Can you please explain the different audio levels you have to meet for different platforms like YouTube, broadcast, et cetera? Why are there different levels expected, and what do you have to meet besides pure levels?
ASKED BY · Andre Dole · BERLIN · 23 SEP 2026 · ▶ 00:20:39
Explains broadcast uses standards bodies with different US/EU specs. Internet streaming uses LUFS targets: Apple/podcasts -16 LUFS with -1.5 DBFS true peak, YouTube -14 LUFS. Broadcast recommends -23/-24 LUFS. Explains lower levels chosen for noisy listening environments and mobile devices. Details why -16 LUFS requires excessive limiting and compression. Office Hours uses -23 LUFS as conservative standard.
Confirms -23 LUFS is conservative and quieter than -16 LUFS; notes Netflix requires exactly -27 LUFS with automatic rejection if not met; discusses YouTube's approach of compensating for quiet audio in player rather than requiring specific input level.
Notes transcription software performs best at -12 to -18 LUFS levels; OpenAI Whisper can normalize audio and identify filler words for omission; discusses need for balanced loudness levels for transcription accuracy.
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20:27Isn't that the bat phone? Yes. It's red, right? Oh, I love this. That's so funny, David. You might have to mod it with a push to talk button. Let's go to the next question, Alexander. That's going to be my dedicated comms mic from now on. Next question is coming in from Andre Dole in Berlin. Can you please explain the different audio levels you have to meet
20:48for different platforms like YouTube? broadcast, et cetera. Why are there different levels expected? And what do you have to meet besides pure levels? Alexander? So there are, so in the world of broadcast, there are standards. There's actually a standards body for loudness. You know, there's different standards for the U.S. versus European Union and that type of thing. However, for internet streaming, there is no
21:17official ratified standard other than the fact that many people many platforms have agreed on certain loudness target i'm talking integrated loudness which which is a measurement over time from the entire like for the entire program basically so you have to measure if you have a one-hour show you would measure the entire show and it would have to meet that certain target now
21:37apple and most podcast platforms have agreed that they recommend if you're distributing a stereo program that it should be hitting negative 16 LUFS. Okay. And then they also recommend that your true peak should be negative. No, I think it's like negative 1.5 or negative one DBFS. That's the decibels full scale. And the reason for that is because a lot of the reason why this
22:07actually started the origin of it is because a lot of people that move to listening to these programs are listening now in loud, noisy environments. They're listening on mobile devices. So they're on the train, they're on the bus, they're maybe in a noisy car. And these lower, quieter broadcast standards, like when they are, you know, recommending negative 23 or 24 LUFS, it's too quiet. So that's one of the constant complaints people seem to have,
22:36consumers have, is that all this stuff is way, way too quiet. So they came up with negative 16, And that's what these platforms have kind of all agreed and recommended that you distribute your audio at. YouTube has decided to do something different. They recommend a much louder target of negative 14, which they're not going to penalize you if you submit something quieter.
22:57They've tried to go around this now. So they now inside the actual audio player, they have a button you can check for boosting audio dialogue. and so they're trying to do their own things to kind of correct bad audio if it's if it's too loud you can you can kind of level it out so it's they're doing their own compression and limiting to get around that I don't like
23:22distributing myself at negative 14 in my opinion requires far too much limit you're compressing the dynamic range so the louder you go the more compression and limiting is required and the more your audio starts to if you look at the waveform starts to become like a brick wall and i'm just not a fan of the way that sounds so everyone is kind of doing their own thing um you know specifically with um uh us i know andre
23:48i know you you know what we do here you know we kind of invented our own thing like to try to at least have some consistency between panelists on a show like this it's nice to have some kind of audio meters that people can look at and just kind of get within the ballpark of a certain number. And we've decided it's going to be negative 23 LUFS. And that's just to make sure everyone's
24:11within a tolerable range. And actually, without getting too much in the weeds of audio processing, some people say, well, if I want my audio at negative 16, shouldn't I just gain my mic up? No, it's impossible. If you tried to do that, and I recommend you try it, grab an audio meter, look at the short-term loudness if you gained your mic preamp to hit negative 16 you would
24:34overdrive that preamp like crazy um if you if you just with your transients right just with transients you would you would just be distorting the heck out of it and you can't get to negative 16 without dynamics processing it's just not possible so that's why we chose that as a reasonable loudness target to just get everybody consistent and even and then any processing we need to do
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