Mixing and Mastering AICheck your loudness before you release, in about ten seconds.
Every streaming platform turns your track up or down to sit at roughly the same level as everything else. If you do not know what your master measures, you do not know what a listener will actually hear.
The Loudness Meter answers that in one upload. It decodes your file, measures it to the ITU-R BS.1770-4 method, and tells you in plain language whether the track has the headroom it needs and how it compares to the level streaming services aim for.
Key points
- Integrated LUFS is the number that decides how loud your track sounds after normalisation.
- Keep true peak at or below -1.0 dBTP so lossy encoding does not clip it.
- Streaming platforms target around -14 LUFS; anything louder gets turned down on playback.
- Free to run, no token, and your file is measured and discarded.
What the Loudness Meter measures
Integrated Loudness (LUFS) is how loud your track sounds across its whole length, weighted the way human hearing actually works. It uses K-weighting and gated block averaging, so quiet passages and silence do not drag the number down the way a simple average would. This is the figure streaming services read when they decide how to normalise you.
Loudness Range (LU) describes how much the loudness moves between the quietest and loudest sections. A low number means a consistent, dense record. A high number means real dynamic contrast between a verse and a chorus. Neither is wrong, but a range near zero on a song that should breathe usually means the limiter is doing too much.
True Peak (dBTP) is the highest level the waveform actually reaches once it is reconstructed, including the peaks that fall between samples. We detect it with 4x oversampling, because those inter-sample peaks are invisible to an ordinary peak meter and only appear after conversion to MP3 or AAC, which is exactly when they distort.
RMS (dBFS) is the mathematical average level of the waveform. It is simpler and more technical than LUFS, useful as a second opinion, but LUFS remains the more reliable guide to how loud something actually sounds.
How to read your result
If true peak comes back above -1.0 dBTP, you get a TRUE PEAK CEILING EXCEEDED panel. Gold means you are above the ceiling but still under 0 dBTP: headroom is tight and a small turn-down is worth it. Red means you are at or above 0 dBTP, where clipping after lossy encoding is very likely.
At -1.0 dBTP or below there is no warning at all, because the track already has the room it needs. If true peak is -20 dBTP or lower you get a green HEADROOM AVAILABLE note, which usually means the file is a rough bounce rather than a finished master.
When the track measures louder than -14 LUFS, the meter tells you by how many LU. That is not a failure, plenty of records are mastered louder on purpose, but it tells you how much of your loudness the listener will never hear because normalisation removed it.
What it is good for
- Before you release. Check the master you are about to upload to Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube and catch a ceiling problem while you can still fix it.
- Before you pay anyone. Measure your own mix and see whether it needs mastering at all, and how far off the mark it currently is.
- Checking an engineer's work. If a master comes back and something feels wrong, the numbers say whether it is squashed, clipping, or simply quieter than you expected.
- Matching a reference. Run a commercial track you admire, then run yours, and compare the four numbers side by side.
What it costs
Loudness Meter is free. It costs no tokens and there is no cap on how many files you run through it. Create a free account and it is available immediately.
Common questions
What LUFS should my track be?
Most streaming platforms normalise to about -14 LUFS, so that is a sensible target if you want your track to keep its dynamics after normalisation. Louder masters are common in club, hip hop and electronic music, often -8 to -10 LUFS. Neither is wrong. What matters is that you know your number and chose it, rather than discovering it after release.
Why is my true peak above 0 even though my DAW says it is not?
Your DAW is most likely showing sample peak, which only looks at the samples themselves. True peak reconstructs the waveform between samples, where the real maximum often sits 1 to 3 dB higher. That overshoot appears when the file is encoded to MP3 or AAC, which is why a -0.1 dBFS master can distort on streaming while measuring clean at home.
Is the Loudness Meter free?
Yes. It costs no tokens and there is no limit on how many files you check. It is free because it is the measurement that tells you whether you need anything else.
Does my file get uploaded or stored?
Your file is decoded to take the measurement and is not kept afterwards. Nothing is published, shared or used to train anything.
Is this a certified broadcast meter?
No. It is an ITU-R BS.1770-4 approximation, accurate enough to make release decisions with and to compare tracks against each other, but it is a reference check rather than a certified broadcast-compliance deliverable.
Related tools
- Loudness Normalizer (1 token) — Hit a target LUFS for any platform, exactly.
- True Peak Limiter (1 token) — Hold a real dBTP ceiling with no intersample clipping.
- Audio Analysis (free) — LUFS, true peak, crest, correlation and band balance.