LUFS explained

LUFS stands for Loudness Units relative to Full Scale. It is the standard measurement of how loud a piece of audio sounds to a listener, as opposed to how high its peaks are. Club Ready Music measures every rendered take in LUFS and adjusts it to the target you chose in the Master & export panel.

Why peaks are not enough

A track can hit 0 dBFS at its peaks and still sound quiet if those peaks are brief. Another track can sit far below full scale and sound loud because it is dense. Peak level tells you about clipping; it does not tell you about loudness. LUFS fixes that by filtering the audio to match how human hearing weights frequencies, averaging over time, and ignoring silence.

The three numbers

• Integrated loudness, in LUFS, is the average over the whole track. This is the number presets refer to. −8 LUFS is a loud club master; −14 LUFS is the level most streaming services normalise to.
• Loudness range, in LU, describes how much the loudness varies between quiet and loud sections. Club Ready Music's normaliser targets a range of 11 LU.
• True peak, in dBTP, is the highest level the reconstructed analogue waveform reaches, which can exceed the highest sample. Club Ready Music limits true peak to −1 dBTP so MP3 encoding and playback do not clip.

Where the standard comes from

LUFS is defined by ITU-R BS.1770 and adopted in broadcast through EBU R128 in Europe and ATSC A/85 in the United States. Streaming services then applied the same measurement to music, each choosing a reference level, which is why "−14 LUFS" is familiar to producers.

How Club Ready Music uses it

After the vocal gate, each take goes through a two-pass loudness process. The first pass measures integrated loudness, true peak, loudness range and threshold with the same pre-filters applied, hard start, mono bass and any bass fade, so the measurement matches what will be exported. The second pass applies a linear gain correction to hit your target exactly, with the −1 dBTP ceiling, and the result is encoded to MP3 and optional WAV. Linear mode means the dynamics of the model's mix are preserved; the normaliser is not a compressor.

Choosing a target

The Master & export panel offers Club max −6, Club −8 (the default), Festival −10, Streaming −14 and Custom from −20 to −4. The related answers explain why −8 is the default and which to pick for your use.

What LUFS does not fix

Loudness normalisation sets level. It does not change tone, stereo width, or arrangement, and it cannot make a thin mix sound full. It does make every Club Ready Music track in your crate sit at the same level as the next, which is what matters when you are mixing.