Loudness Normalization for Podcasters

In this episode, you’ll learn how to set your podcast episodes to the perfect volume using loudness normalization.

Loudness Target Guidelines:

• Mono Audio Files: -19 LUFS
• Stereo Audio Files: -16 LUFS

Check out our Auphonic guide for podcasters.

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Transcript

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Travis 0:00

Today on five minute Mondays, you'll learn how to set your podcast episodes to the perfect volume. Welcome to five minute Mondays where we bring you the best tips and strategies for building your podcast in five minutes or less. So if you're new here, consider subscribing. Now this is week number three of a four week mini series that we're doing about rookie editing mistakes. These are common mistakes that you hear in new podcasts that distract from the listener experience and scent , your podcast growth, which is not what you want. And today we're gonna talk about loudness normalization. Now if you've never heard this term, you've probably experienced it and you'll notice it the most when you switch between different podcasts that you listened to. One will be set at a very nice volume level where you can hear everything clearly without cranking up your stereo or your headphones. But then the next one will be so quiet that no matter what you do, you can't hear what the host is saying. So that is where loudness normalization comes in. And loudest normalization adjusts the overall loudness or perceived volume to the specified loudness target. So that all process files have a similar average loudness, so if leveling, which we covered in a previous episode, ensures that your episode volume is consistent. Loudness normalization determines how loud or soft your episode is. All right . You can think of this as like the average, the average overall volume for your episodes, so you want to make sure that you set your loudness intentionally. This isn't something you want to leave to chance. This isn't something you want to overlook and I'm going to teach you how to do that. Now, if you used a more advanced [inaudible] digital audio workstation like Adobe audition or Hindenburg , you can set the loudest target in your editing software. There's actually features that allow you to say, I want my overall loudness, my loudness normalization to be at this particular level. If you use a more beginner level editing software like garageband or audacity, then you'll need to use an additional software like owl phonic, which you've heard me talk about several times to manually set the loudness on your final podcast episode and if you've never used our phonic and aren't familiar with it, I'll leave a link in the show notes for our complete guide on how we use auphonic to mix and master our bus route podcast episodes when we edit them in garageband. But then how loud should you make your podcast episodes cause you don't want them to be too quiet and you don't want them to be too loud either. Well, if you have a mono podcast, that means that the left and right side play exactly the same audio. You'll use negative 19 lafs or negative 19 l u f. S. If you have a stereo podcast where the left and the right side have different audio tracks, this is common if you use a music bed or three music where there might be some differences in the left and the right side and you've exported your podcast episode as a stereo file . Then you'll want to use negative 16 LEFS or negative 16 lafs. Setting your loudness target correctly goes a long way towards improving your listener experience and avoiding the dreaded rookie podcast label. That's it for today. If you're new here, hit the subscribe button. If you're watching this on youtube, or you can subscribe to the five minute Mondays podcast in your favorite app to squeeze even more podcast related content into your life, and if there's something you want us to talk about on a future episode, simply click the link in the show notes to submit your question. Thanks for listening and as always, keep podcasting.