How do I check my audio levels before uploading?
Bad audio loses more viewers than a soft shot ever will, and you cannot trust your own ears to catch it. Here are the two numbers that matter, the meter to read them on, and three ways to run the check.
By Thomas, founder of CutScore · Updated June 2026
I have shipped videos that sounded great in my headphones and tinny everywhere else. The problem is not your ears, exactly. It is that you heard the mix a hundred times in the edit, and your brain stopped flagging the hum and the harsh "s" sounds hours ago. By export time you are not hearing the audio. You are remembering what you meant it to sound like.
Then your gear flatters you. Good headphones add bass and clarity that a three-year-old phone, one tinny speaker, on a noisy train, simply does not have. So the mix that felt warm and full on your desk arrives thin and quiet for half your audience. Loudness is the worst offender, because there is no visual cue for it. A dark shot looks dark. A quiet mix just sounds normal, until it plays right after a video that is twice as loud.
So the answer is not "listen harder." It is measure, then listen on bad speakers. Listening is a vibe. Measuring has targets. The two targets that matter are short, dull, and almost entirely under your control. Here they are.
Loudness and true peak, in plain terms.
Forget the dozen meters in your editor. For a pre-upload check, two readings carry almost all the weight. Hit both and your audio sits at the right level without distorting.
| Reading | Target to hit | What it costs you if you ignore it |
|---|---|---|
| Integrated loudness (YouTube) | ≈ −14 LUFS | Too quiet and the video feels weak and timid next to everything else in the feed. |
| Integrated loudness (Reels, TikTok, Shorts) | ≈ −16 to −14 LUFS | Vertical feeds normalise a touch quieter; aim slightly lower than YouTube so it is not blasting. |
| True peak | ≤ −1 dBTP | Hot peaks crackle and distort once the platform re-encodes your file to its own codec. |
| Voice vs music | voice clearly on top | Music burying the speech is the single most common amateur tell in the whole feed. |
| Noise floor | low, steady | Constant hiss or hum reads as "cheap" before a single word is understood. |
Reading a loudness meter on every export gets old fast. CutScore measures integrated loudness, true peak and the voice-to-music balance in one pass, then tells you the exact gain change to make.
Four quick passes, in order.
1. Put a loudness meter on the finished export
Check the file you are about to upload, not a clip mid-edit, because the integrated reading is measured across the whole thing. Any EBU R128 or ITU-R BS.1770 meter works. Premiere and DaVinci Resolve both have one built in, Audacity ships a loudness analyser, and the free Youlean Loudness Meter shows integrated LUFS and true peak side by side. Play the whole video through it. The number you care about is integrated (sometimes labelled "program" or "I"), not the momentary value bouncing around. Aim for −14 LUFS on YouTube, a touch quieter on vertical feeds.
2. Check the true peak, not just the loudness
Loudness and peak are two different things, and people confuse them constantly. A mix can read a polite −14 LUFS on average and still have a single transient (a clap, a hard consonant, a door slam) that spikes right up to the ceiling. When the platform re-encodes your file, those spikes can push over 0 and crackle. Keep your true peak at or below −1 dBTP. If your meter shows a true peak above that, a limiter with the ceiling set to −1 dBTP fixes it without changing how loud the video feels. If you are not sure the spikes are distortion, here is how to tell whether your audio is clipping.
3. Balance the voice against the music
Numbers do not catch this one, your worst speakers do. The most common audio fault I see is not a wrong LUFS value at all. It is music sitting on top of the speech, because the creator mixed it on headphones where every word was crystal clear. Solo the music, then bring it back, and ask whether you would still understand every sentence on a phone speaker. If the answer is no, pull the music down four or five decibels and duck it further under the talking. Better yet, automate it: louder in the gaps, quieter under the voice. If yours already drowns the talking, this is why your music is louder than your voice.
4. Do the bad-speaker listen
This is the step that catches what the meter cannot. Export, then play the video back on the cheapest, nastiest speaker you have: a laptop, a phone held at arm's length, one earbud on a train if you can. Listen for three things. Can you hear every word over the music? Is there a hum or hiss you tuned out hours ago? Does the whole thing feel about as loud as the last video you watched on that device? If yes, yes (the bad kind), and quieter, you have your fixes. For the full picture on why quiet audio happens in the first place, see why your video audio is so quiet.
Here is a real CutScore report for an everyday talking-head video: loudness, true peak, voice-to-music balance and the rest, scored, with timestamps and the exact fixes.
If you only fix three things.
Most of the jump from "sounds homemade" to "sounds professional" comes from these three. Do them in this order.
By ear, by meter, or in one pass.
By ear alone
Free, and the least reliable. Your ears adapt and your gear flatters, so a mix that sounds full on your desk can arrive thin on a phone. Works best on someone else's video, or yours after a day away. Always finish with a listen on your worst speaker.
With a loudness meter
Accurate and honest. A loudness meter on the export gives you integrated LUFS and true peak in two numbers. The cost is time and knowing the targets: you have to open the tool, read it right, and do it for every video. Great if you enjoy this. Most people do not.
With a coach in one pass
Hand the file (or a link) to CutScore. It measures loudness, true peak and the voice-to-music balance against the right standard for your platform, then gives you a 0 to 100 score with timestamped evidence and the gain changes. No meter to read. See a sample report.
Frequently asked.
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