How to prepare your audio files for distribution

Knowledge Base Articles > Best Practices
Audio files should fall within the following specifications:
  • A true LPCM uncompressed WAV file with a .wav extension
  • Can have a bit depth of 16 or 24 bit
  • Can have a sample rate of 44.1 kHz, 48 kHz, 88.2 kHz or 96 kHz
  • Should have a clean header (make sure to export without any non-audio metadata)
  • Should not be a Broadcast WAV (BWF)
If your audio is rejected by the Portal, before contacting us, please read this: https://support.the-source.eu/kb/a36/how-to-correct-rejected-audio-files.aspx

Furthermore, make sure that the audio is:
  • Clean, without obvious analogue blemishes such as clicks, pops, crackles, or digital issues such as zipper noise, aliasing, drop-outs, clipping (unless deliberately applied as creative effects)
  • Cut to fit the musical content: max. 200 milliseconds lead-in silence, max. post silence 1 second
A note about loudness:
Loudness is a psychoacoustic term describing how loud music sounds to the human ear. Generally speaking, the lower the dynamic range, the louder music sounds compared to the same music with a higher dynamic range played at the same amplification volume/level.
In order to improve end user experience, most DSP's do not accept audio that sounds too loud compared to the other tracks on their platform and will actively lower the playback volume of tracks that are mastered too loudly.

To prevent this from happening to your track(s), we recommend mastering your audio to -14 LUFS integrated, normalized at -1 dBFS.

Article ID: 48, , Modified: 3/26/2026 at 3:36 PM

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