What −14 LUFS means, and why Spotify turns loud songs down

Loudness is the second specialist word Orbit Waves teaches, after stems. It is worth thirty seconds, because it decides how your song sounds next to everybody else's.

LUFS in one paragraph

LUFS stands for Loudness Units relative to Full Scale. It is a measurement of how loud a song sounds to a person, averaged over the whole song, weighted the way ears hear (we are more sensitive to the mids than to deep bass). −14 LUFS is louder than −16 and quieter than −9. One LU is one decibel of loudness.

Why the services normalise

Streaming services do not want listeners grabbing the volume knob between songs. So they measure each song and turn it to a common level. That means making a master louder than the service's level does not make it louder for listeners. It makes it quieter, with the dynamics already squashed.

• Spotify: about −14 LUFS by default
• YouTube: about −14 LUFS
• Apple Music (Sound Check): about −16 LUFS

True peak and the −1 dB ceiling

Loudness is the average. Peak is the single loudest instant. When a service turns your WAV into a compressed stream, peaks can overshoot and crackle. Keeping the loudest true peak at −1 dB leaves room for that conversion. Orbit Waves always holds the ceiling at −1 dB, whatever loudness you choose.

Which target should you pick?

For streaming, −14 LUFS is the safe default and what Make it sound finished sets. Choose −16 if the song is quiet and acoustic and you want it to breathe, or Apple Music is where it lives. Choose louder only for club or DJ use, where nobody normalises. In Orbit Waves, Check loudness measures the current mix and reports the LUFS and the loudest peak.