Is Your Audio Mix Too Loud?

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-23 LUFS is for film and TV. -13 to -15 is for internet and streaming(user content based, not netflix and hbo etc.) right ? so if you would like to have control of the facebook/vimeo/youtube video, you have to stay @ around -14LUFS on the LU-I meter.

Correct. Every outlet has its own guidelines and you have to get their specification guides to know. As far as outlets like YouTube, there is some grace (versus broadcast, Netflix, etc), because they use additional processing to normalize your files to their specs.

NUGEN Audio has a plugin called MasterCheck. MasterCheck lets you check your levels for multiple outputs at once. No need for guessing; it's all monitored with a clear UI.

Cool. Yes, Nugen makes nice stuff. The multiple outputs check is great. Although in the article, I was trying to stick with tools that you already have or can be inexpensively added. It seems the Klangfreund meter/filter basically does the same, but with a less fancy UI, albeit at a single level. But an editor really needs to understand FCP's signal flow. If MasterCheck works as a plug-in, then placing it (or any other plug-in) at the wrong point in the flow would result in incorrect readings. There are also others, like iZotope RX Loudness, which work by rendering the audio. Regardless, MasterCheck is a good suggestion. Thanks.

I didn't want to criticise your piece which is brilliant as usual. Sorry if I gave that impression. Of course an editor should know FCP's signal flow. And you're right, you still need to work out where in the flow to put the plug-in.

No, not at all! I didn't take it that way. Thanks.

klangfreund.com seems to be down with Server Error 500.

Works for me. I just checked.

Yeah it came back up later. Your article must have crashed their servers!

Ha ha ha

very nice article, thank you!

You're welcome.

BTW - circling back on the need for a better mixing module in FCP…

I’ve now upgraded several Macs to Big Sur and notice the same issues. FCP has become rather unstable with a number of third-party audio plug-ins. I first saw this with Catalina, but it’s now worse with Big Sur.

A number of third party audio filters are slow to respond, cause application hang-ups (“application not responding’), or in the case of some with a skeuomorphic interface, the controls are small within a bigger background window. That last bug seems to affect some of the Waves filters.

FWIW - the same plug-ins work fine in Logic Pro, Premiere Pro, Audition, and Resolve. A few, like iZotope Ozone and RX, also have their own standalone application as well as plug-ins. Those also work fine under Big Sur. So this is clearly an FCP issue.

My warning is that if you intend to use third-party audio plug-ins with FCP and Big Sur (and in some cases Catalina), you may or may not get acceptable behavior.