Loudness standards
ferraus measures loudness with ITU-R BS.1770-4 / EBU R128: K-weighted, gated integrated loudness in LUFS (loudness units relative to full scale), short-term (3 s) and momentary (400 ms) loudness, loudness range (LRA, in LU), and true peak in dBTP (measured after 4x oversampling, so it catches peaks between samples).
| Target | Integrated | True-peak ceiling | Where it applies |
|---|---|---|---|
streaming | -14 LUFS | -1 dBTP | Spotify, YouTube, Tidal, Amazon normalize around this level |
apple | -16 LUFS | -1 dBTP | Apple Music and Apple Podcasts |
youtube | -14 LUFS | -1 dBTP | alias of streaming |
club | -8 LUFS | -0.3 dBTP | DJ and club playback, no normalization |
cd | -10 LUFS | -0.3 dBTP | 16-bit 44.1 kHz with dither |
broadcast | -23 LUFS | -1 dBTP | EBU R128 (--standard atsc: -24 LKFS, -2 dBTP) |
podcast | -16 LUFS stereo, -19 LUFS mono | -1 dBTP | speech |
ferraus analyze loudness song.wavreports every measure;--timelineadds curves.ferraus normalize song.wav --lufs -14reaches a target within 0.3 LU and never exceeds the true-peak ceiling (a lookahead limiter catches overshoot).ferraus master mix.wav --target streamingdoes tonal balance, dynamics, stereo, and loudness.
Louder is not better on streaming services: they turn loud masters down, so excessive limiting only costs dynamics.