Crest factor
The ratio between a signal's peak level and its average level.
Crest factor quantifies how much headroom sits above the average loudness. A sparse acoustic recording has a high crest factor; a brick-walled modern master has a low one. It is one of the cheapest measurements available and one of the most misused.
Generated tracks frequently arrive already loudness-maximised, so they cluster at low crest factors. So does most commercial music released since about 2005. The measurement separates 'has been maximised' from 'has not been maximised' — it does not separate machine from human.
How this tool uses it
Contributes to the dynamics component. Its weight is automatically reduced when spectral evidence disagrees with it, because reference-conditioned generators can inherit human dynamics.
What else produces the same reading
- Loudness-war mastering on human records.
- Streaming normalisation applied after the fact.
- Reference-conditioned generation copying a human envelope.