Nice freeware LUFS meter - and mastering for new level standards for streaming audio

[William Bushnell]

I downloaded and installed it on my test computer to give it a quick try. To see any indication of it working I changed the setting at the bottom from ELAPSED to CONTINUOUS. Haven't read the pdf manual as yet. Thanks Steve for the link.


Also, thanks Dave for the link for the MBprocess AGC plugin. Just did a quick test to see if it would function an it looks good.
_____________
William Bushnell

[mr_es335]

William,

To see any indication of it working I changed the setting at the bottom from ELAPSED to CONTINUOUS.

...That did the trick!! Thanks for this.

[studio-c]

Sorry about the delay, but YES! It worked. Thank you so much!!

[Bruce Callaway]

Great thanks Steve

[Carlos Mills]

Very useful information as usual Steve, thank you very much. Would the LUFs metering compare to the K metering found in Sonoris Meter Plug in, for instance?

Greeting SAWyers -
Streaming is quickly replacing downloaded music files for the majority of end listeners' preferred delivery methods - and the adoption of "loudness normalization" algorithms as a default on playback by many of these services (particularly Spotify, YouTube and Tidal) has started to spark a major turning point in mastering levels.
For those new to this - some background info on the various new average metering scales (including LUFS) is at https://www.tcelectronic.com/brand/t...ness-explained
Spotify and Tidal are now using the LUFS metering system (which measures average loudness similar to RMS, but uses frequency weighting to make their measurments much more accurate for describing actual perceived loudness than RMS gives) and using -14 LUFS as their target - and YouTube uses a slightly different algorithm with around -13 LUFS as its target. What this means is that heavily brickwall limited tracks that were crushed in order to sound "loud" in a CD player or iPod shuffle have their overall level turned down by an x measured amount to allow more dynamic tracks when played in shuffle to sound as if they are at the same level. So - more dynamic tracks will sound just as "loud" as heavily crushed tracks in a shuffled Spotify or YouTube playlist - but the less crushed tracks will be able to playback cleaner, with less harshness and more punch and snap retained.

SO- if you are mastering specifically for these formats it is now vital to be able to meter using the LUFS standard if you want to achieve optimal results for them.

One of the best VST plugin meters for the various new loudness standards is Nugen Mastercheck Pro - however this is only available as a 64bit plugin - and when I attempted to wrap it as a 32bit dll using JBridge it still crashed SAWStudio. Not only that - but it costs a bit of cash that could likely be better used for other things in a studio's budget if other options are available. You can still send to this meter via using Virtual Audio Cable to send to a different host that can handle 64bit plugins - or you can stream to the other host via a multiplexing in a digital interface or digital patchbay - but these work around solutions are a bit more clunky than just being able to load a plugin directly in SAWStudio.
Luckily I found a great freeware meter that reads LUFS correctly - that works great in SAWStudio - the YouLean Loudness Meter -
https://youlean.co/youlean-loudness-meter/

Hope this post helps some others - and Happy SAWing!

Best regards,
Steve Berson

[TotalSonic]

Very useful information as usual Steve, thank you very much. Would the LUFs metering compare to the K metering found in Sonoris Meter Plug in, for instance?

While they are very similar in intent, they are different standards. K-metering never had any industry wide acceptance - where as LUFs is a published standard by the AES/EBU, level limits calibrated via LUFs metering has been mandated for use for many European Union broadcasts, and as noted is now a standard used by many of the most popular music streaming services are now using it metering the target levels for their loudness normalization algorithms.

Best regards,
Steve Berson

[bcorkery]

Steve,

Thanks for the info. I've been using Waves Loudness Meter, WLM Plus, and have had good results with that one.

-Bill

[jmh]

I have yet to play with any of the plugins, but found the topic interesting. I came across this link:

http://www.repetito.com/index.php?pa..._lufs-truepeak


Also this command line utility that is an available package on many linux distributions:

http://bs1770gain.sourceforge.net/index.html