Standards

A standard is a named set of checks that decides what "passing" means for a report. Every report — from an upload or from a monitored podcast feed — is judged against one, and the standard used is recorded on the report so editing or replacing it later never changes a report that already exists.

This feature is rolling out gradually. If you don't see the "Standard" picker described below on your account, or the Settings → Standards page, it hasn't reached your workspace yet.

What a standard holds

A standard is a list of checks (loudness, peak level, chapters, and so on — the same checks described in Understanding Reports), and each one is set to:

• Required — decides the report's Passed/Failed verdict
• Informational — runs and is shown, flagged when it's outside its limit, but never fails the report
• Off — doesn't run at all

Most checks also carry limits shaping what "within range" means for that standard — a loudness window in LUFS, a maximum peak level, a minimum number of chapters, and so on. Four checks have no numeric limit to set: cover artwork, metadata completeness, quiet-channel detection and the explicit flag always use the same fixed rule, whichever standard they're in — you can only choose their severity.

Built-in standards

Every workspace can use three read-only standards out of the box:

Standard	Loudness	Peak
Podcast (the default)	-17 to -15 LUFS	at most -1 dBFS
AES speech	-19 to -17 LUFS	at most -1 dBFS
EBU R128	-24 to -22 LUFS	at most -1 dBFS

• Podcast is Audio Audit's own default, close to Apple Podcasts' -16 LUFS loudness target. It's what every show and upload uses until you assign something else.
• AES speech targets speech-led shows, after the recommendation for online audio streaming and on-demand distribution published by the Audio Engineering Society.
• EBU R128 is the European broadcast loudness standard, centred on a -23 LUFS target.

All three peak limits above are checked against sample peak — the loudest individual sample in the file — not true peak (the level the waveform can briefly reach between samples once it's reconstructed for playback, measured by oversampling). A file that just clears -1 dBFS here can still overshoot slightly on playback or once it's re-encoded.

All three built-ins run the same split of checks: bit rate, sample rate, loudness, peak, quiet-channel detection and the explicit flag are Required; channel count, silence at the start/end/middle, noise floor, sample width, profanities, restarted sentences, unwanted noises, chapters, cover image and metadata are Informational. Unwanted words, expected words and RMS loudness are Off in every built-in — they only make sense once you've told them what to look for or which platform you're targeting, so you turn them on in your own standard.

Built-in standards open read-only, with a "Duplicate to customise" option.

Creating your own standard

Settings → Standards lists the built-ins plus any standards your workspace has created. There are two ways to start one:

• Duplicate a built-in. Each built-in standard's row has a "Duplicate" action — this is the only way to start from AES speech or EBU R128's numbers.
• "Add standard", next to the custom standards list. This starts you from the Podcast built-in's checks, severities and limits, ready to edit.

A custom standard you already own has no Duplicate action of its own — if you want another copy of it, duplicate a built-in instead and re-apply your changes on top.

Either way, then:

1. Give it a name
2. For each check, choose Required, Informational or Off, and set its limits
3. Save

For every numeric check you can set a Required, Informational or Off severity and the limit itself — for example, narrowing the loudness window to -18 to -16 LUFS, or moving Profanities from Informational to Required so any swearing fails the report outright.

Changes apply to new reports only. Editing a standard — a limit, a severity, its name — never rewrites the verdict of a report that was already judged against it. Every report freezes a copy of the standard it used at creation, so past results stay exactly as they were.

Creating, duplicating and editing custom standards needs a paid plan. If your workspace is on the Free plan, you'll see a notice pointing to Billing instead of the editor. Assigning a standard (built-in or one your workspace already owns) to a show or upload, and deleting one, work on every plan, Free included. If your workspace is downgraded later, any custom standards you already created keep running and stay assignable — they just become read-only until you upgrade again.

Explicit flag

The explicit flag check (Required in every built-in) is about one specific mismatch: swearing that isn't reflected in your podcast app listing.

• It fails only when the episode contains swearing and the episode isn't marked explicit in your feed's itunes:explicit tag.
• An episode with swearing that is marked explicit passes — that's the flag doing its job.
• An episode with no swearing at all passes regardless of the flag.
• A missing itunes:explicit tag counts as not explicit, the same way podcast apps read it — this check applies to every feed episode, not just ones that carry the tag.
• It's not applicable, and no row is shown, for uploads (no feed to read a flag from) or for feed episodes whose flag Audio Audit hasn't determined yet — episodes ingested before this check shipped, until a poll refreshes them while they're still the feed's newest item. Either way it doesn't count towards the report's total.

The flag is read live, not just at the time of the report. Each time Audio Audit polls your feed, it re-reads the newest episode's itunes:explicit value — for as long as that episode stays the newest item in the feed. So if an episode fails this check, you go and mark it explicit in your hosting platform (Megaphone, Buzzsprout, and so on), and Audio Audit polls the feed again before your next episode goes out, the report turns green on its own — no retry, no extra credits. Once a newer episode is published, the window closes and that episode's flag is no longer refreshed.

Because a report's verdict can change after it completed this way, an email or webhook already sent for it is never re-sent — but reopening the report itself always shows the current, correct verdict.

Every swearing hit in this check's result is timestamped, exactly like the separate Profanities check, so you can click straight through to each occurrence.

Unwanted words and expected words

These are two checks you configure yourself with your own word or phrase lists — both Off in every built-in standard, so you only see them once your own standard turns them on.

Unwanted words fails when any of your listed words or phrases are said — a discontinued slogan, a competitor's name, anything you don't want in the episode. Every occurrence is timestamped so you can jump straight to it.

Expected words is the mirror image: it fails when any listed phrase is never said at all — a sponsor read, a membership pitch, a legal disclaimer. The result shows every phrase you listed, with timestamps for the ones that were found and a clear "not found" for the ones that weren't.

Both checks share the same list limits: up to 50 words or phrases, each up to 50 characters, matched case-insensitively on whole words (so "Ford" won't match inside "afford"). A check you've turned on (Required or Informational) needs at least one word or phrase in its list.

Silences in the middle

Separately from the silence checks at the start and end of an episode, Audio Audit flags any silence inside the body of the episode that's the set length or longer — 3 seconds by default, which is also the shortest limit you can set. It's Informational in every built-in standard, so a long mid-episode silence is shown but doesn't fail the report unless you move it to Required in your own standard.

Assigning standards

A standard has to be assigned somewhere before it judges anything:

• A show — on that show's settings page (see Podcast Details), pick "Workspace default" or a specific standard. Every feed report for that show is judged against it.
• An upload — pick a standard from the picker next to the upload button (see Creating Reports). Leave it on the default and the workspace's default standard applies.
• The workspace default — set from Settings → Standards. Any show or upload left on "Workspace default" follows whatever you set here; leave it unset and Audio Audit's own Podcast standard applies.

Who can do what

Action	Who
Create, edit, duplicate and delete standards; set the workspace default	Workspace Owners and Admins
Choose which standard a show uses	that show's Managers, and Owners/Admins
Choose a standard for an upload	anyone with the "Run reports" workspace permission (see Roles and Permissions)

In a personal workspace, you do all of the above yourself.

Next steps

• Understanding Reports — How the Passed/Failed verdict and the checks themselves are shown on a report
• Creating Reports — Picking a standard for an upload
• Podcast Details — Assigning a standard to a show