RMS level for audio books or podcasts

[permanent hearing damage]

So I have a few podcasts and audio books I am working on right now and I honestly have no idea what my output should be looking like. I think it is pretty unlikely anyone will be tinkering with the audio after it leaves my hands.

I know that I hate that I can never listen to podcasts walking around the city unless I'm blasting it because I lose too much of the dialogue due to erratic levels.

I have one right now that I have kinda obliterated and it has an RMS level just around -12 dB - which is just about where my super dense rock mixes tend to end up.

I think it sounds fine, though it was a helluva battle keeping noise and hiss down.

What do you folks shoot for?

[Nick Sevilla]

Read some of these:

http://www.tcelectronic.com/loudness/br ... standards/


Typically when I have mixed material for broadcast, I tend to have peaks at -3dBFS, and an RMS between -14 and -12 dBFS, but it also depends on the program material itself.

As an example, classical music always tends to be less loud than rock, and that is o.k.

Cheers

[idylldon]

I just did a few audiobooks for ACX and the standards were:

Peaks > -3db
RMS between -18dB and -22dB
Noise floor between -50dB and -60dB

.5 second before chapter number, 2.5 secs. after chapter number and start of narrative, and 3.5 secs. after last word in chapter.

Since I think they do other processing to the files, these might not be the standards for other outlets.

Cheers,
--
Don

[permanent hearing damage]

Thanks! Just what I needed

[apropos of nothing]

Nice references. Thanks for the questions and responses guys. I adore this community -- it has been the one I have retained for greater than ten years, as I have dropped away from several others.