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.
Loudness Target
The loudness target is the integrated LUFS (Loudness Units relative to Full Scale) value the renderer aims for after processing. LUFS measures perceived loudness rather than raw sample level, and "integrated" means a gated average across the whole track: loudness is taken in 400 ms blocks, and blocks below -70 LUFS or more than 10 LU below the track's own mean are dropped before averaging. A silent tail or a hushed intro therefore cannot pull the number down — 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 protects the rendered file from peaks that may appear during reconstruction or codec conversion. A common streaming-oriented starting point is around -1 dBTP — dBTP means decibels true peak, the peak level measured between samples rather than at the sample points themselves.
Use a lower ceiling, such as -2 dBTP, when you want more codec safety. Use a tighter ceiling only when the delivery path is known and controlled.
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
Start with the destination, then listen to the material:
- Pick the closest platform preset.
- Render once without over-tuning.
- Check whether the limiter is audibly changing the groove or transient impact.
- If the master feels smaller, lower the target or loosen the dynamics before raising loudness again.
- 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