Favorite LUFS/True peak meter

[AaronBalakay]

Hey everyone,

What is your absolute favorite LUFS/True peak meter?
Looking to get me one currently. Please share your thoughts and opinions

[Jet Set]

I’m a big fan of MTM Levels - for true peaks and everything else. So easy to use and it’s all there in a glance.

There are more detailed level meters, but this one covers all I need in a very attractive and user friendly package.

[foosnark]

YouLean Loudness Meter.

[heavymetalmixer]

Youlean Loudness Meter inside the DAW, Orban Loudness Meter outside the DAW. Both are free.

[plexuss]

I tried many. I settled on Youlean. If I want a meter that takes up less display real-estate I use Nugen Master Check.

[jochicago]

I own a few including Insights 2 and the ToneBoosters meter, and I prefer the free Youlean meter.

Insights 2 eats up too much CPU. Toneboosters is fine, but I like the presentation and layout on Youlean better.

Also, Hornet makes a nice inexpensive one too.

[fese]

I don’t bother with true peak meters, and LUFS is included in TB barricade wich always is on my master bus, so I’m covered.
Youlean is a nice one, though...

[MogwaiBoy]

Limitless / Pro-L 2

[Milford]

I often use the 32-bit version of Youlean in Audacity when I just want to get a quick measurement of a wav file.
I also use the free Melda one, “MLoudnessAnalyzer” I think it’s called

[plexuss]

I often use the 32-bit version of Youlean in Audacity when I just want to get a quick measurement of a wav file.
I also use the free Melda one, “MLoudnessAnalyzer” I think it’s called

You can drag an audio file onto Youlean which can run as a standalone app. I also use MTM Expose for this as well and to compare multiple files - it also does drag and drop.

[Milford]

I often use the 32-bit version of Youlean in Audacity when I just want to get a quick measurement of a wav file.
I also use the free Melda one, “MLoudnessAnalyzer” I think it’s called

You can drag an audio file onto Youlean which can run as a standalone app. I also use MTM Expose for this as well and to compare multiple files - it also does drag and drop.

Oh, right, I forgot about the Youlean standalone. IIRC, when I first installed it I tried that and could not figure out how to actually open a file in the UI. Drag and drop is not supported in the free version. I’ll go back and try again.

[Halonmusic]

i dont understand LUFS and true peak measurements, but people like Youlean Loudness Meter. I tend to use VU meters only.

[plexuss]

i dont understand LUFS and true peak measurements, but people like Youlean Loudness Meter. I tend to use VU meters only.

Think of it this way: VU is measure of signal amplitude based on the electrical characteristic of the signal; LUFS is a measure of signal amplitude in the way a human ear/brain would percieve it. for example, if you have a 30kHz signal at 1 Volt or say 3dB on some scale, it will measure as such, but to the human it is inaudible - the VU measurement will register a value but LUFS will not because humans can't hear it. That's all. LUFS is a way to measure based on human hearing, not electrical characteristics.

[Halonmusic]

i dont understand LUFS and true peak measurements, but people like Youlean Loudness Meter. I tend to use VU meters only.

Think of it this way: VU is measure of signal amplitude based on the electrical characteristic of the signal; LUFS is a measure of signal amplitude in the way a human ear/brain would percieve it. for example, if you have a 30kHz signal at 1 Volt or say 3dB on some scale, it will measure as such, but to the human it is inaudible - the VU measurement will register a value but LUFS will not because humans can't hear it. That's all. LUFS is a way to measure based on human hearing, not electrical characteristics.

thanks for the explanation. Could i replace my VU meters with Youlean Loudness meter perhaps? I dont mix very loud.

[plexuss]

i dont understand LUFS and true peak measurements, but people like Youlean Loudness Meter. I tend to use VU meters only.

Think of it this way: VU is measure of signal amplitude based on the electrical characteristic of the signal; LUFS is a measure of signal amplitude in the way a human ear/brain would percieve it. for example, if you have a 30kHz signal at 1 Volt or say 3dB on some scale, it will measure as such, but to the human it is inaudible - the VU measurement will register a value but LUFS will not because humans can't hear it. That's all. LUFS is a way to measure based on human hearing, not electrical characteristics.

thanks for the explanation. Could i replace my VU meters with Youlean Loudness meter perhaps? I dont mix very loud.

Yes you could. The idea with LUFS is to meter based on human hearing vs the technical characteristics of the audio. However the technical characteristics are important too, such as clipping. VU was an early way of approximating human hearing in a metering device but of course it's not very accurate for that. Good enough though for most applications.

Anyway, If you use LUFS you'll find it close to VU but it will be more accurately correspond to human hearing. I use an LUFS along with a regular peak meter so I can both monitor percieved loudness and the electrical characteristics. I call this "perceptual metering" vs "technical metering" both of which are important.

The value of LUFS as a primary metering method is that you can better dial in to a particular percieved loudness that will work across a broad range of people.

Another think to know about LUFS is that there are really 3 different measurments based on averaging over time: momentary, short and integrated. These are just essentially averages of the LUFS over time: momentary is averaged over 400 ms, short over 3 sec and integrated is the average over the whole track - these are useful because you can then measure the loudness at that moment (momentary), the loudness over a short segment of time (short) and the average loudness of the whole track. This ties into the way people perceive loudness in general ("its loud right now" vs "that track was loud" etc).

Finally within the context of perceived loudness, now we can also measure things like dynamic range and the over-all dynamics of the track based on human perception. These are measurements like PLR (peak-loudness ratio, a measure of perceived dynamic range) and LU (loudness units, the variance of loudness in the track which can relate to over-all track dynamics).

Measuring perceptually requies a bit of a paradigm shift in one's idea of what is being measured, why and how. But it's very powerful to be able to measure based on human perception vs the technical characteristics because it enables production of tracks that sound better (eg. increasing PLR to increase the perception of audio quality).