Loudness Penalty 2 Upgrade

Note: this is an upgrade for owners of Loudness Penalty v1. The full version of v2 can be found here.

Will your music be turned down by online streaming services?

Confidently assess how your music will play back online.

With Loudness Penalty, you can...

• Optimize your music's online loudness: Share your music knowing it will hold up online.
• Preview how your music will sound online: No need to leave your DAW.
• Pinpoint loudness pain-points: Find exactly which parts of a song trigger the biggest penalty.
• Turn your music up without a penalty: Discover when there's headroom for extra level.
• Reassure clients: Show them how streaming services affect loudness.
• Avoid loudness indecision: No more trial and error, no more guessing.

Take Control of the Loudness Penalty
Manage how much the level of your music is adjusted by online streaming services.

Online streaming services turn down loud music to ensure a more consistent listening experience. The Loudness Penalty plugin tells you how much your music will be turned down by YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, TIDAL, Deezer and Pandora. Now you can have immediate access to this information right in your DAW. Spot the moments that trigger the biggest penalty, and tweak your settings to avoid them, while retaining impactful, punchy playback.

What's New in Loudness Penalty 2?

• Spotify Loud limiter emulation: See and hear what Loud mode removes from your music.
• Realtime block view: True peak, integrated loudness, and loudness range at a glance.
• New Loudness Penalty scores: Spotify Quiet, Loud and YouTube Music.
• Resizable UI: A new compact list view that fits any session.
• Lock scores: Prevent scores from drifting after measuring a track.

Hear the Impact of Spotify's Limiter
For the first time, preview the limiter your listeners hear.

When Spotify users select the "Loud" volume preference, quieter songs are turned up and a limiter steps in to prevent clipping. Until now, you had no way to hear what that limiter was actually doing to your music before uploading.

Loudness Penalty 2 emulates the limiter in Preview mode and shows you the gain reduction in real time. Click the delta button to hear only what's being removed. Decide whether you're happy with the result before anyone presses play.

A Complete Loudness Picture, In Real Time
Max true peak, integrated loudness, and loudness range at a glance.

The new block view shows your music's max true peak, integrated loudness, and loudness range in real time. In Preview mode, it also shows how your music's gain will be adjusted by each streaming service, and the impact that will have on the overall loudness picture. Will your peaks get clipped? Will your song get turned up or down? With the block view, it's easy to see.

Fits Any Session
From full mastering view to a single-strip glance.

Drag a corner to resize, or pick a preset from the size dropdown in the header. A new compact list view trims the interface down to a single column, small enough to sit beside a busy session but complete enough to give you the numbers you need.

Why Do You Call It a Penalty?
Because it is!

We deliberately chose the name "Loudness Penalty" to be a little provocative, but it is accurate. The louder your music is, the more it will be turned down by online streaming services, to avoid "blasting" listeners with unexpected changes in loudness. Hopefully your music sounds fine, even when it has been turned down, but with Loudness Penalty you can be sure. Preview your music live, and test whether you want to take advantage of the opportunity for more dynamics.

No More LUFS Estimates
Objective, accurate feedback.

Have you ever been told to upload your music at -14 LUFS, or some other specific value? Don't - it doesn't work! Aiming for "targets" rarely gets the results you're hoping for. Loudness Penalty gives you accurate feedback and lets you preview the result. No more guessing, no more trial and error. With Loudness Penalty, you can optimize and upload your music knowing it will stand head and shoulders against the competition.

Features

• Realtime Loudness Penalty scores
• Realtime block view: max true peak, integrated loudness, and loudness range
• Supports all major streaming services: YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, TIDAL, Deezer and Pandora
• Spotify Quiet, Normal and Loud modes
• YouTube Music and YouTube Video modes
• Spotify Loud limiter emulation with delta preview
• Fully resizable / responsive interface with compact list view
• Lock button to freeze measurements
• Discover when you can turn your music up without incurring a penalty
• Preview how your music will sound online, without leaving your DAW
• Faster-than-realtime processing in Pro Tools' Audio Suite