YouTube Audio Analyzer: Loudness (LUFS), Waveform and Spectrogram
Free YouTube audio analyzer: measure any video's loudness in LUFS, true peak and loudness range, and see its waveform, spectrogram, silences and clipping. Works with YouTube, 3Speak, Rumble, Odysee, BitChute, X and your own audio or video files. Nothing is uploaded.
Everything is measured in this browser. Nothing you play, drop or record is uploaded.
Want the exact numbers for a YouTube video? Download it first (your own videos: YouTube Studio → Content → ⋮ → Download), then drop the file here.
Open the video in another tab, then press the button, pick that tab and keep Also share tab audio on. Play the video: the page measures what the tab plays.
Works in Chrome, Edge, Brave and Opera on a computer. Firefox, Safari and phones can't share a tab's sound with a web page.
Play the video here
No playing needed: the page reads the video's sound track straight from the site and measures all of it.
Or measure while it plays:
- Press ● Start listening. Your browser asks what to share: pick This tab and keep Also share tab audio switched on.
- Play the video, with the player's own volume at 100% (not muted: to keep your room quiet, tick Keep my speakers silent below instead). Measure the whole video, or the part you care about.
- Press ■ Stop to see every number and chart below.
Listening 0:00
Silence while nothing plays is fine: quiet parts below −70 LUFS are left out of the loudness, as the standard says.
Measured through YouTube's player?
YouTube plays loud videos quieter than they were uploaded. Right-click the video → Stats for nerds and look at Volume / Normalized: for example 100% / 61% (content loudness 4.3dB). Type the content loudness number to get the loudness of the upload itself.
Over time
Drag to move along, Ctrl + scroll (or pinch) to zoom, double-click to see it all. Click to play from there.
What each site would do
| Where | Aims for | Change |
|---|
Loudness normalization turns whole videos up or down; it never fixes a mix. Values are the sites' published targets and can change.
Average spectrum
How much of the sound sits at each pitch, averaged over the whole recording.
Silences and pauses
Loudest moments
Clipping
Save the results
How this works
A web page is not allowed to read the sound inside a YouTube player (or any other site's player): the browser keeps other sites' media sealed off. There are four honest ways around that, and this page uses all of them:
- A file you drop. The exact sound, measured from start to end in a few seconds. Video files work too (MP4, MOV, MKV, AVI…). For your own YouTube videos, download the file from YouTube Studio.
- A direct link to an audio or video file (ending in .mp3, .mp4, .wav…), when the site holding it lets other pages read it. If it doesn't, download it and drop it.
- 3Speak and Odysee: the whole video without playing. These two sites let other pages read their video files, so ⚡ Measure the whole video now reads just the sound track and measures all of it in seconds to a few minutes (3Speak keeps the sound inside the video, so the download is the size of its smallest video version). Odysee sometimes stops other sites part way through a long video; then listen to it instead.
- Listening to a tab. For YouTube, Rumble, BitChute, X and Substack (and 3Speak or Odysee if you prefer), the video plays in the site's own player and the browser shares that tab's sound with this page (you choose the tab, and it asks first). It measures in real time, so a 10-minute video takes 10 minutes; you can stop any time. Tick Keep my speakers silent and the browser keeps sharing the sound while your speakers stay quiet.
What the numbers mean
- Integrated loudness (LUFS)
- How loud the whole thing feels, as one number (ITU-R BS.1770, the method YouTube, Spotify and TV use). YouTube plays everything at about −14 LUFS: louder videos are turned down, quieter ones are left quiet.
- True peak (dBTP)
- The highest point of the sound wave, including the peaks that happen between samples. Keep it at −1 dBTP or lower so it doesn't distort after it is converted to AAC or Opus.
- Loudness range (LU)
- How much the loudness changes between the quieter and louder parts (EBU Tech 3342). Speech is often 3 to 8 LU; a film can be 15 or more.
- Momentary and short-term
- Loudness over the last 0.4 s and the last 3 s, the two lines on the loudness chart.
- Peak-to-loudness ratio (PLR)
- True peak minus integrated loudness: how much punch is left. Very low values (under 8) mean heavily squashed audio.
- Noise floor
- The level of the quietest tenth of the recording, usually room noise or hiss between words.
- Clipping
- Places where three or more samples in a row sit at full scale: the wave was cut flat and you hear distortion.
Questions
Why does a YouTube video measure quieter than my file?
Because YouTube turned it down. Its player lowers loud videos to about −14 LUFS before you hear them, and this page hears what the player plays. Stats for nerds shows how much (content loudness); type that number in the box under the results to get the upload's own loudness. Also check that the player's volume slider is at 100%.
Can it measure a YouTube video without playing it, or faster?
Not from a web page. YouTube only gives its sound to its own player, and getting the file from a server would mean getting around YouTube's protection against downloaders, which we don't do. Playing faster would change the sound itself (and so the numbers). What you can do: tick Keep my speakers silent and let it play muted for you, or download your own video from YouTube Studio and drop the file here, which takes seconds.
Why must the player's own volume stay at 100%?
The page measures what the player plays. Muting the player or turning its slider down sends silence or a quieter copy. To keep your room quiet, leave the player at 100% and tick Keep my speakers silent instead: the browser then plays the tab to the page only.
Is the tab's sound recorded?
Only if Keep the sound so I can play it back is ticked: then the shared sound is also saved as a compressed copy in this browser's memory so you can play it back from the charts or download it. It is never uploaded and is gone when you close or reload the page. Untick it and the page keeps only the measurements (loudness every 0.1 s, the waveform's outline and the spectrogram). Sharing stops when you press Stop or close the tab.
Why can't it just download the YouTube video?
YouTube does not offer that to other websites, and getting around its protections is against its terms. Playing the video in YouTube's own player and listening to the tab is allowed and needs nothing extra.
Which loudness should I aim for?
For YouTube, about −14 LUFS with true peaks at or below −1 dBTP. For podcasts, −16 LUFS. Broadcast TV: −23 LUFS (Europe) or −24 LUFS (North America). Our Audio Editor can set the loudness of a file for you.