Loudness (LUFS)
Damian Moore, Last updated: 15 October 2026
You may have noticed having to turn up the volume to listen to a particular podcast but then have your ears blasted when you receive a phone notification or your player moves onto the next episode in the queue. By adhering to loudness standards you are protecting your listeners’ hearing and ensuring a consistent and pleasant experience. Arguably getting loudness correct is more important for podcasters than say TV producers due to the fact that most people are listening to podcasts with headphones/earbuds and often the volume has to be louder to compensate for noisy environments. Therefore audio that is too quiet can be more damaging than audio that is too high.
So what is the meaning of LUFS and what does it stand for? LUFS (also known as LKFS) stands for “Loudness Units Full Scale” and is a way of measuring average audio levels using the decibel (dB) scale. There have been several mechanisms used to gauge the loudness of an audio track over the years. Just taking the “True Peak” value is not representative and is easily biased, RMS (Root Mean Square) is better as it averages over the time period but is still heavily influenced by things like gaps of silence. The LUFS standard goes a step further and aims to represent loudness in a way that humans perceive it. It has been adopted across TV, film, music, and radio stations over the past two decades.
Apple is the dominant authority when it comes to podcast standards and recommends “-16 dB LKFS [LUFS], with a +/- 1 dB tolerance”. Factoring in the tolerance, our recommended range is -17 to -15 LUFS. This can be considered the “podcast LUFS standard” and a very strong guideline of best practices.
How loud should a podcast be?
Aim for -16 LUFS integrated loudness (between -17 and -15), with true peaks no higher than -1 dBTP. That is Apple Podcasts’ published recommendation, and no other podcast platform publishes a different one. For a mono file, the usual convention is about -19 LUFS, because players send it to both earbuds and it sounds about 3 LU louder than it measures (more on that below).
Specs last checked against the official sources on 15 October 2026.
Podcast loudness specs by platform
Each figure below comes from the platform’s or standards body’s own document. Where a platform publishes nothing for podcasts, the table says so rather than repeating the number that circulates online.
| Platform or standard | Integrated loudness | Tolerance | Peak ceiling | Status | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apple Podcasts | -16 LKFS (LUFS) | ±1 dB | -1 dB true peak | Recommendation | Apple Podcasts audio requirements |
| Spotify (podcasts) | Not published for podcasts | - | - | - | Spotify for Creators |
| Spotify (music, for comparison) | -14 LUFS, applied at playback | - | -1 dBTP (-2 dBTP if mastered louder than -14) | Platform behaviour | Spotify loudness normalization |
| YouTube | No reference level published; “stable volume” is on by default | - | - | - | YouTube Help |
| Amazon Music / Audible podcasts | Not published | - | - | - | - |
| Overcast | -14 LUFS, only when the listener turns on Voice Boost | - | - | Player behaviour | Marco Arment, Voice Boost 2 |
| AES TD1008 (speech streams, including podcasts) | -18 LUFS | Up to +1 LU | -1 dBTP | Recommendation | AES TD1008 v1.21-9 (2021) |
| EBU R 128 (European broadcast) | -23 LUFS | ±1 LU, only where the target isn’t practical (for example live) | -1 dBTP | Required for R 128 compliance | EBU R 128 (2023) |
| EBU R 128 s2 (streaming) | -20 to -16 LUFS (interim range) | - | - | Recommendation | EBU R 128 s2 (2023) |
| ATSC A/85 (US broadcast) | -24 LKFS | About ±2 dB | -2 dBTP | Recommended practice | ATSC A/85 (2026) |
| ACX (Audible audiobooks) | -23 to -18 dB RMS (not LUFS) | The range itself | -3 dB peak; noise floor -60 dB RMS | Requirement | ACX audio submission requirements |
What the table tells you
- Apple’s -16 is the only podcast-specific target any platform publishes. Mastering to -16 LUFS with -1 dBTP peaks puts you inside Apple’s recommendation and AES TD1008’s (-18 plus 1 LU of headroom). A platform or player that normalises louder content turns it down cleanly.
- ”Spotify wants -14 for podcasts” isn’t something Spotify says. Its -14 LUFS page is about music, and its podcast publishing guide only asks for mono or stereo files. The same goes for YouTube and Amazon: the -14 LUFS often quoted for them comes from third-party measurements, not from the platforms.
- Apple’s figures are recommendations, not hard requirements. Apple doesn’t say it rejects episodes outside the range, but listeners to a quiet show will reach for the volume, and the next louder show in their queue will jump out at them. Apple does reject single-channel WAV and FLAC files (send two identical channels instead); mono MP3 is fine.
- Mono at -19 LUFS is a convention, not a platform rule. Apple gives one figure for mono and stereo alike. The -19 comes from how players handle mono: the ITU-R BS.1770 meter measures a mono file as one channel, but most phones and earbuds play it through both channels at full level, so it sounds about 3 LU louder than its reading (Auphonic explains the maths). Podcast engineers have mastered mono 3 LU lower since at least 2015, and Google’s own loudness guide states -16 LUFS stereo / -19 LUFS mono. If your meter has a “dual mono” setting, turn it on and aim for -16 either way.
- Audiobooks use a different measure. ACX checks RMS level, peak and noise floor, not LUFS, so an episode that passes Apple’s loudness can still fail ACX. Our ACX preset targets -19 LUFS, which usually lands inside ACX’s RMS window.
- Broadcast targets are much quieter. EBU R 128’s -23 LUFS and ATSC A/85’s -24 LKFS are for TV and radio. If someone tells you to master a podcast at -23 or -24 LUFS, they’re quoting a broadcast standard.
Other media, for comparison
Common targets outside podcasting, as typically used. These aren’t all published by the services, so treat them as rules of thumb:
| Medium | Typical target |
|---|---|
| Music streaming (Spotify, YouTube Music, Tidal) | -14 LUFS |
| Apple Music (Sound Check) | -16 LUFS |
| Netflix (dialogue-gated) | -27 LKFS |
| Loud commercial CD masters | Around -9 LUFS |
Why so much variation? TV standards mainly cap loudness so adverts can’t blast out louder than the programme they interrupt, and film and TV leave more headroom for dynamics such as explosions. Music streaming normalises everything to one level so that tracks from different albums sit together. Podcasts are mostly speech, listened to on earbuds in noisy places, which is why the podcast target sits nearer music than broadcast.
You may also hear of Integrated, Short-term and Momentary LUFS, which measure over different time windows. Where nothing else is specified, LUFS means Integrated: the measure across the whole episode, and the one every target above refers to.
How Audio Audit judges loudness
Our loudness check measures the integrated LUFS of your episode and judges it against your report’s standard. There are three built-in standards:
- Podcast (the default): -17 to -15 LUFS
- AES speech: -19 to -17 LUFS
- EBU R128: -24 to -22 LUFS
If your show targets something else, you can create a custom standard and set your own loudness window (custom standards work on every plan). See Standards for how to set one up. Loudness goes hand in hand with peak level, which we cover in Peak volume. If you want to measure LUFS yourself while editing, we’ve rounded up some free LUFS meters.
Mastering for a LUFS target
Most DAW software has a filter to alter volume to a chosen LUFS target or the option to process it during MP3 file export. We’ll show you how to make this adjustment using the most popular tools. If your tool isn’t listed here and you know it supports this feature, please let us know so we can add it. If you’d rather not do it in your editor at all, see “Normalising with Audio Audit” at the end of this page.
Audacity
LUFS Loudness Normalisation is a relatively recent effect added to Audacity in June 2020 so you may need to upgrade if you have an old version. You’ll need version 2.4.1 or above to use it. The Audacity LUFS feature can be used as follows…
First select your track(s) then from the top menu choose “Effects” and then “Loudness Normalization”. A dialogue will appear. Select “perceived loudness” from the dropdown options and enter “-16” as the LUFS value for podcasts.
You can read more in Audacity’s own documentation for the feature.
Logic Pro
- Sound Advice — Normalising in Logic Pro X
- Mikael Baggström — Normalize Audio Clips in Logic Pro X (Tutorial)
Pro Tools
Reaper
Adobe Audition
DaVinci Resolve
Normalising with Audio Audit
If a report shows your loudness is off target, you can fix it without opening your editor. Audio enhancements include volume normalisation, which works in two passes: the first measures your episode’s integrated loudness and true peak using the ITU-R BS.1770 loudness model (the basis of EBU R128), and the second applies a single, constant gain change to hit the target. Because the gain is constant, your dynamics are left untouched; only the overall level changes.
The default Podcast preset targets -16 LUFS with a safety limiter at -1 dBTP true peak, which only catches the occasional stray peak. For mono files it targets -19 LUFS instead: AES TD1008 notes that mono content played on two channels measures about 3 LU louder, so -19 LUFS mono sounds as loud as -16 LUFS stereo. There are also presets for YouTube (-14 LUFS) and ACX audiobooks (-19 LUFS), or you can set your own target and true-peak ceiling.
If your levels are uneven across the episode, compression is a separate enhancement tuned for speech. It evens out loud and quiet passages before normalisation sets the final loudness. Full details are in the Enhancing audio guide.
Header photo: Jonathan Taylor
