How To Use YouLean Loudness Meter

[@oldguysplaymetal5517]

Youlean has been the most accurate in terms of determining the true peak level when mastering. As long as you don't go over zero, it won't distort in streaming. With that said, I always try to preserve a -0.3 to -0.4 dB margin of error, at least at the very loudest part of the song, and this plug in definitely helps me do that.

[@dawsonkamenz]

100% agree. Youlean makes it really clear what's actually happening with your audio and goes further than a regular dB meter. When I first learned about LUs and Youlean I was blown away haha. Thanks for checking out the video, take care.

[@doperscrew]

is having a -0.1 to -0.2 also good? im new to using this loudness meter and on all my tracks, i have around that value

[@oldguysplaymetal5517]

@@doperscrew well, YouLean isn't necessarily perfect, so if you are hitting -0.1dB, its possible you would also have some inter-sample peaks that are over zero. I just try to be in the habit of an integrated LUFS that sounds good, not shooting always for a certain absolute, and then making sure the limiting done at mastering keeps the peak level under -0.3 or so. Has worked very well for me thus far.

[@doperscrew]

@@oldguysplaymetal5517 oh okay, thanks!

[@chukarec]

THANK YOU SO MUCH BROTHER! I ALREADY HAD A IMPLE IDEA ON HOW TO USE YOULEAN BUT YOU MADE MY DAY WITH ALL OF THIS

[@dawsonkamenz]

Wow thank you my friend. Would you be able to send this video to some other musicians? It would help the channel greatly. Take care!

[@chukarec]

@@dawsonkamenz unfortunately, all the musicians i know dont speak english nor understand english nor are interested in mastering :( im a music producer and im getting into the master stage of an album im producing for some clients and this video gave much confidence on how i want the album to sound like, although, you earn a subscriber :) you content is really good and helpful, it just hasnt exploted yet!

[@dawsonkamenz]

Forgot to reply, all good, thank you again so much. Hope the album mastering goes well man! @@chukarec

[@dzmo-official]

Fantastic walkthrough and explanations. tysm, man

[@dawsonkamenz]

i'm so glad it was helpful for you. all the best!

[@CemeterySoulsMusic]

The best thing BY FAR that I've gotten out of this, besides the excellent things that you've shown, is turning off short term and momentary graphs to get the true peak graph to show. That was a GAME CHANGER for me for setting levels. I was going by the metering in Studio One and setting it for my kick at -6 for where it showed on the mixer. However, YouLean showed me that that was NOT the case at all. By using the true peak graph in YLLM, I can easily set my rough mix levels to what I want and then use the faders to tweek afterwards.

[@dawsonkamenz]

hahaha yes! sometimes audio levels are deceiving... having youlean really clears things up. i'm so glad youlean is helpful for you as a producer! love it! thanks for watching by the way!

[@ChuckSilva]

This is the best 'how to YouLean Meter' I've found---nice and to the point-THANK YOU Dawson!

[@dawsonkamenz]

wow thank you so much! glad it was informative

[@Tintin___]

which meter should i look to know how loud is my track? is it Integrated or some other?

[@TheCelestineProph]

Awesome presentation. Thanks for sharing. Cheers mate!!

[@dawsonkamenz]

Thank you sir have an amazing day!

[@michaelfarrow4648]

Excellent presentation, Dawson. 🙌 I love this meter and used the free version for a while. But I think it is so useful, I paid for the pro version -- support great ideas!

[@dawsonkamenz]

wow thank you! yes i can understand getting the upgrade... one of those plugins that's really worth it.

[@waynecsmith5145]

Excellent presentation

[@dawsonkamenz]

Hey man thank you my friend 🤩

[@333Rick66]

Great video and you have a good vibe in the way you present the material. I just subscribed to your channel. Btw, LUFS stands for Loudness Units Relative to Full Scale, (not Loudness Units Full Stop", lol).

[@dawsonkamenz]

haha thanks man. u rock. thanks for the sub!

[@Mr.facts-88]

such a beautiful explanation thanks a lot

[@dawsonkamenz]

hey thank you so much!

[@smonomono4194]

Bro thanks! Wish your channel the best success!

[@dawsonkamenz]

aw man thanks!

[@razkli]

I can't quite seem to figure out why my song keeps having higher LUF level and lower True Peak Max. For example, the song I've been working on has an average of -6.2 True Peak Max and an average of -9.4 Integrated LUFS. Which the True Peak Max would be quite lower than you said is a good level and the Integrated LUFS would be quite a bit higher than what you said is good.

[@razkli]

I've seen that a good range for Integrated LUFS should be around -12 to -14 Integrated LUFS. So mine is higher, but the True Peak is quite a ways from the targeted -1dBTP. Unsure if this is still okay, or if something needs to change in the way I'm compressing/limiting the master (I use Ozone to do the final master, but I'm not a pro at mastering).

[@razkli]

What I assume is my song is very compressed, resulting in the lower TP yet loud resulting in higher LUFS? When I play it on other speakers, the master doesn't seem that loud though (to be higher LUF range than recommended).

[@vinylmastersgr1036]

​​@@razkliTrue Peak good is to be at 0. It depends on genre. Many newer greek laiko songs have True Peak over+2 and loudness -7LUFS and distort awfully.

[@JamesWarrenWatts]

Thanks for this video tutorial Dawson. I am getting only -19.6 integrated LUFS if I stay under -1.0 True Peak Max. How do I get my final mix to a higher Integrated LUFS without clipping, going above -1.0 True Peak Max?

[@dawsonkamenz]

Hey thank you for watching! If you want to bring your LUFS higher, like to -16 or -14 while still remaining under -1 true peak, you'll want to use a limiter which will limit and lower the peaks of your audio, in turn you'll have more 'headroom' which will allow you to increase overall loudness of your audio without passing your true peak of -1 dBs. Furthermore, you could use a compressor to reduce the dyamic range of your audio, again giving you more 'headroom.' This is a really short answer to a big question... But it will give you some direction. Use limiters, compression, and get more headroom. I have a tutorial on a free compressor on my channel called Kotelnikov.

[@nixe_music]

amazing video, thanks

[@dawsonkamenz]

i got you

[@ItsWesSmithYo]

cool, FYI the big electronic producers blow the True Peak by 1 to 2 dB on most any track I have analyzed using the PRO version w/drag and drop function.

[@dawsonkamenz]

i see. they're bReAKiInG the RuLe!Sz!

[@ItsWesSmithYo]

@@dawsonkamenz it’s all TrUe

[@lee_the_underground_producer]

So will this help eliminate artifacts and these platforms like Facebook and Instagram youtube nasty background noise and low volume and its compression?

[@dawsonkamenz]

ah hopefully this answers your question. if you get your master up to proper loudness (social media is usually -14 LUFS -0.1 dBs true peak) then the platforms won't have to increase or decrease the loudness of your audio. if they DO have to adjust the audio for their loudness standards, yes it can ruin the way your audio sounds and the final result will not be how you originally designed the audio. background noise, i think that will have to do more with your recording equip and processing.

[@lee_the_underground_producer]

​@@dawsonkamenzI struggled with this for years thanks. Put this to use later on. Going to do some testing. Thanks bro

[@dawsonkamenz]

@@lee_the_underground_producerhopefully it helps man and don't hesitate to get back in touch 🤩 all the best!

[@woutvalcke]

Very helpful video! Thanks man!

[@dawsonkamenz]

Glad it was helpful man thanks for watching!

[@sequoiaproductions5684]

Changing the channel configuration and select the available surround sound preset will increase the loudness. This is what i noticed after changing from stereo to Dolby surround sound.

[@dawsonkamenz]

thank you for this interesting comment... you've given me some stuff to research/study!

[@blagxku]

thanks for the explanation

[@dawsonkamenz]

you are absolutely welcome!

[@kaliyuga6613]

Very useful - thanks.

[@dawsonkamenz]

amazing :) thank you!

[@tayzonday]

Why is it that when I put major label pop music (like Dua Lipa - Levitating) through this . . . using MP3s downloaded from Amazon music as master references . . . it is majorly violating Spotify's loudness recommendation? Dua Lipa - Levitating comes in at -5.9 average LUFS and +0.9DB true peak max . . . so it's clear that massively successful tracks are ignoring these guidelines completely and cheating in the "loudness wars."

[@dawsonkamenz]

the short answer... some people just don't care, and loudness levels probably is not as important as it's often made out to be

[@dawsonkamenz]

my idea about this concept is that a great song with production that 'breaks the rules' will always outperform a bad song with production that 'follows the rules'

[@tashmusicc]

Thanks man, this was very helpful :)

[@dawsonkamenz]

hey thanks T. glad it was helpful!

[@DanielBarro-x3l]

but the question is what tool should help us lower those red peaks

[@dawsonkamenz]

Ah, if you're peaking you might want to implement a limiter, clipper or compressor with a high ratio. The red peaks on the loudness meter though don't necessarily denote peaking on your speakers... At the end of the day, a true peak higher than 0.0 dBs is gonna need some limiting/clipping though.

[@dawsonkamenz]

I hope I got to the point of your question!

[@sn8si]

Great video! Would you say that -1.0db True Peak is a safe standard to go for, for most tracks? I know how to use Limiters but I don't know how to use Clippers, so I mostly control audio levels by manually mixing directly in the mixer for each individual channel/track.

[@dawsonkamenz]

hey thanks fam! to me, -1.0dBs true peak is safe generally/overall. i typically have that as the max true peak on any project i'm working on, but i know some people will push that further to -0.3dBs or -0.1dBs. The thing about the true peak and measuring dBs, is it safeguards your audio from demanding more from the speakers than they can give. The goal of that is really to prevent crackling/distortion. If you don't hear any distortion, then that's what really matters haha. Hope that kinda gets to your question. Thanks for the support fam

[@sn8si]

@@dawsonkamenz Awesome thank you

[@SouthStreet24Media]

Thanks bro.

[@dawsonkamenz]

thanks for watching fam

[@raised-in-thailand]

I was actually looking for something where you dont have to listen through the whole track to determine the LUFS integrated. Im using the internal multimeter in Final cut pro, but I cannot see that this is better in terms of not having to spend so much time getting the levels right. Sometimes I spend more time on adjusting sound levels (master) than the whole edit. It seems like our technology should have come far enough for us not to sit and jerk around with this. I find these measurments to be highly inacurate. Sometimes I upload my track to youtube just to check that I come in right. If I see between -0-1 and -1.0 I just use it. If not I try again and upload again. If KZbin can determine this after a quick analysis, so should we be able to without having to adjust the sound when you reach 17 min of an 18 min track, just to have to do it over again. Are you supposed to listen to your entire track 5-10 times just to get the right level? Once I made a video with Da Vinci and they had a way better solution for this, so it does exist.

[@dawsonkamenz]

that sounds like so much work. i found the same issue, where i wouldn't really know the true levels until i played through the whole song, and it takes a lot of time collectively. i would cheat sometimes and just play the loudest part of the track to check levels. i do know the pro version of this plugin would give you the ability to drag and deop your audio and get data from that. obviously double check though before spending money! the youlean website is really good and informative.

[@dawsonkamenz]

i will mention that there is increasingly more softwares which will export at a specified loudness level. FL studio for sure has this, you can master your tracks in FL studio and set the loudness. Even Adobe Media Encoder can export at a specified loudness. If you're really concerned about the peaking, you could rely on those tools. If you're more concerned about the feel of the master, yes doing it by hand or by yourself is probably best. Although, I feel that stressing so much about a tiny loudness difference is a bit counterproductive... depends on what you're working on obviously... but i try personally not to worry too much about the small details

[@billmakatowicz8603]

@@dawsonkamenz Indeed. Good point! Thanks for that.

[@lewiswilliams2522]

Thanks for the info and tips. Great video. Must say I'm a bit disappointed in that RODE Clip-on

[@dawsonkamenz]

haha i am so glad it was helpful for you! the mic is better than it seems... some user error, ironically, the levels were not set very well lol (while i'm trying to teach loudness haha)

[@kimbapx]

Hi Dawson! So, the example track you've shared seems to go between 12-15 LUFS integrated. However, when you showed the graph to left showing the LUFS level that the majority of your song sits at. Is this normal? Is the goal still to just reach -14 LUFS when trying to upload to KZbin or Spotify? Also, you shared that I may have to clip the peaks of certain elements of the song to make sure that the true peaks do not go over -1 dB. If it causes distortion, what are some ways I can do so without causing distortion?

[@dawsonkamenz]

To answer your first question, if your goal is -14 LUFS, ideally you want as much of your audio to hit that level, but there will most likely be short moments where it goes above or below. That's okay. Generally, a range of plus or minus 2 LUFS is fine. But keep in mind that if more of your audio is reaching above that -14 LUFS level, it will have to be lowered by Spotify or KZbin or whatever platform you're uploading to. That can change the character of your audio that you took time to craft. All in all, try to keep it within plus or minus 2 LUFS of your -14 LUFS goal, and aim for MOST of the audio to be reaching your -14 LUFS goal. To answer the distortion when clipping, you will find that if you limit or clip audio a lot at once, let's say you limit audio by 8 dBs, you're more likely to distort the sound. If you limit a little bit, i.e., one or two dBs, then compress a little bit, limit a bit more and so on, you'll find that each limiter or compressor is not having to work so hard, they're all 'teaming up' to bring the audio down to a desired dB level, resulting in less distortion. Of course, the quality of your limiter and compressor will come into play, and they all will alter the character of your audio in more or less subtle ways, depending on their quality.

[@Dj10thPower]

What about for a mix down? Can it be used for that instead waiting until you get to the master? What levels would you set for a mix? Specifically hip hop and r&b music

[@dawsonkamenz]

Yes it could be used for a mixdown before getting to the master stage. I think the most important thing for a mix though is the amount of headroom you have. I don't believe getting an exact loudness level in a mix is that important, from what I know at least. Personally I like my mixes to be hitting around -12 to -6 dbs, regardless of genre. As far as loudness goes, I only worry about it once I'm mastering a beat. If you send your mixdowns to a mastering engineer, it's best to just leave a good amount of headroom so they have room to play around with in terms of loudness. Does that answer your question? Hope that helps.

[@Dj10thPower]

@dawsonkamenz yes that answers my question. Thank you so much for your reply.

[@oleholstarnet]

Why doesn't my limiter change the loudness shown on the YouLean Meter?

[@dawsonkamenz]

uhm... could be that your limiter is after your loudness meter on your fx chain. make sure youlean is last because it will reflect the changes of everything before it

[@dawsonkamenz]

hope that helps man let me know if it's still not working!

[@shanehen]

Isn't it Loudness Units Full Scale?

[@dawsonkamenz]

it's both 🤷🏻‍♂️

[@SinfidelityMusic]

So u went into great detail of the interface but then completely skipped how to actually get audio into it?!?! I tried opening a file and also dragging a wav in bit got the message only for pro users. wtf. How do I use this stupid thing ?

[@dawsonkamenz]

hahaha sorry dude. it doesn't affect audio just reads it. put it at the end of your mastering chain, everything you put before it will affect the plugins data.

[@TortugaBossa]

😂bro

[@beatsbydamnboy3661]

😂😂very naive

[@MorreskiBear]

I had the same questions, and was saddened to see how others "answered" you. Did you get it working? I thought it would initially just "listen" to my computer's audio output, but I had to jump through hoops to make it work. I managed to get my very old Sony Movie Studio Platinum 12 to acknowledge the plug in, after which I able to add it to my "master" audio track and finally monitor the audio output.

[@mexxitamusic]

Be patient with the 94 year old lady

[@PitchWheel]

I came here to understand how to to use this fantastic plugin and all I had is a list of definitions, all my doubts of non-professional passionate remain: what's the best lufs? what's the lufs range i want through the piece? what are pro and cons of different loudness ranges? how true peak affects loudness? what's real time dynamics? what's plr? I understand that this may go beyond the scope of this video, but to know what this video says I just read the manual

[@dawsonkamenz]

haha sorry man i should have included more in the video on actual loudness standards/pros and cons. good place to start though is just researching what loudness standards are on different platforms or the platform you publish to. Spotify is -14 LUFs for example

[@ronnieblanchet4072]

Go bless you homie! SOLI DEO GLORIA (To The Glory Of God Alone) Father, Son & Holy Spirit -Ronnie

[@dawsonkamenz]

you rock 🤓

[@TheGaslightDistrict]

i got 3.0 lufs with 16.3 db peak max, i think im cooked 😭

[@dawsonkamenz]

hahaha you gotta slap on a hard limiter

[@spoink-x3z]

assuming youre in fl studio like i am you probably did what i did and put it before the limiter at the bottom of your master and thats why lol, you would realize if it was actually that loud because your speakers wouldnt be able to keep up and the noise would get super distorted

[@prichyrich]

-9 is cd quality just saying

[@dawsonkamenz]

yessir cd is a lot louder than spotify or youtube

[@MendingSilence]

Yo

[@dawsonkamenz]

🙋🏻‍♂️

[@MendingSilence]

@@dawsonkamenz your video was the best I’ve seen on this plug-in :-) I still have some issues with my mixing and gain staging so if your able to chat with me and help me on that I could show you a project I got going on if so, is there somewhere better we could discuss this?

[@dawsonkamenz]

@@MendingSilencesure i hit you up on IG