So glad I searched for LUFS first, before starting another topic on the subject.
I have just spent the last two years working to the K system, mainly K12, for my ambient stuff.
Then over on the other forum I frequent, a loudness discussion was started and LUFS was mentioned. I ignored it then, but it raised its head again with respect to someone's track.
I had already come across the Ian Shepherd article and associated video, which I found very interesting and it does make a lot of sense.
As it happens I had already embarked upon no longer using any compression on any of my creations and even though I have Pro-L on my master buss, I only use it because I like the metering. If something is too hot, now I use automation, in some form or another, to tame any peaks.
That said, it appears that I am still mixing (I don't like using the term mastering because I really don't know what I am doing) a bit too high. Talk on the street is, for ambient stuff, I should be hitting between -18 to -16 LUFS, integrated (over the length of a track).
bitflipperYour best bet using bundled plugins in SONAR is Adaptive Limiter, which conveniently displays LUFS values.
Thanks for pointing that out, Dave. Because I already had Pro-L, which can display RMS to the K system, I didn't bother trying Adaptive Limiter when it was introduced into SONAR. My initial question about this tool is, it doesn't give me a peak integrated LUFS level and once a track starts to fade, or get louder, the LUFS value changes too.
Ian Shepherd used something called LCAST but that is something like $200 and I'm not sure I can afford that at the moment.
So I am now looking into what other tools are out there that I can use just to meter, in terms of LUFS.