A RITE

THE RECKONING

Face your mix. Measured in your browser, nothing uploaded.

YOUR TRACK

DROP HERE

click or drop · WAV / AIFF best

REFERENCE optional

DROP HERE

a track you trust, to compare

Nothing is uploaded. Everything is measured inside your browser and forgotten.
LUFS to BS.1770-4 / EBU R128. True peak 4x oversampled. All measurement is an estimate; trust your ears last.

The Reckoning: how loud is your master? Free LUFS and true peak check

The Reckoning is a free, browser-based loudness meter and mix analyser. It tells you how loud your master actually is, in LUFS, and whether it will survive streaming without being turned down or clipped. Drop a track in and the rite measures integrated loudness, short term and momentary loudness, loudness range, and true peak. Drop in a second track you trust and it compares the two, so you can hear where yours sits against a record that already works. Nothing is uploaded. Everything is measured inside your browser and forgotten.

Read more. What it measures, how to use it, and answers

What it measures

LUFS stands for Loudness Units relative to Full Scale. It is the standard that streaming services use to judge how loud a track is, and it follows your ears more closely than a peak meter does. The Reckoning measures integrated LUFS (the loudness of the whole track), short term and momentary LUFS (how loudness moves through the track), loudness range (how much distance there is between the quiet parts and the loud parts), and true peak, oversampled four times so it catches the peaks that appear between samples once a file is converted for streaming. Measurement follows BS.1770-4 and EBU R128.

How to use it

  1. Drop your track in. WAV or AIFF gives the most accurate read.
  2. Optionally drop in a reference track you trust, to compare against.
  3. Press Reckon.
  4. Read the verdict: your loudness, your headroom, and what streaming will do to it.
  5. Save the image if you want to keep the judgment.

What it is good for

  • Checking whether a master is the right loudness for Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
  • Finding out if a track is clipping, or will clip once it is encoded
  • Seeing whether a mix is too squashed, or too dynamic, by its loudness range
  • Comparing a mix against a reference record, honestly, with numbers
  • Anyone finishing a record who wants a second opinion before it goes out

Questions

Is it free?

Yes. Every rite on MEME PLUGINS is free to use.

What LUFS should I master to for Spotify?

Spotify normalises playback to around minus 14 LUFS integrated. Mastering to roughly that mark, with true peak kept at or below minus 1 dBTP, means your track plays back at the loudness you intended. Master much louder and Spotify simply turns it down, so you lose the dynamics you crushed to get there and gain nothing.

Is minus 14 LUFS too quiet?

No. It sounds quiet next to a louder file on your own system, but on a streaming service every track is levelled to the same target, so the louder master is turned down to meet yours. What survives that is dynamics and clarity, not raw level. Loud on your desktop is not loud on Spotify.

What is true peak, and why does it matter?

A sample peak meter only sees the samples in the file. True peak reconstructs the waveform between those samples, which is what actually happens when a file is converted to MP3 or AAC for streaming. A track that reads exactly 0 dBFS can go above 0 once encoded, and that is distortion. Leaving a decibel of true peak headroom prevents it.

Is my audio uploaded?

No. The analysis runs entirely in your browser. Your track never leaves your machine and it is forgotten when you close the page.