Loudness Equalization
Loudness Equalization keeps everything at a steady, comfortable volume — quiet passages are lifted and sudden loud moments are reined in. It's the same idea as Windows' own "Loudness Equalization", but tuned differently and with real controls: it's built so a game's footsteps stay audible while the gunshots don't deafen you, rather than just squashing everything toward one level. Ideal for late-night listening and chaotic game audio, where whispers and explosions live side by side.
Reach for it when:
- you want to hear quiet footsteps without gunfire blowing your ears out, without riding the volume yourself;
- your mix (or a game's own audio) swings between whisper-quiet and painfully loud;
- you're listening late at night and don't want to wake anyone with the loud parts, but still want to follow the quiet ones.
FX inserts can be added and set up on Free, but they only affect the sound with Premium.
Adding it
On a channel's FX tab, click + Node ▾ → Dynamics → Loudness Equalization. It drops into the chain just after the selected node. To edit it, pin one of the dock's two panels to it with ⇅, or set a panel to ⟳ Follow FX tab selection and click the node.
In Simple mode, add it from the Effects block's ⚙ instead — see Simple mode.
Where it sits in the chain matters: it works best late in the chain, after tone-shaping (EQ) has already set the character of the sound — it's reacting to loudness, not reshaping tone, so let everything upstream do its job first. Put a peak-sensitive node like an Expander before it if you're also cleaning up background noise, since this node will otherwise lift that background along with everything else.
Need more room? This panel doesn't have a ⛶ maximize button — with ten knobs and two graphs it's already the largest panel in the dock, and it always shares the dock evenly with its neighbor.
Reading the panel
The panel has two graphs side by side.
The left graph shows the boost ceiling per frequency band — the signal is split into five bands, and each one has its own independent boost limit. It's not a live meter; it shows what the AGC is allowed to do to each band right now, which updates live as you turn MAX BOOST and AIR.
The right graph is the peak compressor's transfer curve — the final safety stage (see "Compressor" below). While the engine is running, a bar along its bottom shows the incoming level, and the GR strip on its right edge shows how many dB the peak compressor is shaving off.
Controls
| Knob | Range | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| STRENGTH | 0…100 % | 70 | How hard each band's AGC pulls toward the target loudness. 0 = off (no lift or duck at all). |
| TARGET | −30…−6 dB | −18 | The comfortable level each band aims to hold. |
| ATTACK | 1…50 ms | 5 | How fast it turns down when things suddenly get loud. |
| RELEASE | 100…3,000 ms | 800 | How fast it turns up again once things go quiet. |
| RMS WIN | 100…3,000 ms | 1,500 | How long the mid band's loudness detector averages over before reacting to a rise. The other bands scale off this — lower bands react a bit slower, higher bands a bit faster — but every band recovers quickly regardless, so quiet detail returns promptly after a loud moment. Longer = calmer, steadier reaction to a single burst; shorter = reacts to level changes faster. |
| MAX BST (Max Boost) | 0…24 dB | 24 | The most any band is ever allowed to lift quiet material. The full value applies to the 500–1500 Hz band (a footstep's body); other bands get a fraction of it — the sub-bass is held back to around half, to avoid boom, while the two upper bands are set by AIR below. Lower this if quiet moments still get too loud overall. |
| BED REJ (Bed Reject) | 0…100 % | 70 | How much of the steady background is held back from the boost. Each band learns its own noise floor over time; this sets how strongly sound sitting at that floor (room tone, hiss, constant ambience) is kept from being lifted, while detail rising above it (a footstep, a transient) still lifts fully. Higher = less background comes up with the boost — the fix for "quiet ambience gets cranked up to a roar" along with whatever you actually wanted to hear. |
| AIR | 0…100 % | 50 | High-frequency emphasis, covering the two upper bands (1.5–4 kHz and above 4 kHz). These carry the direction cues — the subtle level and timing differences between your ears that tell you where a sound is coming from — but also the harsh, sibilant top end. Low = warm and safe, with less of that top lifted; high = bright and precise, with sharper directional detail but a sound that can sting. There's no universally "right" setting — dial it to your own ears and headphones. |
Compressor — a broadband peak catcher, applied after the five-band lift, that clamps sudden loud transients (like a gunshot) so they're tamed rather than blasting through:
| Control | Range | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| KNEE | −20…0 dB | −6 | The level where the peak compressor starts acting. Higher (closer to 0) means it engages on less material. |
| RATIO | 1…20 : 1 | 8 | How hard it clamps peaks once past the knee. |
Switches:
- BOOST QUIET (default: on) — when off, no band is ever allowed to amplify above unity; it can only ever duck the loud parts, never lift the quiet ones.
- LIMIT PEAKS (default: on) — when off, the final brickwall limiter (a hard cap near 0 dB) is bypassed, so nothing stops a sample from clipping past what everything upstream produced.
- MONO ANALYSIS (default: on) — when on, each band's detector judges loudness from the combined power of both channels, so left and right rise and fall together. Either setting preserves your stereo/spatial image — this only changes how loudness is measured, not how the resulting gain is applied to each channel.
How the lift is shaped
The signal is split into five frequency bands (crossovers at 150, 500, 1,500 and 4,000 Hz), and each band has its own independent loudness-tracking AGC and its own boost ceiling. The profile is kept fairly flat on purpose — only the sub-bass band is held back — so the high-frequency direction cues survive the lift and you can still tell where a footstep is; AIR is what tunes how much of that high-frequency detail comes through.
Every band also tracks its own noise floor independently (the BED REJECT control): a constant rumble, room tone or background hiss settles into that band's floor and is left alone, while anything rising above it is what actually gets pulled up. That's the mechanism behind why footsteps cut through without the steady background being cranked up right alongside them.
A good starting point
- Add it near the end of the chain and leave every knob at its default — that default is already tuned for "hear quiet detail, don't get blasted by loud moments" rather than a flat, even loudness.
- Play through something with a wide range — a quiet passage and a loud one (a game with footsteps and gunfire is the textbook case). Watch the GR strip on the peak compressor while the loud moment hits.
- If quiet detail still isn't coming through, raise STRENGTH, or raise MAX BST if it's the ceiling holding it back rather than the pull strength.
- If a steady background (fan noise, room tone, crowd murmur) is coming up too loud along with the detail you actually want, raise BED REJ.
- If the lift sounds harsh or fatiguing on your ears/headphones, lower AIR; if directional detail feels muddy or hard to localize, raise it.
The five knobs interact — STRENGTH sets how hard it pulls, MAX BST sets how far it's allowed to go, BED REJECT decides what counts as "worth lifting" in the first place. Expect to go back and forth a few times against real material before it feels right for your ears.
If it sounds wrong
| You hear… | Try… |
|---|---|
| Quiet detail still buried | Raise STRENGTH or MAX BST; lower TARGET (a more negative number) so it aims for a louder floor. |
| Background noise/room tone comes up too loud along with the detail | Raise BED REJ. |
| The lift sounds bright, sharp or fatiguing | Lower AIR. |
| You can hear direction cues (footsteps) but can't tell where they're from | Raise AIR — the localization detail lives in the two upper bands it controls. |
| A loud moment still spikes through uncomfortably | Lower KNEE or raise RATIO on the peak compressor; confirm LIMIT PEAKS is on. |
| Pumping, or level visibly "breathing" | Lengthen RMS WIN for a calmer reaction, or lengthen RELEASE so recovery isn't so abrupt. |
Presets, bypass and reset
- PRESET ▾ in the panel header applies a saved setup, or saves the current one under a name. Once one is applied the header shows Preset: name — see Knowing what preset is applied. Ready-made Loudness EQ setups — including game-specific footstep tunings — can be found in the Workshop — Workshop ▸ Browse, filter chip LEQ.
- ON / OFF bypasses just this node — the quickest way to hear whether it's helping.
- RESET returns every knob to its default.
Related
- Expander — cleans up steady background noise directly; pairs well placed before this node so there's less background left for it to lift.
- Compressor — general-purpose dynamic range control; this node is a specialized, multi-band alternative aimed at loudness comfort rather than tone-shaping.
- Spatial: Binaural HRTF — the directional cues this node's AIR control preserves are what a spatial fold turns into actual 3D positioning; the two are often tuned together for competitive gaming audio.
- Effects Rack — adding, ordering and rewiring nodes.