LUFS and Loudness For Livestreamed Events Explained

[@Backtoflying]

Thank you for this superbly helpful video! I will use this wisdom to fix up our church's livestream!

[@MichaelCurtisAudio]

You're welcome!

[@okay1904]

Excellent. Well explained and very useful.. Good job.

[@MichaelCurtisAudio]

Thank you so much! Glad it was worth the watch : )

[@zBalistiqRain]

Super helpful and to the point especially when you mentioned how you calibrate your levels to use with BMD switchers as we use them and have been unsure if i was doing it correctly! So if i understood correctly if you hit ebu s2 standards the DBs should be at -16? Because i will meter externally to get -16 lufs but do dbs match the lufs metering or what? A bit confused here 😅

[@noelbulls8628]

So from the daw up in the media room we are going to insert a tone generator and send a 1 kh at 0 DB tone and trim out V MIX . Ok this explains why I’m still having to use a second limiter on V MIX. Thanks a million

[@MichaelCurtisAudio]

You got it!

[@mark12.31]

Video idea - useful audio apps for the smartphone: meters, etc., and how reliable are they vs something like smaart or whatever. There's also the Shure app for wireless mics, etc., that is handy. Just an idea!

[@MichaelCurtisAudio]

Great suggestion. I honestly don't use my phone on a show other than accessing planning documents, pictures, and Spotify playback. But I can dive in and see if there are some other useful tools!

[@OtherTheDave]

The Shure iOS app is great for when you want to monitor stuff and don’t have room for a laptop with WWB (or if you don’t stay put long enough to make it worth setting up). I prefer having a computer running WWB with a real keyboard is for _changing_ settings, but the iOS app is certainly better than nothing.

[@Holden.strackbein]

How does dynamic range play into this! At my church we are sending at -14 LUFS on a meter but it always feels so quiet and I have to crank my volume. I noticed the dynamic range looks to be in the 20db range. How much if at all is this causing the stream to sound quiet?

[@MichaelCurtisAudio]

Great question! First I'd verify that the -14 LUFS you're metering is staying at that level alllllll the way through video world and out to the stream. You've probably got this on lock, but just in case, check that out. The best way to verify that is to use an iPhone that's monitoring the stream and plug into your Mac and set it up as an audio input device. Then run Youlean Loudness Meter and check it out. I looked at this service from you guys and it hung out around -18 LUFS: kzbin.info/www/bejne/m2HcqpRmZ651mKc As far as dynamic range goes, I'm not too surprised it's wide since a lot of church music has "down choruses" and "down bridges", then it builds up. So, I'd keep -14 LUFS on your normal-run-of-the-mill choruses, then it's ok if it drops from there. Not to mention a prayer time where it's just a light pad going. I wouldn't worry too darn much about dynamic range since the service varies so much, but do try and keep levels consistent as much as you can. It's not uncommon to have to push dialog based mics 15dB more than the band.

[@jeremiahjackson3248]

@@MichaelCurtisAudio so If I am monitoring LUFS from a device like my phone, should I be monitoring with the volume on the target device at max? Or would that just depend on where I want the loudness to land (i.e. do I want the loudness equivalent of -18LUFS etc to register for the listener with their volume at max or at mid volume etc) thanks!

[@MichaelCurtisAudio]

@@jeremiahjackson3248 Great question! When you're passing the audio signal from an iPhone to your Mac for monitoring it will pass the original digital stream at full level, even if you have the volume keys on the side of your phone down. If you're watching a video on KZbin or listening on Spotify you will want the app's volume slider all the way up.

[@jeremiahjackson3248]

@@MichaelCurtisAudio awesome! Thanks for the reply 🙏🏿

[@MichaelCurtisAudio]

@@jeremiahjackson3248 You're welcome!

[@LMHop]

Helpful! Do you happen to know if OBS Audio meter measurement can be well into the red before clipping? I've been running our audio at just into the red, and it is streaming pretty quiet. It's measuring 10.8dB under KZbin recommendation (thanks for that tip on how to see that info!). I installed OBS on my computer and the YouLean Loundess meter as well, and by that measurement, during the music, our livestream is measuring around -14 in the short term LUFS meter. When I put on a pro-video (Keith Urban, for instance) the short term hits around -7. So, I'm not sure what to do with this information, as far as getting our livestream, or at least our uploaded service AFTER livestream, to the optimal loundess. We stream, but upload later because we use higher quality CODECS for the local recording than can be used in OBS for streaming. Thanks for this content, it was really helpful for my understanding of how loudness works!!

[@MichaelCurtisAudio]

Great questions! Yes, the OBS audio level meter starts turning red about -8 or 9dBFS, so you still have a a good bit more until you actually clip. As far as competitive loudness goes commercially released tunes are mastered VERY loud (too loud in my opinion) and will push levels far beyond where they're needed, especially for streaming. -14LUFS is plenty for a live church service. If you're commercially releasing your own music, feel free to go higher than that if you'd like. Are you getting your broadcast level loudness from the console, or using processing with "filters" in OBS to serve as your gain and true peak limiting? I'd try the free VST LoudMax if you want to handle it within OBS - www.kvraudio.com/product/loudmax-by-thomas-mundt

[@blueridgebiblechurch]

@@MichaelCurtisAudio Thanks for the response! We are using a DAW and the measurement there is about -18LUFS. Then I'm boosting with the Gain filter in OBS by 2dB. And I'm having the OBS audio meter now at about -3, and it's not clipping! I was wrong above, our audio was hitting around -18 and the loudest parts in KZbin, so much lower during quiet parts of the set. Now, with those adjustments, it is hitting about -16 in the test stream I just did from our DAW mix of Sunday's service. I'll take a look at the LoudMax plugin. We'd like to hit -14, but I think we're too close to clipping the OBS audio meter to do that.

[@noelbulls8628]

Question: Can I inject a 1 kg hertz tone into one channel on the X 32 and read the whole level going through the entire system would that be OK? This is for testing only. Since I don’t have anybody singing I want to driver it hard to see what happens.

[@MichaelCurtisAudio]

That could help serve as a proxy, yes.

[@stevenadams-o9k]

just play it off your phone at 0db and send it to the right source to test it