[MLA] iTunes NOT using -16 LUFS yet ?

[Ian Shepherd]

Hi All,

Just a heads-up about this. We’re planning an update to Loudness Penalty to reflect the news that iTunes is going to use LUFS for Sound Check, but I wanted to warn you that in our tests it doesn’t seem to be working as intended, even on a brand new M1 Mac with the latest software updates and recently released material.

I have other examples but specifically Bob drew my attention to this song:

https://music.apple.com/gb/album/the-joker-and-the-queen-feat-taylor-swift/1608894948?i=1608894952 <https://music.apple.com/gb/album/the-joker-and-the-queen-feat-taylor-swift/1608894948?i=1608894952>

Using the afinfo command in Terminal it reports the following results:

> aa itu loudness: -8.5
> sound check volume normalization gain: -7.50 dB

This would result in a playback loudness of -16 LUFS, but measuring the actual value gives a result of -15.1 LUFS, which is a normalization change of only -6.6 dB

Whereas the "Song Info>File>Volume" value in iTunes reports -6.7, which is obviously a very close match to the measured result. Since this is the “Legacy” Sound Check value, this song and other examples like it make me think that LUFS values aren’t being used yet, on Mac OS at least.

Testing the results from iOS is tricky because of Apple’s copy protection, but if we make any progress with this I’ll let you know.

I’ve emailed Buddy to ask about this, and will let you know if I get a reply - perhaps it’s just a glitch!

Either way I wanted to make you aware so that we don’t jump the gun announcing the change.

Cheers,

Ian



***
Ian Shepherd
Mastering Media Ltd <http://mastering-media.co.uk/> - Audio Mastering, Blu-ray and DVD Excellence
http://twitter.com/ianshepherd <http://twitter.com/ianshepherd>

 <http://twitter.com/ianshepherd>Mastering Media Ltd,
Kemp House, 152 City Road, London, EC1V 2NX
Registered in England and Wales 
Company No. 073500450

Tel. +44(0)1487 842498

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://grimmaudio.nl/pipermail/mla_grimmaudio.nl/attachments/20220223/0b2d04b8/attachment.html>