Audio Loudness Normalization: Mastering to the -14 LUFS Broadcast Standard

During the early days of online video, platforms were plagued by the "Loudness Wars"—creators would push limiters as hard as possible so their videos blasted louder than competitors. Today, automated algorithms enforce international loudness normalization standards based on the ITU-R BS.1770-4 specification.

Meta targets an integrated loudness level of approximately -14 LUFS (Loudness Units relative to Full Scale). If you master your audio too hot (e.g. pushing a podcast track to -8 LUFS), Facebook's automated ingest limiter aggressively ducks your volume, making speech sound muffled, dynamic range squashed, and background music pump awkwardly.

The Social Video Audio Mastering Checklist

• Integrated Loudness Target: Aim for -14 LUFS (+/- 1 LUFS) across the full duration of your clip using an ITU loudness meter (Youlean Loudness Meter, iZotope Insight).
• True Peak Ceiling: Always set your master peak limiter ceiling to -1.0 dB True Peak (dBTP). This critical headroom prevents inter-sample clipping when Meta's transcoders convert your audio into lossy AAC format.
• Dialogue EQ: Apply a high-pass filter at 80 Hz to eliminate low-frequency air conditioning hum, and use gentle multiband compression to ensure clear speech intelligibility on tiny smartphone speakers.