Thanks for sharing! Quick question : how do you use LUFS metering when making sound effects ? What should we aim for in terms of loudness ? Or do you use this just as a reference to make sure you're just not too low ?
(Edit: not sure why RUclips struck a line through some of my text below, but please disregard that!) Hey there, thanks for watching :) This is a great question. LUFS metering can be especially useful when we want to keep our assets at a uniform level, usually as a premixing step. That is, if you owned all of the ambience audio design for a video game, it would be beneficial to mandate several LUFS values that you would export your assets at to make mixing in middleware or in-engine easier (eg: - 18 LUFS for close-medium proximity sounds, -23 LUFS for distant sounds, etc.) In my opinion, mandating this is essential when working on large-scale projects that could easily have hundreds of thousands of audio assets. This sort of uniformity allows you to confidently lower or boost a whole subgroup of assets in one broad stroke, rather than level matching them all and THEN performing a boost or attenuation. Getting this right at the source level will make your life way easier down the road :) As far as what LUFS value we should aim for: with video games, it's sort of the Wild West. Most projects I've been on adhere to an average of -23 LUFS Integrated over an hour of gameplay, +/- a few LUFS values to account for big moments or more subdued, quiet slices of gameplay. As it pertains to this video, I didn't approach designing the assets with any values in mind, I was just jamming. I find that most sounds I work on in my free time tend to end up in the -18 LUFS-I to -23 LUFS-I range, as I try to avoid overcompressing them. I'm mainly using the metering as a tool to check the phase coherence while avoiding being tooooo loud. However, when I'm mixing music, those loudness standards tend to be much different haha
Awesome video, Thank you for sharing this!!
Thanks for the kind words, hope it was helpful :)
Thanks for sharing! Quick question : how do you use LUFS metering when making sound effects ? What should we aim for in terms of loudness ? Or do you use this just as a reference to make sure you're just not too low ?
(Edit: not sure why RUclips struck a line through some of my text below, but please disregard that!)
Hey there, thanks for watching :)
This is a great question. LUFS metering can be especially useful when we want to keep our assets at a uniform level, usually as a premixing step. That is, if you owned all of the ambience audio design for a video game, it would be beneficial to mandate several LUFS values that you would export your assets at to make mixing in middleware or in-engine easier (eg: - 18 LUFS for close-medium proximity sounds, -23 LUFS for distant sounds, etc.)
In my opinion, mandating this is essential when working on large-scale projects that could easily have hundreds of thousands of audio assets. This sort of uniformity allows you to confidently lower or boost a whole subgroup of assets in one broad stroke, rather than level matching them all and THEN performing a boost or attenuation. Getting this right at the source level will make your life way easier down the road :)
As far as what LUFS value we should aim for: with video games, it's sort of the Wild West. Most projects I've been on adhere to an average of -23 LUFS Integrated over an hour of gameplay, +/- a few LUFS values to account for big moments or more subdued, quiet slices of gameplay.
As it pertains to this video, I didn't approach designing the assets with any values in mind, I was just jamming. I find that most sounds I work on in my free time tend to end up in the -18 LUFS-I to -23 LUFS-I range, as I try to avoid overcompressing them. I'm mainly using the metering as a tool to check the phase coherence while avoiding being tooooo loud. However, when I'm mixing music, those loudness standards tend to be much different haha