Where do you see and change the reference level in the Loudness track?
I believe the reference level is -23 LUFS, but I don’t think it can be changed. https://www.steinberg.help/r/nuendo/14.0/en/cubase_nuendo/topics/tracks_about/tracks_about_transpose_track_inspector_r.html
it can be changed as it follows the control room meter settings
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It uses the settings from the loudness metering.
True peak values are over 0dB FS. So reference level for true peak values is 0dB FS.
Thanks all. Making adjustments in the Meter next to CR did it. A couple things - it’s weird that I can Only set -13LUFS as the max. I know that’s crazy loud, but there are some styles that need to push it higher than that. Also, the TP detection doesn’t make sense to me. I reduce the reference level and the TP values exceeding the reference values goes down. That doesn’t make sense to me…shouldn’t they go up?
yes that’s the window i was referring to. -13 is very loud and i only use -14 for web/smartphone productions. But indeed there are genres of music that go to -9… i once heard a young producer say: “.. it just doesn’t feel right when i don’t hit -9. It feels off when it doesn’t”. I think that is troublesome (it was dnb/hardstyle).
Having a limit on it though, yeah that is weird i think. I don’t see a reason besides ear sanity… but still.
On loudness: when your integrated loudness reference drops, your headroom goes along with it, I guess. You can raise it afterwards though, right? It is not very intuitive i agree but not a big issue.
What do you mean by that?
I would think a higher reference point should give a lower “count of true peak values exceeding reference level”.
I agree it’s no big deal. Was just curious because I hadn’t tried the loudness track before. I’ll stick with my third-party tools.
It’s “nice” that Nuendo tells us what is good taste what is not I guess 
Not many tracks on the 100 most played that is below -10 LUFS though…
Best regards,
Johannes
Before or after streaming platforms normalize toward -14?
Well after they are normalized, they are all topping out on -14… Most (almost all) still chooses to upload files that are waaaaay louder that that. But to each their own. My point is just WHY Steinberg has an opinion.
It completely depends on the genre. Some genres I mix are hitting -2LUFS (short term). Most pop these days is quite loud in short term and it’s appropriate for that genre. We’ve got the ability these days to mix both loud and dynamically exciting tracks as you can achieve that loudness through mix density.
A well-executed loud mix is still going to sound loud even when turned down by the streaming platform (assuming if the user has streaming normalization on). There are a variety of ways to achieve this but I’ll always tell people to mix for the genre and ignore the numbers as it’s a bit of a pointless exercise trying to chase a moving target re: streaming platform loudness recommendations. Simply mix for the song/genre and if it needs to be a loud and dense mix, that’s what it needs to be.
My comments are from the perspective of a modern music mix engineer and post mixing is a different beast.
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