Guide
How to master a song to −14 LUFS for streaming
Streaming services play every song at roughly the same loudness. A master that is louder than their target is simply turned down, so pushing harder buys you nothing except a flatter, more tiring song. Two numbers get you a master that survives the trip: how loud it is on average, and how high its peaks reach.
The two numbers
| Number | Aim for | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Integrated loudness | about −14 LUFS | The average loudness of the whole song, measured the way listeners hear it. |
| True peak | −1 dBTP or lower | The highest point the signal reaches, including the peaks that fall between samples. |
Spotify and YouTube level music to around −14 LUFS, and Apple Music to around −16. A −14 master with its peaks at −1 dBTP plays well on all of them. The headroom under the peak matters because the service converts your file to a compressed format, and that conversion can push a peak slightly higher than it was.
These are targets, not rules. A quiet acoustic song can sit below −14 and be right. What you want to avoid is squashing a song to −8 for a platform that will turn it straight back down.
By hand: the limiter on the master
In Zammoth both numbers live on one device, the Limiter, placed last on the master track.
- Ceiling runs from −6 to −1 dBTP and starts at −1. The limiter measures true peaks, so this is a real dBTP figure and not a sample-peak reading.
- Loudness target runs from −24 to −6 LUFS and starts at −14.
The device shows the loudness of what is playing against your target, and how much the limiter is taking off. Watch that second figure. A limiter that is constantly removing several decibels is being asked to do the mix's job. Go back and fix the balance, then return to the master.
The top bar's CLIP lamp is the standing check while you work: amber means you are over your ceiling, red means the signal is truly clipping between samples.
With one button: Auto Mix
Auto Mix builds a starting mix from raw tracks: it works out what each track is, balances them, adds corrective EQ and gentle compression where the measurements call for it, and puts a limiter on the master at the loudness you choose. Its menu offers four:
- Streaming, −14 LUFS
- Apple and podcast, −16 LUFS
- Club, −8 LUFS
- Ceiling only, which protects the peaks and leaves the loudness alone
When it finishes, undo run takes the whole thing back in one click, and holding a/b swaps between before and after so you can hear what it did.
In one sentence: ask the engineer
The engineer measures the mix, makes its moves, renders, and measures again, for a limited number of passes. It cannot set the master's true peak above −1 dBTP, and if a later pass makes the measurements worse it goes back to the best pass and tells you so. Every move it made is listed with the reason for it. The engineer needs an Anthropic API key; the limiter does not.
If you have a song you want yours to sit beside, load it as a reference. Zammoth shows the loudness gap and where the tone differs across eight bands, and Match hands that comparison to the engineer as a brief. Only the reference's measurements are used. Its audio never enters your mix.
Export, and check the file
File ▸ Export writes WAV, AIFF or FLAC at 16-bit, 24-bit or 32-bit float.
- For a distributor, 24-bit WAV at the session's sample rate is the safe choice. If you export at 16-bit, switch dither on.
- Leave Normalize peak off for a master. It rescales the file after the limiter and can push the peak past your ceiling.
- Zammoth reads every export back after writing it. A file that is silent, or that reaches full scale, is reported instead of passed off as done.
Zammoth is a DAW for Apple silicon Macs with an AI audio engineer built in. The beta opens soon.
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