Is my mix uploaded anywhere?

No. The file is decoded by your browser and measured in the page, so it never leaves your device. Unreleased masters are safe to drop in.

What loudness should I master to?

Master to what the music needs, then check the number. Spotify, YouTube and Tidal normalise to about −14 LUFS and Apple Music to about −16 LUFS, but they turn loud masters down rather than rejecting them. Broadcast at −23 LUFS is a real delivery spec; streaming targets are not.

What is the difference between true peak and sample peak?

Sample peak is the highest stored sample. True peak is the highest point of the waveform once it is reconstructed between samples, which is what a converter or a lossy encoder actually produces. True peak is always equal to or higher than sample peak, and it is the figure delivery specs use.

Why is my integrated loudness lower than the level I see on my meters?

Integrated loudness is gated: silence and very quiet passages are excluded, and everything else is averaged in the energy domain over the whole programme. A peak meter shows the loudest instant instead, so the two figures answer different questions.

What does loudness range tell me?

It is the spread between the quiet and loud sections, measured over 3 second windows. A few LU means a consistently loud master; 10 LU or more means the arrangement moves a lot. Neither is right or wrong on its own.

Which standard is this measuring against?

ITU-R BS.1770-4 for K-weighting, block sizes and the two-stage gate, and EBU Tech 3342 for loudness range. True peak uses 4x oversampling, the minimum the standard accepts at 44.1 and 48 kHz.

Free tool

LUFS Meter

Integrated loudness, true peak, loudness range and dynamics for a finished mix — measured to BS.1770-4 in your own browser.

Your mix is decoded and measured in this browser tab. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is stored.

Your mix

Decoded and measured in this tab. Nothing is uploaded or stored.

Choose an audio file

WAV, MP3, FLAC, AIFF, M4A, OGG — up to 250 MB. Full-length masters are fine.

Detail

How this works

Loudness is not level. A peak meter tells you the single loudest instant; loudness tells you how loud the programme is over time, weighted for how hearing responds to frequency. That weighting, the 400 millisecond blocks and the gate that ignores silence all come from ITU-R BS.1770-4, which is why the figure here matches a mastering meter rather than a fader.

True peak matters separately. Between two stored samples the reconstructed waveform can rise higher than either of them, and a lossy encoder will happily turn that overshoot into distortion. Measuring it needs oversampling, which is what the true-peak figure here does at 4x.

The target comparison exists to remove guesswork, not to set a rule. Streaming platforms normalise: a master louder than their target is turned down, so the reward for squashing a mix is smaller dynamics at the same perceived level. The useful move is to check the number, keep about a decibel of true-peak headroom, and let the music decide the rest.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

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