Following current standards, loudness normalization is applied regardless of the content of a production. Cinematic content, i.e. productions with a high loudness range, can benefit from dialog loudness normalization.
At Auphonic, we are introducing a classifier for automatic speech loudness normalization, and our processing stats now provide level statistics for dialog and music as well as the overall production.

Photo by Dima Pechurin.

Loudness of Cinematic Content

We have discussed the issue extensively, but it’s still true: getting the levels of your production right is difficult. It’s especially challenging when you work with music, sound effects and ...

Zapier is a tool that allows users to connect and automate services without any coding.
So far, if you wanted to start a new Auphonic production or retrieve the results of a finished production, you had to login to the Auphonic website, connect with one of our external services, or know how to code and use the Auphonic API.
With Zapier, in just a few clicks, you can set up your email account, a Dropbox watch folder, your podcast host, your Twitter account and many more web-based services to interact with Auphonic.

For example, it’s possible to ...

Should I set the loudness target for mono podcasts to -16 LUFS or -19 LUFS?
This seemingly simple question comes up often and is the main topic of this blog post.

Photo by Franck V.

We are also introducing the new loudness normalization parameter Dual Mono and we're announcing the move of our Advanced Audio Algorithms to Public Beta!

The Mono Loudness Problem

"If my stereo production is loudness normalized to -16 LUFS, should I use -19 LUFS for mono (3 LU lower)?"
Unfortunately, this simple question is not that easy to answer - it depends on how ...

If listeners find themselves using the volume up and down buttons a lot, level differences within your podcast or audio file are too big.
In this article, we are discussing why audio dynamic range processing (or leveling) is more important than loudness normalization, why it depends on factors like the listening environment and the individual character of the content, and why the loudness range descriptor (LRA) is only reliable for speech programs.

Photo by Alexey Ruban.

Why loudness normalization is not enough

Everybody who has lived in an apartment building knows the problem: you want to enjoy a ...

In the classic loudness war, music and radio producers have been trying to create their recordings as loud as possible and loudness normalization was introduced to stop that. Now one can see the start of a new loudness target war, where podcasters set their loudness targets higher and higher, mainly triggered by high target recommendations of platforms like Spotify or Amazon Alexa.
In this article, we will show how to resist the loudness target war and still be compliant with major platforms.

Resist the loudness target war! (Photo by Nayani Teixeira)

What's the problem?

“Two or three ...

Last weekend, at the Subscribe10 conference, we released Advanced Audio Algorithm Parameters for Multitrack Productions:

We launched our advanced audio algorithm parameters for Singletrack Productions last year. Now these settings (and more) are available for Multitrack Algorithms as well, which gives you detailed control for each track of your production.

• Fore/Background Settings: keep your music/clip tracks unchanged and set a custom background gain
• Multitrack Leveler Parameters: control the stereo panorama, leveling algorithm, dynamic range and compression
• Better Hum and Noise Reduction Controls for each track
• Maximum True Peak Level setting for the final ...

Until recently, Amazon Transcribe supported speech recognition in English and Spanish only.
Now they included French, Italian and Portuguese as well - and a few other languages (including German) are in private beta.

Update March 2019:
Now Amazon Transcribe supports German and Korean as well.

The Auphonic Audio Inspector on the status page of a finished Multitrack Production including speech recognition.
Please click on the screenshot to see it in full resolution!

Amazon Transcribe is integrated as speech recognition engine within Auphonic and offers accurate transcriptions (compared to other services) at low costs, including keywords / custom ...

In late August, we launched the private beta program of our advanced audio algorithm parameters. After feedback by our users and many new experiments, we are proud to release a complete rework of the Adaptive Leveler parameters:

In the previous version, we based our Adaptive Leveler parameters on the Loudness Range descriptor (LRA), which is included in the EBU R128 specification.
Although it worked, it turned out that it is very difficult to set a loudness range target for diverse audio content, which does include speech, background sounds, music parts, etc. The results were not predictable and ...

Large file uploads in a web browser are problematic, even in 2018. If working with a poor network connection, uploads can fail and have to be retried from the start.

At Auphonic, our users have to upload large audio and video files, or multiple media files when creating a multitrack production. To minimize any potential issues, we integrated various external services which are specialized for large file transfers, like FTP, SFTP, Dropbox, Google Drive, S3, etc.

To further minimize issues, as of today we have also released resumable and chunked direct file uploads in the web browser to ...

Lots of users have asked us about more customization and control over the sound of our audio algorithms in the past, so today, we have introduced some advanced algorithm parameters for our singletrack version in a private beta program!

• Leveler Presets are basically complete new leveling algorithms
• Maximum Loudness Range (LRA) Target to control the strength of our Leveler
• Maximum True Peak Level
• Better Hum and Noise Reduction Controls

UPDATE Nov. 2018:
We released a complete rework of the Adaptive Leveler parameters and the description here is not valid anymore!
Please see Auphonic ...