Met
Measured, and inside the published requirement.
Podcasts and spoken word
Check an episode's loudness and peaks before you publish it.
Finality measures a podcast episode against Apple Podcasts' published loudness and true-peak targets, shows how far it is from them and whether the peaks leave room to get there, lists the long pauses and plosives worth a listen with timestamps, and can return a level-corrected episode.
Three answers, not two
Not met
Measured, and outside it. The shortfall is named in the units the requirement uses.
Not measured
The value could not be read on this file. It is never reported as met, because an unproven requirement is not a passed one.
Why spoken word is reviewed differently
A voice is not a mix, and a target is not a rule.
A voice is not a mix
Music review looks for resonances to cut. In speech, the low note is the host's voice. Finality reviews a podcast as speech, so it does not tell you to EQ a voice out of your own episode.
The targets are guidance
Apple publishes -16 LKFS, give or take 1 dB, and a true peak no higher than -1 dBFS, as recommendations. Missing them does not stop an episode going out. Apple recommends them so that a player does not have to adjust your episode's volume.
Quiet does not always mean fixable
A quiet episode with high peaks cannot simply be turned up: the peak ceiling runs out first. Finality works out how much gain the ceiling allows and says how far short of the target that leaves you.
What gets measured
Two published targets, and the parts of an episode around them.
Loudness and true peak are checked against Apple Podcasts' published figures, with the measured value beside each target. Around them, Finality reviews what a host hears on a second listen: how long the pauses run, where the hard p and b sounds land, and how much noise sits under the voice.
The targets are taken from Apple's published audio requirements. They are recommendations, so Finality reports each as met or not met without treating a miss as a failure.
Apple Podcasts' published targets
Integrated loudness
-16 LUFS, within 1 LU
True peak
No higher than -1 dBTP
Also reviewed in an episode
Level headroom
Gain needed to reach -16, and gain the peak ceiling allows
Long pauses
Gaps of 5 seconds or more, listed with timestamps
Plosives
Hard p and b bursts, located by time
Noise floor
Background level under the voice
Correction
A level-corrected episode, re-measured after it is rendered.
Where an episode is outside the loudness or true-peak target, Finality can return a corrected file on request. Level is moved toward -16 LUFS with the true peak held under -1 dBTP. The rendered file is then measured again through the same analysis that judged the source, so the result describes the file you receive rather than the plan that produced it.
Your original is untouched
The original stays your primary download. A corrected episode is an additional file you asked for.
Only level moves
No EQ, no noise reduction, no editing. The correction changes one thing, the level, and reports the before and after.
No compression without you
Where an episode cannot reach -16 by gain alone because its peaks are too high, Finality reports the shortfall and stops rather than compressing the read.
No outcome claim
A corrected file meets the published figures. It carries no claim about how any platform or listener will treat it, and the decision to publish stays yours.
Scope
Built for finished episodes.
Upload a finished episode and choose Podcast. Finality reads it as speech from the first second, so nothing in the review is written for a song.
Reading an audiobook instead? Submission specs work differently. See the ACX lane
Not sure what to aim for? Read the podcast loudness guide
What this lane does not do yet
- Speech clarity itself is not measured. Finality reports level, peaks, noise, pauses and plosives; it does not score how intelligible a voice is.
- Finality reads the finished episode as one file. It does not separate hosts or judge individual tracks.
- Finality does not upload, submit, or publish anything to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any host on your behalf.
Check an episode before your listeners hear it.
Upload an episode and see it measured against Apple Podcasts' published targets before you publish it.
Free to start. 60 minutes of review a month.
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