Soundwave

Soundwave is a Decepticon in the Transformers franchise. He was Megatron's most loyal minion and transforms into a cassette player. Unlike the most other Decepticons, he is emotionless, but probably due to his more "robotic" character traits.

Generation One
Soundwave is the most loyal Decepticon to G1 Megatron. Like Starscream and Shockwave, he is one of the highest-ranking Decepticons, but only he obeys Megatron's commands while Shockwave is individual (or at times alert Megatron if a situation occurs) while Starscream tries to become the leader of Decepticons and replace Megatron. He has several minions similar to G1 Autobot Blastor, and his Decepticon minions are Ravage, Laserbeak, Ratbat, and Rumble. In the G1 movie, he had a very minor role where he was fighting the Autobots at the beginning, but then he must ally with the Autobots to destroy Unicron at the end of the movie. He then again was a loyal Decepticon to Megatron, who is now Galvatron.

Revenge of the Fallen
"Soundwave acknowledges." - Soundwave.

Soundwave hacks into a government satellite by releasing metal tendrils from his body into it.

He then acquires all the frequencies and signals from the satellite, thus discovering the location of the last Allspark fragment and Megatron's corpse. Upon finding out, he sends Ravage to retrieve it. Then he uses the satellite to keep track of the Allspark empowered flesh creature and its parental units. He calls Sam's female batch initiator on her cellphone. She answers but cannot understand Soundwave's deep voice, so she calls him a mouth-breathing pervert and hangs up. Later, he locates Sam in Egypt via a security camera which transmitted the face to the satellite and Starscream is sent in pursuit. He isn't seen throughout the rest of the movie.thumb|300px|right|Soundwave

Dark of the Moon
"Soundwave reporting Lord Megatron." -Soundwave

Soundwave is a minor character in the film. He was hiding in Africa with Starscream, Megatron, and Igor, after he launched down from space to Earth and his satellite mode was never seen. Soundwave has a new minion, a condor called Laserbeak that transforms into a printer, a TV, and a small pink replica of Bumblebee. He was working with Dylan Gould, the film's tertiary antagonist who gave orders on action regarding Sam Witwicky's attempts to fight Dylan. He transformed into Carly's car, then while Sam and Carly were driving him to escape Dylan, Soundwave transformed back into robot mode, knocking away Sam and grabbing the helpless screaming Carly trapping him inside his vehicle mode. Soundwave wanted to, out of fun, dissect Carly with his wired weapons but Dylan ordered him to stop tormenting Carly since she was the reason Sam was surrendering. After killing Autobot Que who was trying to talk him out of murder through words but to no success, Soundwave decided to kill Bumblebee, but Autobots Wheelie and Brains crashed down Decepticon fighters from a warship in the sky, which distracted Soundwave and Bumblebee got the upper hand, killing Soundwave.

Animated
Soundwave is also in '''Transformers: Animated. '''

He is made of a more menacing character than in Generation One series and the Revenge of the Fallen film. He was created by Megatron, who tells Soundwave that humanity is now depending on robots as modern conveniences in their lives. In a similar way of the Matrix series episode, "The Second Renaissance", he controls all the robots in Detroit, Michigan to eliminate the Autobots and the humans, but Soundwave was defeated by Autobot Bulkhead and the controlled robots were back to normal. He returns again in the third season and steals the Autobots' bodies and replace them with human bodies so that he can control the Autobots and turn them into Decepticons. However, when Autobot Prowl broke free of the control, he freed the other Autobots and Optimus Prime destroyed him with his own minion Laserbeak.

Prime
Soundwave is one of the primary Decepticons in the Hub show Transformers: Prime. Unlike Generation One and other incarnations, he has no face and his head is only a screen that scans soundwaves. Soundwave records other voices and replays them as to inform the Decepticons. He can contact any satellite network except the Autobot base since he has no knowledge of where the Autobots' headquarters are. He has a minion, which is Laserbeak, that originated from Generation One.

Despite being the Communications Officer and rarely be shown in combat, he has proven himself to be a brutal combatant. He is even considered by many to be Megatron's only equal (aside from Optimus Prime). His first battle was against Airachnid, who had insisted that she take control of the Decepticons after Megatron left to help the Autobots defeat Unicron. In a short-lived battle, Soundwave brought Airachnid down in a matter of seconds without a scratch. He was later shown fighting Wheeljack, who managed to crack Soundwave's visor before being defeated in a similar fashion to Airachnid.