Delivery Targets

Delivery Targets are the loudness and peak-safety choices you make for the place where the track will be published.

The demo exposes common platform-style targets such as Spotify, YouTube, Apple Music, TikTok, and Custom. These are practical starting points, not universal rules.

METERS · LOUDNESSIDLE

Loudness metering — LUFS, true-peak, and range

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The bar tracks momentary loudness as the clip plays; the panel is the loudness over time. Integrated LUFS is the single overall number, true-peak estimates peaks between samples, and LRA captures how much the loudness moves. Switch the window to compare the fast momentary meter with the smoother short-term one — each reports only once its window has filled, so the short-term contour starts three seconds into the clip.

Window

Loudness Target

The loudness target is the integrated LUFS (Loudness Units relative to Full Scale) value the renderer aims for after processing. LUFS estimates programme loudness rather than raw sample level, and "integrated" means a gated average across the whole track: loudness is taken in 400 ms blocks, with an absolute gate at -70 LUFS and a relative gate 10 LU below the absolute-gated average. Silence is excluded, but a quieter intro above the relative gate still contributes and can lower the result. See LUFS for the gating in detail.

Target	Practical use
-14 LUFS	A balanced streaming-style target for many music releases.
-16 LUFS	Useful for Apple Music style targets, podcasts, speech, or more headroom.
Custom	Useful when you know a delivery spec or want to audition a different loudness.

Louder is not automatically better. If the target forces the limiter to work too hard, the master can lose punch and still be turned down by the platform.

A higher target is not a louder master

Streaming platforms normalize playback loudness. Past a point, raising the target just makes the limiter work harder for no extra loudness on playback — and costs you punch. See Loudness Matching.

True-Peak Ceiling

The ceiling is the highest true peak the rendered file may reach. dBTP means decibels true peak: the peak of the waveform as it is reconstructed between the samples, which can sit above every stored sample value. A common streaming-oriented starting point is around -1 dBTP.

The limiter holds the file itself under the ceiling, but a platform's lossy encoder changes the waveform afterwards and can push its peaks back up. The gap between the ceiling and 0 dBTP is the headroom left for that, so a lower ceiling, such as -2 dBTP, gives more codec safety. Use a ceiling closer to 0 dBTP (such as -0.3 dBTP) only when the delivery path is known and does not re-encode.

LOUDNESS · TRUE PEAKIDLE

Inter-sample peaks — why a master clips on playback

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The dots are samples of a sine wave; the curve shows its analytic waveform. A crest can fall between samples, above every stored value. The gap depends on frequency and phase, so it does not increase smoothly toward Nyquist. Compare the analytic peak with the oversampled meter reading. Raising the sample peak toward 0 dBFS can leave an inter-sample over that clips a converter or processor without sufficient headroom.

Sample peak

-0.3 dBFS

Frequency (×Nyquist)

0.4

A meter that oversamples more finely than the limiter can read slightly above the ceiling; see the limiter residue note for measured margins.

Signs to Back Off

If kick, snare, and consonants start to flatten right after you raise the target, the chain is gaining density rather than loudness. Lower the target or relax the dynamics before doing anything else. Raising the ceiling to compensate increases the risk of clipping after codec conversion, so it should not be the first move.

If lowering the target barely changes the musical impact, prefer the safer setting. When the platform is likely to turn the master down anyway, a slightly lower target often preserves more punch on playback.

Choosing A Target

The targets each engine targetPlatform name aims for are listed in Engine delivery targets.

Start with the destination, then listen to the material:

1. Pick the closest platform preset.
2. Render once without over-tuning.
3. Check whether the limiter is audibly changing the groove or transient impact.
4. If the master feels smaller, lower the target or loosen the dynamics before raising loudness again.
5. Export the JSON report so the target, ceiling, and chain stages are documented.

Implementation notes

The demo maps platform choices to a LUFS target and passes that target into libsonare's loudness stage. The true-peak limiter and loudness optimizer share the ceiling value so final gain is capped against peak safety.

The exported report records the selected preset, platform, target LUFS, tuning values, source metrics, rendered metrics, and stage names. This makes the browser render reproducible enough to use as a starting point for CLI or application integration.

When the ceiling constraint is reached before the LUFS target, the implementation favors peak safety. In that state, pushing the target higher will not raise output loudness as expected. Reading the report's applied gain alongside output LUFS makes it easier to separate a target-setting problem from a problem in the earlier dynamics or low-end stages.

Related: LUFS, True Peak Safety, Stereo, Limiter, and Loudness Controls