Youlean Loudness Meter 2 - V2.5.10 - November 10, 2024 update

[bmanic]

DUDE!!! Julijan!! Man you just utterly KILLED the competition.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but he did not. He would be, if he'd came up with these features in v1 already, and made them free or sub 50USD without any price hiccups or day-1 announcements yet again that "prices go even higher up". At this stage, the dev is running after(!) the competition.

For free, this is definitely unbeatable. No argument about that.

But sorry to say this... ToneBoosters offered his EBU Loudness tool with a near identical v1.9.x feature set (sans resizing and custom settings) for 30EUR already years ago (price didn't change throughout the years, and was never wonky either), and NugenAudio are the forerunners in this field (always with the finger on the pulse of time) that can't be beat.

But hey... "Instant purchase" to some!

Well you ain't bursting my bubble as we obviously have very different views on the thing. I can not stand the TB EBU plugin _at all_. I literally have trouble reading it's displayed information. Basically purely visually it is unusable for me at the moment.

As for NugenAudio, I just don't grok with their products either. To be fair I haven't tried their demos in years but since their inception, the interfaces have always been super clunky and weird behaving. Maybe that's changed? No idea..

Purely aesthetically and visually pleasing and easy to read what I need, Youleans plugin is vastly superior to anythin else I have here. I don't even really need the Pro features but I'm happy to pay for it as the plugin just clicks with me.

Yeah, the webshop thing he uses is abysmal and absolutely horrible. Hopefully he can change that.

[bmanic]

That's strange, looks like the payment system works differently depending on a country ip. I had a VAT id field as the first thing. Mind you I payed with my cc. At least you can deduct VAT right away. AVID or Propellerhead is a different story. At AVID you have to email them your VAT no. and ask for a refund (probably because they are indie startup company and can't afford to implement it), and Propellerhead support simply told me that they don't do BtoB transactions in their webshop - hence no option to buy exVAT. Sorry for OT.

You are right, the VAT id field is actually there if you select the credit card option.. but only available afterwards if you pay with paypall.

[Compyfox]

Well you ain't bursting my bubble as we obviously have very different views on the thing. I can not stand the TB EBU plugin _at all_. I literally have trouble reading it's displayed information. Basically purely visually it is unusable for me at the moment.

Keep in mind, the design of TB EBU Loudness is an old one and didn't see an update in quite a while, also no resizing. But back in the day, it was the forerunner for affordable ITU-R type metering.

As for NugenAudio, I just don't grok with their products either. To be fair I haven't tried their demos in years but since their inception, the interfaces have always been super clunky and weird behaving. Maybe that's changed? No idea..

Yes, the UI is clunky - but I can't confirm weird behavior.

Yeah, the webshop thing he uses is abysmal and absolutely horrible. Hopefully he can change that.

I don't think this will happen prior to the deal running out.

[Youlean]

Seems like it might be a rival to Ian’s plugin with the paid feature? Any thoughts?

It indeed it is.

[Youlean]

Is it possible to save custom presets?

It is not possible to do that.

[Youlean]

Cute easter egg.

youllybird.png

Hahahaha, you found it!

[plexuss]

Seems like it might be a rival to Ian’s plugin with the paid feature? Any thoughts?

It indeed it is.

Ya. I didn't buy his. way too expensive. I mean, $ / increased quality of work just wasn't there for me. But your's is and so I bought it immediately. I really want a plugin that does all the metering I need. and the YLM2 is the closest so far.

Still missing: ISP meter including "ISP density" (number of estimated ISP's per given time) including selection of different encodings. so like an ISP Density for uncompressed, and a couple different codec choices. sort of like what Nugen does but with density not just when they occur. I need to know how many ISPs might be genereated to make decisions about how to adjust loudness etc. the more of the risk the more I might make a comprimise. also if a specific section of audio has more ISP risk I may opt to fix that area. just know that they occur (like a clip indicator) is not enough to make any decision about it. the only plugin I know that does this is apple's roundtripacc tool. having this in a loudness plugin would give so much more to an engineer in terms of getting the best audio quality.

[midi_transmission]

Just tried the free version. The history is a little bit choppy. Nothing that's not usable, it would be a lot nicer when the animation could be smoother. I also get a bit flicker when zoomed out very much with the true peak lines, seems like the already finished line drawing is moving a bit and therefore flicker.

No real problem, but a enhancement would be really welcome in this area.

[Youlean]

OK, there are so many replies so I will have to go it one by one in one major reply. Sorry about not replying any sooner, I was extremely busy, and for some reason, I did not get any email notification for a new reply here.

Just bought it. It's great!

Just an idea which came up. As the PLR graph displays the ratio smaller when there is less dynamic range, would it be possible to invert the graph, so that it gets broader when there's less DR?
Maybe also I just need to get used to it

Another thing which I found, that due to missing numbers on the meter display it is not possible to do exact readings. Is it intended to not display values in the important range? Only when I set the target loudness it displays this number, but I'd be happier if all steps would be there, maybe even half steps.

Thanks for the fine meter

That would be hard to implement actually.
Regarding the scale, It might be possible to fill the gaps, but it might be a bit cluttered.
BTW, I know that I replied to your email. I hope I gave you the same answer here too.

Ok, it's been sitting on my master bus in ProTools Ultimate 2018.7 for last two days. First of all, this is a gem!!! Guys, if you can afford to spend $27 for the Pro version, please do it. Youlean deserves it.

I already have several options - WLS, TC Electronics, Insight. I always wanted Nugen, but couldn't justify its $400 price tag, although I work in post. This is it!!! Most importantly, it is accurate, dynamics and timeline view are perfect, 5.1 support, and it really feels like stealing for the price:-). I have a few minor gripes but let me stress "minor" word - right of the bat I had to tick eco true peak and adv. optimalization options, otherwise the session was stuttering, stopping, processor overloading, but since then it's been a smooth ride (2013 6core mac pro, 10.12.6, 64 GB RAM).

I would appreciate the ability to customize color of the upper and lower stripe, when you have the plugin open for a whole day, that white becomes rather painful. A shade of grey would be much easier on the eye. Also I'm missing R128 Short Program preset, but I can easily make my own. Also a built-in TP limiter along with some other features would be great, but then again I'm sure the developer couldn't keep the plugin so affordable

Overall, stellar work it is already and I believe it will only get better

Thanks for your support!
That is strange for true peak. Are you using the time code histogram?
Dark mode is coming in some of the future update. I might take a look at R128 Short Program.

DUDE!!! Julijan!! Man you just utterly KILLED the competition. Loudness Meter V2 is incredible!

Well done mate!!

Thanks!

When is the intro offer ending?

Intro is ending in Synday, September 16th

Occasionally I get this gui glitch in Pro Tools after switching histogram to mini view.

This is a known bug and I still have not found the solution for it. It will go away when you move the plugin.

Bought the Pro version, excellent stuff!

One minor suggestion though: the four top icons (the View, Register, Export and Settings icons) are all different sizes, which doesn't look too good. Maybe you can try to resize them so they're are perfectly aligned, size/proportion wise?

Really, I like it as it is. I actually tried to make it look the same size but it ended up looking even worse. Maybe because icon widths are not the same.

Youlean doesn't really frequent this thread too much, i think he prefers to use his FB group/page/whatever as the main discussion area. Which is kind of ironic, considering the history.

The free version is surely a no-brainer though, isn't it?

Not really. The fact is that I am really busy and I have not recevied the emails from KVR about new replies.

The payment portal thing is definitely iffy and very strange. As I'm a VAT registered company I searched very long for where to enter my VAT id to get it taken away.. this is possible only AFTER I come back from the paypal portal. Very confusing and extremely unintuitive.. not to mention that this information was nowhere to be found.

Things like these should be super simple and immediately obvious. VAT should be very clearly stated always (if a price includes it or not) and the possibility of entering a valid VAT id should be always on the first payment page.. not after the actual payment.

Thanks for the suggestions. I will deffinatelly look at improving the payment process.

Bought- price came to $50 NZD, which is 28 Euro. Not sure if I paid extra VAT or not. I thought people outside the EU were exempt from paying VAT.

Yes, you paid ~24 Euro + ~4 of VAT.
Unfortunately, many countries are now starting to use VAT. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_c ... _tax_rates

[Youlean]

Seems like it might be a rival to Ian’s plugin with the paid feature? Any thoughts?

It indeed it is.

Ya. I didn't buy his. way too expensive. I mean, $ / increased quality of work just wasn't there for me. But your's is and so I bought it immediately. I really want a plugin that does all the metering I need. and the YLM2 is the closest so far.

Still missing: ISP meter including "ISP density" (number of estimated ISP's per given time) including selection of different encodings. so like an ISP Density for uncompressed, and a couple different codec choices. sort of like what Nugen does but with density not just when they occur. I need to know how many ISPs might be genereated to make decisions about how to adjust loudness etc. the more of the risk the more I might make a comprimise. also if a specific section of audio has more ISP risk I may opt to fix that area. just know that they occur (like a clip indicator) is not enough to make any decision about it. the only plugin I know that does this is apple's roundtripacc tool. having this in a loudness plugin would give so much more to an engineer in terms of getting the best audio quality.

Thanks for the support!

ISP density is a quite nice feature, but it will be hard to implement and I am not sure how much it will be usefull.

[Youlean]

Just tried the free version. The history is a little bit choppy. Nothing that's not usable, it would be a lot nicer when the animation could be smoother. I also get a bit flicker when zoomed out very much with the true peak lines, seems like the already finished line drawing is moving a bit and therefore flicker.

No real problem, but a enhancement would be really welcome in this area.

History will change it's refresh rate depending on window size. This is because it would be very hard to draw long graphs smoothly.

Can you share any screenshots or video for that flicker issue?

[Youlean]

I would like to address the shop issue.

First, yes, the ~33 EUR price was some misconfiguration when their stuff switched some options for me. It seems that the price has gone 3 EUR higher than it should be. i.e. the price was set at 27 EUR + VAT.

This was reported by user recently I have fixed that. I want to apologize to everyone that had that problem, and everyone that had bought the plugin will get the 3 EUR refund in the next couple of days.

As for shop, I had to start with something. I don't like it either and I will definitely try to improve it.

What changes would you suggest for the shop? I was thinking should I switch the shop on USD only? But if I do that, you might be charged big conversion rate.

Also, I guess I will need to write that this price is the without VAT.

Sorry for the troubles.

[lumcas]

Whoa, what an outburst of answers:-)

Thanks for your support!
That is strange for true peak. Are you using the time code histogram?
Dark mode is coming in some of the future update. I might take a look at R128 Short Program.

Yes, I'm using a time code histogram, but it's not a serious issue, your meter is still more accurate regarding true peak level than WLM, even in the eco TP mode:-)

[plexuss]

Seems like it might be a rival to Ian’s plugin with the paid feature? Any thoughts?

It indeed it is.

[snip...]
Still missing: ISP meter including "ISP density"

Thanks for the support!

ISP density is a quite nice feature, but it will be hard to implement and I am not sure how much it will be usefull.

Alright...

Why bother metering loudness? Because it helps to manage sound quality: LUFS vs PLR. You want to get a suitable LUFS while not impacting PLR to the point where sound quality is comprimised.

So who cares about ISPs? The issue is that if you master so peaks hit 0dBFS or your ceiling slighyly lower, and you've pumped up your LUFS to get to a target loudness, there is a risk that both compression CODECs and DACs will throw peaks that are over 0dBFS and hence clip. So as part of a holistic loudness metering workflow one should also inspect the risk of ISPs because most music is streamed through a CODEC and all music must go through a DAC, both with can cause ISPs. ISPs, being pure clipping, cause wide-band distortion. If you get an ISP here and there sporadically, it's usually not a concern. However it is possible to get a lot ISPs occuring in a short period of time but over a period where distoriton becomes audible.

By having a meter that shows ISP prediciton and shows how many ISPs over time (ISP density) you can better gauge if your LUFS and PLR targets are risky in this regard and adjust accordingly.

ISP metering and ISP density are as critical as LUFS and PLR.

[mutantdog]

It would be handy to have some sort of way of distinguishing the relative magnitude of true-peak detections. Currently there is no visible difference between peaks 0.1dB above the chosen threshold and those that are, say, 1.0dB above. It would be good to have some sort sort of colour gradient so that the most excessive peaks are easily identified from the minor ones.

Another request would be some kind of internal snapshot saving feature where i could easily compare between multiple different mixes/masters. Perhaps as a switch between A/B or as an underlay behind the current display. This would certainly be handy for seeing how a loud master and a dynamic master would differ from each other when gain matched.

I'll also repeat my previous request for at least one visual iteration between 1 and 2 hour so i don't have to zoom out so far to view a 65 minute project.