The plugin and the standalone app

LoudSense 0.3 is a native VST3 and AU plugin for the master bus and a standalone app for files, for macOS and Windows — a one-time purchase at the price on the plugin page. Both use the same measurement core as this browser tool, tested against the EBU reference signals, so a file reads the same everywhere. Audio passes through the plugin untouched, with zero latency.

Quick start

1. Put LoudSense last on the master, after every other plugin, with the master fader at 0 dB — so it measures what you will export.
2. Pick what you deliver to in the bar under the tabs (Delivering to). The first time you open LoudSense, it asks.
3. Play the song or the episode. The big line on the Meter tab is the answer: on target, or what to change, in dB.

Meter

One answer line for the chosen target — "On target for Apple Podcasts", "Lower by 2.1 dB for Spotify", "Clipped: re-export without clipping" — and under it the live LUFS-M, LUFS-S, LUFS-I, LRA, peak, true peak and clips of the run. The bars and the short-term curve show the target's window in green and the true-peak ceiling in red; values outside turn amber or red. The spread next to the curve shows where the whole run sits against the window, and true-peak overs are marked on the curve where they happened.

Below, a verdict row for every target of the group, each with its fix. Gain to target is the number to type into the master's output trim — or says Limiter when turning down would leave the window and a true-peak limiter at the ceiling is the fix. Peaks since reset lists every clip run and true-peak overshoot with its song position; click one to copy the time.

When the run starts over

The dropdown next to the answer line sets it:

• Restart on locate (default): stop and play on from the same spot and the reading keeps adding up; play from somewhere else and it starts fresh. A cycle jump keeps adding up.
• Restart on every play: every press of play starts a new reading.
• Manual reset only: it never restarts by itself.

Pause holds every number (the Timeline keeps measuring). Reset starts over; a run of 10 seconds or more can be undone for 10 seconds, after that it is kept in History.

The … menu: reset on loop jumps, hold while the transport is stopped, the scale (absolute LUFS, or EBU +9 / +18 around the target, where 0 means on target), save the settings as default for new instances, and the compact view — one strip with the answer, LUFS-S, LUFS-I and true peak.

Timeline

The song, not the pass. Every block the host plays through LoudSense lands on the song position the host reports, in 100 ms slots. Play any part in any order: the newest pass over a part replaces the older one, and the numbers and verdict rows are stitched from everything measured so far, with the same gating as a single pass. The Timeline is saved with your project: reopen the session and the verdict for the song is still there.

The bar shows what is covered and how fresh it is: bright for the last two minutes, dimmer for older. The list next to it shows each measured stretch with its age. Double-click a stretch to clear it; Clear starts over. The plugin cannot see edits: after a change, play that part again.

Check a bounce

Drop the exported file on the Timeline tab (or use Check a bounce). LoudSense measures the file and lines it up against what played through it, then says where a difference comes from: the master fader not at 0 dB, a plugin after LoudSense, dither, the MP3 or AAC encoder adding true peak, a fixed-point export that clips, or simply a different length.

Analyze a part of the song

A plugin never gets the timeline itself from the host, only the audio the host plays through it. So the part has to play through LoudSense once:

1. Play it in realtime. Select or cycle the part and press play. It lands on the Timeline; with Follow transport it also becomes a capture.
2. Offline bounce of the cycle range. The host renders far faster than realtime and still reports the position, so the part is measured in seconds.
3. Export the selection into the watch folder. The standalone app measures it as it lands and raises a notification when it misses the target.

Show (live sets)

Start show when the doors open and press Next song between songs — or type the next title and press Return. Every song gets its own LUFS-I, loudness range and true peak against the target; the strip shows the whole show on the clock, the song starts marked. End show keeps the show in the Panel tab (each song is a section) and in History, and Save setlist CSV writes the table.

Surround and Dolby Atmos

Put LoudSense on a 5.1, 7.1, 5.1.4, 7.1.2 or 7.1.4 bus: every channel counts with its ITU-R BS.1770 weight — the surrounds weighted up, the LFE left out of the loudness but kept for the peaks. For Dolby Atmos, a plugin sees channels, never the Atmos objects: measure the bed, the renderer's 7.1.4 or 5.1 re-render routed back into the DAW, or the stereo fold-down. The Surround / Atmos group has Apple Music Dolby Atmos, Netflix (dialog-gated) and EBU R128 5.1.

Capture

Press Capture, play the pass, press Stop capture. The Panel tab then shows the waveform with clip and peak marks, the loudness curve, the stats and the speech/music line, with three views underneath: Verdict, Sections and Compare across the last five passes — "before the limiter change" next to "after". Export copies the text report or saves the panel as PNG and the curve as CSV.

Markers. The Marker button (shown while a capture runs) drops a marker; shift-click the panel adds one afterwards; Export › Import markers reads a marker export from the DAW. Sections then report LUFS-I, short-term max, LRA, peak and clips each — verse, chorus, ad read.

Files (standalone)

Drop files or folders: a row per file with the verdict for the chosen target, the album loudness underneath, and Report CSV / Report HTML with a row per file and a column per platform. Multichannel WAV files are measured on every channel; on macOS the app also reads Dolby Digital and Dolby Digital Plus (.ac3, .ec3).

Watch folder points at the DAW's bounce folder: every new export is measured when it has finished writing, and a bounce that misses the target raises a notification. Play / Hear as plays a file at the level a platform normalizes it to.

History and targets

Every capture, file, reset run and show is remembered on this machine, numbers only, and shared by every LoudSense on it. Pick a row in History to see the trend of its series. Targets holds the built-in table plus your own: add a station spec or a client rule, click it to edit, export it as a .lstarget file and send it to the mix engineer.

Dialog-gated loudness

Next to the full-mix value the plugin shows an estimate of the integrated loudness over the parts its speech detector marks as speech — the value long-form deliveries such as Netflix (−27 LKFS, dialog-gated) specify. It is an estimate: those deliveries are measured with the broadcaster's own dialog detector.

The numbers and the keys

What Peak, True peak, Clips, LUFS-M, LUFS-S, LUFS-I and LRA mean is on Reading the numbers; the same text is in the plugin's ? panel. Inside a DAW the host keeps the keyboard, so use the buttons; in the standalone app R starts and stops a capture and Return drops a marker.

Install

To activate the plugin, sign in once from it with a free squaresmile.de account, using the email address you bought it with, on up to three computers. It runs offline and renews its license when it is online.

macOS 11 or later (Apple Silicon and Intel): the VST3 goes to ~/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST3, the AU to ~/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components, the app to Applications. Windows 10 / 11 (64-bit): the VST3 goes to C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3, the app anywhere you like. No AAX, so not for Pro Tools.

The macOS builds are signed with an Apple Developer ID and notarized by Apple, so they install and open without a warning. The Windows build is not code-signed yet, so SmartScreen asks once on the first launch: More info → Run anyway.