![]() Dynamic range, then and nowīefore the R 128 standard, decades of squeezing music’s dynamic range ended up leaving us very squashed. Streaming platforms have got onboard with this somewhat, with Spotify and YouTube normalising to -14 LUFS, Apple Music to -16 LUFS, and Amazon normalising to between -9 and -13 LUFS. The EBU’s recommendation is for streamed music to aim for a target level of -23 LUFS. To get the actual measurement, the signal is K-weighted with a high-pass filter and a 4dB increase above 1kHz. The Full Scale value (LUFS) measures an absolute loudness and is referenced to 0dBFS. The new system replacing RMS level (for our purposes here), is a system of Loudness Units (LU). If a piece of music has an average loudness above that level, it is to be turned down if below that level, it should be turned up. ![]() This specified a way to measure the perceived loudness of an audio signal, and crucially, a target level for that signal. In 2010, the European Broadcasting Union issued EBU R 128, a recommendation for a system of Loudness Normalisation. ![]() With the Peak level set and unchangeable, the incentives were aligned for engineers to raise the RMS value as loud as they possibly could. There was a definite peak level that a piece of digital music theoretically couldn’t cross: when those 16 bits were full of 1s. In the days of the CD, music was carried with an amplitude range across 16 bits. ![]() During the loudness wars, the highest peak was a set value.
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