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