--- title: "Broadcast and Streaming Loudness Specs for Commercials" description: "What loudness a commercial has to deliver at: -24 LKFS for US broadcast under the CALM Act, -23 LUFS for EBU R128, and platform normalisation for streaming." canonical_url: "https://elephantaudio.pk/guides/broadcast-loudness-specs" type: "Article" date_modified: "2026-09-08T18:21:24+05:00" publisher: "Elephant Audio" publisher_url: "https://elephantaudio.pk" entities: - name: "Lahore" type: "City" same_as: - "https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11739" - "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lahore" - name: "Pakistan" type: "Country" same_as: - "https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q843" - "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakistan" author: name: "Abu Bakar Zahid" role: "Founder, Managing Director & Music Producer at Elephant Audio" url: "https://elephantaudio.pk/founder" same_as: - "https://www.linkedin.com/in/abubakarzahid94" - "https://www.youtube.com/@AbuBakarZahid" - "https://www.imdb.com/name/nm12369947/" - "https://open.spotify.com/artist/1vsRY1hLmqEBXcx5xeKs0m" - "https://music.apple.com/us/artist/abu-bakar-zahid/1654787374" - "https://www.deezer.com/us/artist/190524117" - "https://on.soundcloud.com/EnpcD" - "https://www.instagram.com/abubakarzahid94/" - "https://www.facebook.com/abubakarzahid9400/" - "https://twitter.com/abubakarzahid94" - "https://soundsofpakistan.com/artist/abu-bakar-zahid-2/" person: "Abu Bakar Zahid" person_same_as: - "https://www.linkedin.com/in/abubakarzahid94" - "https://www.youtube.com/@AbuBakarZahid" - "https://www.imdb.com/name/nm12369947/" - "https://open.spotify.com/artist/1vsRY1hLmqEBXcx5xeKs0m" - "https://music.apple.com/us/artist/abu-bakar-zahid/1654787374" - "https://www.deezer.com/us/artist/190524117" - "https://on.soundcloud.com/EnpcD" - "https://www.instagram.com/abubakarzahid94/" - "https://www.facebook.com/abubakarzahid9400/" - "https://twitter.com/abubakarzahid94" - "https://soundsofpakistan.com/artist/abu-bakar-zahid-2/" --- # Broadcast and Streaming Loudness Specs for Commercials ## What loudness spec does a commercial have to hit? A US broadcast commercial delivers at -24 LKFS integrated under ATSC A/85 and the CALM Act, with a tolerance of plus or minus 2 LU and true peak no higher than -2 dBTP. European broadcast follows EBU R128 at -23 LUFS. Streaming platforms normalise playback to roughly -14 LUFS. A master cut for one target is not correct for another. -24 LKFS US broadcast (ATSC A/85, CALM Act, +/-2 LU) · -23 LUFS European broadcast (EBU R128) · -14 LUFS streaming playback (Spotify, YouTube, Amazon) · -2 dBTP true-peak ceiling (US broadcast delivery) LKFS and LUFS are the same measurement: This is the single most common source of confusion, and it costs people real money in rejected deliveries. LKFS and LUFS are not two different scales. Both are the loudness unit defined by ITU-R BS.1770 — a K-weighted, gated average of the whole programme. ATSC, the North American broadcast standard, calls the unit LKFS. The EBU, in Europe, calls the same unit LUFS. One LU equals one dB. So the difference between the American target of -24 and the European target of -23 is not a difference of standards or units. It is one decibel. That is small enough that people assume it does not matter and large enough that a compliance system will reject the file. The targets, by where the spot is going: Integrated loudness over the whole spot, with the true-peak ceiling each specification sets: - US broadcast and cable — -24 LKFS, tolerance +/-2 LU, true peak at or below -2 dBTP. Set by ATSC A/85, enforced by the FCC under the CALM Act since 13 December 2012. - European broadcast — -23 LUFS, tolerance +/-0.5 LU for pre-recorded material, true peak at or below -1 dBTP. Set by EBU R128. - Streaming playback (Spotify, YouTube, Amazon Music) — normalised to approximately -14 LUFS. This is not a delivery requirement; it is what the platform does to your master on the way out. - Apple Music — normalised to approximately -16 LUFS. - Netflix delivery — -27 LKFS, dialogue-gated, tolerance +/-2 LU. This is a delivery specification, not playback normalisation, and it is a different number for a different reason. Delivery specification and playback normalisation are different things: A delivery specification is a contractual requirement: hand in a file measuring this, or it is rejected. Playback normalisation is something the platform does after the fact — it measures whatever you uploaded and turns it up or down toward its own house target so the listener is not reaching for the volume between tracks. The practical consequence is that mastering a streaming release louder than -14 LUFS buys nothing. The platform simply turns it back down, and everything sacrificed to get there — the dynamic range, the transients on the drums — is gone permanently while the loudness advantage is not. Nobody hears the extra level. They only hear the damage. It also means the two kinds of number cannot be compared directly. Netflix asking for -27 LKFS dialogue-gated and Spotify normalising to -14 LUFS are not a contradiction, and neither is louder or quieter than the other in any meaningful sense. They are measuring different things for different purposes. Why cut-downs fail compliance when the master passed: Integrated loudness is an average across the whole duration. That has a consequence people discover the hard way: a 15-second lift taken from a compliant 30-second master frequently does not measure the same, because the loud and quiet passages no longer sit in the same proportion. Cut the quiet opening off a spot and the average of what remains rises. So every deliverable gets measured on its own — the 30, the 15, the 6, the vertical social cut, the radio edit. Measuring the master and assuming the children inherit it is the most common route to a spot being bounced back the day before air. The same applies to a spot that is re-versioned for a different territory. A file that was correct at -23 LUFS for a European broadcaster is 1 LU hot for a US broadcaster, which is inside the plus-or-minus-2 tolerance and therefore usually passes — but stacked with any other drift it is what pushes a marginal file over. How a spot gets checked before it leaves: The order matters: measuring before the mix is finished tells you nothing, and limiting after measuring invalidates the measurement. 1. Confirm the target in the brief: Territory and platform, written down before the mix starts. US broadcast, European broadcast, streaming and theatrical are four different numbers, and the mix decisions that follow are not the same. 2. Mix to the target, not to the limiter: A mix built at the right level does not need to be squashed into compliance afterwards. Loudness compliance achieved with a brick-wall limiter on the master bus is audible, and on dialogue it is audible immediately. 3. Measure integrated loudness on the finished file: Whole-programme, gated, per ITU-R BS.1770. Not a moment-to-moment reading, not the loudest section. 4. Measure true peak separately: True peak is not sample peak. Inter-sample peaks appear after conversion, which is why a file reading -0.1 dBFS on a sample meter can clip a consumer D/A converter. Broadcast wants -2 dBTP in the US and -1 dBTP under R128. - Check after any format conversion, not only before - Encoding to a lossy codec can raise true peak further 5. Re-measure every cut-down independently: Each duration, each aspect ratio, each territory variant. The integrated figure is duration-dependent, so inheritance does not apply. ## Frequently asked questions ### Is LKFS the same as LUFS? Yes. Both are the loudness unit defined in ITU-R BS.1770. ATSC calls it LKFS in North America; the EBU calls it LUFS in Europe. One LU equals one dB. The American broadcast target of -24 LKFS and the European target of -23 LUFS differ by exactly one decibel, not by unit. ### What is the CALM Act and does it apply to my spot? The Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act directs the FCC to require that commercials are not louder than the programming they accompany. The rules took effect on 13 December 2012 and are implemented through ATSC A/85, which sets the -24 LKFS target with a plus-or-minus 2 LU tolerance. It applies to advertising carried on US broadcast, cable and satellite television. ### Can I master louder than -14 LUFS for streaming? You can, but the platform will normalise it back down and nothing is gained. What is lost — dynamic range and transient detail sacrificed to reach that level — does not come back when the volume is reduced. The listener hears a quieter, flatter master rather than a louder one. ### Why did my 15-second cut fail when the 30 passed? Integrated loudness averages across the whole duration, so a shorter cut taken from a compliant master often measures differently — usually louder, because the quiet passages that pulled the average down are no longer in it. Every deliverable has to be measured on its own file. ### What is the difference between true peak and sample peak? Sample peak is the highest value in the digital file. True peak estimates the highest level the waveform actually reaches between samples once it is reconstructed by a converter. A file that never exceeds -0.1 dBFS on a sample meter can still clip on playback, which is why broadcast specifications set a true-peak ceiling — -2 dBTP in the US, -1 dBTP under EBU R128. ### Do you deliver to US broadcast spec from Pakistan? Yes. Loudness specifications are numbers in a file, not a location — a spot mastered to -24 LKFS with -2 dBTP headroom is compliant regardless of which studio measured it. Tell us the territory and the platform in the brief and the master is made to that target, with each cut-down measured independently. ## Related - [Mixing and mastering to platform loudness targets](https://elephantaudio.pk/services/mix-master/raw) - [What to ask for from an audio post house](https://elephantaudio.pk/guides/audio-post-deliverables/raw) - [Audio for ads and digital campaigns](https://elephantaudio.pk/services/ads-digital/raw) ## Studio - **Studio:** Elephant Audio — Lahore, Pakistan - **Founder:** Abu Bakar Zahid — Founder, Managing Director & Music Producer at Elephant Audio - **Website:** https://elephantaudio.pk - **Contact:** abubakar@elephantaudio.pk