hours to render a 4 min sequence.  This is a very large project, it will probably take me a few days to render everything... 

For me, the latest update (13.1.0 Build 193) results in waveforms being shown again most of the time, but not always: every so often a clip comes in with an audio flatline.

In addition, from time to time the waveform doesn't match the audio - suddenly, in the middle of a clip, the waveform stops relating to the audio and goes off on its own.