What is LUFS and Why Is It Important for Your Podcast?

When it comes to the listening experience of your podcast followers, LUFS plays a huge role in making it as enjoyable as possible. So what is LUFS and why is it important for your podcast?

Additional reading and listening:

• What Are LUFS? The Complete Guide
• How to do loudness: the LUFS and LKFS FAQ for podcasters
• LUFS vs dB: What’s the Difference and Why Does It Matter? - Produce Like A Pro

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My equipment:

• Shure SM7B dynamic mic
• Rodecaster Pro II audio production studio
• Sony MDR-7506 Studio Monitor Headphones
• Elgato Wave Mic Arm Low Profile

Recommended resources:

• Captivate.fm
• Substack
• Boomcaster remote interviewing

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
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(00:02):
You're listening to One Minute Podcast Tips.
I'm your host, Danny Brown.
And each episode brings you snack-sized tips
to be a better podcaster.
And if you enjoy the show,
you can now support with a one-off donation
at oneminutepodcasttips.com/support.
And now, this week's episode.
When it comes to the listening experience of your podcast,

(00:26):
it's important to understand LUFS
and why you need to use the correct one.
So what is LUFS?
Well LUFS stands for Loudness Units Full Scale
and basically it's a standardised way of measuring loudness.
Now I won't get too technical on this
but basically there's two types of LUFS,
short term and integrated.
Short term gives us a peak reading
of the last three seconds of audio
while integrated is an average of the whole audio mix.

(00:48):
And it's how we measure loudness for film,
music streaming, radio and podcasting.
To get an idea of how important LUFS is,
ask yourself if you've ever listened to an episode
and the ads have been much louder than the episode audio itself or vice versa.
Ideally you want every part of your episode at the same level.
Whether that's you and a guest, your ads, your intro, your outro etc.

(01:09):
It makes it a lot more comfortable to listen back to.
Generally there are two settings to work by.
-16 LUFS for stereo and -19 LUFS for mono.
Now a lot of editing software has LUFS settings built in.
I use Hindenburg Pro for example and when I export the audio I can set it to -16.
and I do this for all my ads, sponsor messages, intro, outro, music and more.

(01:30):
This ensures that every part of my audio is exactly the same level.
There's some great resources for LUFS,
including a detailed explanation of what they are and how to use them,
and I'll leave links to those in the episode show notes,
so be sure to check them out too.
Until the next time, happy podcasting.
If you're enjoying One Minute Podcast Tips,
leave a review at oneminutepodcasttips.com/review

(01:53):
and help others like you find the show too.
Until the next time, happy podcasting.
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