Forget the broadcast police. No rules means no rules. You're not making TV commercials. You're making music that hits people in the chest. The only rule: don't actually clip into true digital distortion. Everything else is fair game. Push the faders. Slam the bus. Make it loud, make it proud.
Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube — they all normalize now. The streaming platforms leveled the playing field. A track mastered at -14 LUFS gets turned UP to match. But that doesn't mean you have to be quiet. We target -6 LUFS-M — loud, punchy, competitive with radio, but never crossing into the +dB digital destruction zone.
-6 LUFS Momentary is the sweet spot where your mix competes with radio without sacrificing dynamics. Radio mixes push right to the edge of 0 dBFS true peak. We do the same — maximize perceived loudness, keep True Peak under 0 dBTP, and let the transients breathe just enough to retain punch and clarity.
Uses the ITU-R BS.1770-4 / EBU R128 algorithm: two-stage K-weighting filter (high-shelf pre-filter + high-pass), mean-square power measurement, gated integration. LUFS-M = 400ms window. LUFS-S = 3s window. LUFS-I = full program with absolute gate (-70 LUFS) and relative gate (-10 LU). True Peak = 4x oversampled inter-sample peak detection.