Volume of your mix

Is there some programme where you can measure if the volume of your mix is good or An advice to do It right. I notice mine are often not as loud as the original.

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Hey Rian,

good that you ask. And yes, there's a general recommendation from the EBU (European Broadcasting Union) for loudness levels in radio, TV, for streaming, and so on. They have a bit of a technical paper here:

https://tech.ebu.ch/docs/r/r128.pdf

For our purposes, Youlean explains it in a way which is a bit easier to understand - and they also have a cost-free loudness meter linked in their page, one of many:

https://youlean.co/loudness-standards-full-comparison-table/

For here, and to make it short:

-23 LUFS and -1dB TP (true peak) is the cuurent EBU R128 recommendation for radio, TV, and such
-16 LUFS and -1dB TP is their recommendation for streaming services (like here)

Others, like Youtube, Spotify & Co go a bit higher (louder on average which also means lower on dynamics).

I don't know with which programs (and OS) you work, but you'll find lots of plugins, both commercial as well as cost-free or even open source ones for almost every DAW on the market.

If you'd like to spend at least 1$ (an amount of your choice), you'll get a compiled version of Ardour 6 (for Linux, Mac, and Windows) which automates this nicely - I can set my "target loudness" during export, or even export for different "targets" (like Youtube or Wikiloops) concurrently. Ardour can do this in several ways, I wrote about that here: https://wolfgang.lonien.de/2020/09/the-new-ardour-6-3-is-out-and-it-has-a-really-cool-feature/

For here, I try to stay at -16 LUFS and -1dB TP, but I know others that go a bit higher (like -14). Both of these leave enough headroom for peaks, and for the music to still sound dynamic.

Important by the way: don't go for the assumed "correct" loudness too early, and in each track - that is something you should care for in the end only (during "mastering"). While still working on tracks, it's much more important to leave enough headroom, so if your meters show something like -10dB (also for the imported tracks of others which you might even have to reduce a bit sometimes), it's just fine. In the end, and on the master channel give your mix the right level.

I hope that helps?

Cheers,
Wolfgang

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Thanks Wolfgang I downloaded the program but I can't find the loudness anelyzer and normalyzer. I saw the track loudness and be right clicking. So I looked at Audicy program I have, there I have given the value of the LUFS. Because in music maker I can't find any thing to do that. I also set the peak DB so the sound of the song is louder now thank you for the info

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You're welcome Rian, glad if I could help. If with 'the program' you meant Ardour, there are two alternate ways to achieve a targeted loudness during export, which are as follows:

Method 1:

during export in Ardour with

Session - Export - Export to audio file(s)

you select the export of your choice (like DVD for 48k, or CD for 44.1k), and select 'Normalize', then Loudness (set it to -16LUFS or whatever), and dBTP (set it to -1 or whatever). If you save this, you only have to do this once. And if you also mark the checkbox 'Analyze Exported Audio' in the normal export window, you'll get a summary after the export is done.

Method 2:

in Ardour (starting from version 6.3):

Edit - Preferences - Signal Flow - Enable master-bus output gain control

This will put a section/button called 'LAN' into your master bus from which you can select different output loudness level 'targets' (like EBU R128 for the radio, Apple Music to go to -16LUFS/-1dBTP like I do it, or Youtube for -14LUFS/-1dBTP to be a bit louder)

Edit:

To show this a bit better I've just uploaded a short video tutorial about those 2 ways in Ardour. See here:

[youtube]1cEvq0qugIY[/youtube]

Edit 2:

In the Ardour forums there was another feature, since 6.8 you can have multiple outputs in one go: https://discourse.ardour.org/t/ardour-export-lufs-normalization/106187

Hope this helps?

Cheers,
Wolfgang

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