Measuring average loudness in Premiere Pro

Most editors are familiar with the audio meters next to the timeline showing your audio peaks. For a lot of videos that’s all you need, keep an eye on your peaks making sure nothing clips and you’re good. But some deliveries might require you to mix your audio to a specific average loudness, here’s a quick tutorial on how to check the average loudness of your audio in Premiere Pro.

How to use Loudness Radar

Loudness Radar is a handy little tool built in Premiere Pro that allows you to scan the average loudness for an individual audio track or the overall audio mix of your video. Just open Loudness Radar, play your video and let it do its thing. At the end you’ll get the average loudness as a LKFS-value. Some spec sheets might list average loudness as LUFS, in the past there used to be small differences between LKFS and LUFS but nowadays they’ve been standardized so they’re the same exact thing. If the spec sheet asks for -22 LUFS you will dial your audio to -22 LKFS in Premiere.

If you need to make adjustments to your audio after the first scan, simply reset Loudness Radar and measure your video again.

If you’re missing Loudness Radar in Premiere you might need to run Premiere using Rosetta. Here’s a quick tutorial on how to launch apps using Rosetta.