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There is no single right number. Spotify, YouTube, Tidal and Amazon Music normalise to about −14 LUFS and Apple Music to about −16 LUFS, so a louder master is simply turned down. Many modern masters sit between −14 and −9 LUFS integrated. Pick the loudness that suits the song, and keep the true peak at −1 dBTP or lower.
Integrated loudness is the average for the whole track, with quiet passages gated out, and it is the number streaming services use. Short-term loudness uses a 3-second window, and momentary uses a 400 ms window, so they show how loudness moves through the song.
LRA, defined in EBU Tech 3342, is the spread between the quieter and louder parts of a track in LU, measured from the 10th to the 95th percentile of short-term loudness. Heavily limited pop is often under 6 LU, while film and classical music can go well over 15 LU.
Peaks can land between samples and go over 0 dB when the file is converted to MP3 or AAC or played back, which causes distortion. This meter oversamples by 4× to measure true peak (dBTP), the way ITU-R BS.1770-4 specifies.
It follows ITU-R BS.1770-4 and EBU R128: K-weighting, 400 ms blocks with 75% overlap, a −70 LUFS absolute gate and a −10 LU relative gate. On EBU test signals and music files, integrated loudness, LRA and true peak match ffmpeg’s ebur128 filter to within 0.1 LU.
No. Decoding and measurement happen in your browser, and your file never leaves your device.