8 May 2026 | 6 min read
What is LUFS, and why your mix gets turned down after upload
Your meters said minus one. The platform still turned you down by six. That gap is LUFS, and it decides how your work actually sounds to an audience.
LUFS stands for Loudness Units relative to Full Scale. It is a measure of how loud audio feels to a human ear over time, standardised in ITU-R BS.1770 and adopted by EBU R128. A peak meter tells you the tallest sample. LUFS tells you the impression the whole programme leaves.
Why peak level is not loudness
Two files can both peak at minus one dBFS and be wildly different in perceived level. A sparse dialogue scene sits far below a wall of compressed music with the same peak. LUFS weights frequencies the way hearing does and integrates across time, so it tracks the difference peaks miss.
The three measurements you will see
- Integrated: the average across the whole programme. This is the number platforms normalise to.
- Short term: a three second window, useful while mixing a scene.
- Momentary: a 400 millisecond window, closer to a traditional level meter.
- LRA: loudness range, how far the quiet and loud parts sit apart.
Targets worth memorising
- YouTube and most streaming video: around minus 14 LUFS integrated.
- Podcasts and spoken word: minus 16 LUFS for stereo, minus 19 for mono distribution.
- European broadcast, EBU R128: minus 23 LUFS with a true peak ceiling of minus 1 dBTP.
- Cinema: not normalised at all, mixed to reference monitoring level instead.
Hitting a target without ruining the mix
Mix first, measure second. Get the balance right, then move the whole programme up or down to land on target. If your integrated level is far below target and raising it clips, the problem is dynamic range, not gain. Ride dialogue, control the loudest music hits, and only then normalise.
Practical first step: get every source at a sane level before the mix. The level controls in the tools here let you trim each track by ear and by number, so nothing arrives at the mix ten dB out.