Audio Export QA Checklist: Catch Problems Before Delivery

An export isn't finished when the progress bar disappears. The delivered file can still have the wrong channel layout, a clipped encode, a missing tail, stale metadata, or a perfectly valid format the recipient never asked for. This checklist keeps the creative approval and the technical handoff apart.

1. Freeze the delivery specification

Write down the destination requirements before you open the render dialog. “High quality WAV” is not a specification. Note the container, codec, sample rate, bit depth or bitrate, channel layout, loudness target, peak ceiling, filename pattern and metadata requirements.

Targets vary. EBU R 128 uses −23 LUFS as its program loudness reference for European broadcast workflows, while web platforms publish their own encoding recommendations. YouTube's current upload guidance, for example, recommends an MP4 container with 48 kHz audio encoded as AAC-LC, Opus or Eclipsa Audio. Neither example should be copied into an unrelated delivery.

2. Preserve a clean master

• Save a new project or file version before final processing.
• Keep a lossless master at the native production sample rate and an appropriate bit depth.
• Create distribution encodes from that master instead of repeatedly transcoding a lossy file.
• Apply dither only when reducing bit depth, and avoid applying it again to an already dithered master.

3. Check the edit before rendering

• Confirm the start is clean and intentional. Look for a clipped first transient or too much pre-roll.
• Listen all the way through the final fade, reverb and ambience tail, and make sure the selection doesn't cut it short.
• Check edits, crossfades, mute regions and processing bypass states.
• Confirm markers, regions and channel routing if the export depends on them.
• Bypass any temporary monitoring correction that shouldn't print into the file.

4. Check level, loudness and headroom

Peak normalization and loudness normalization solve different problems. Peak normalization moves the highest sample to a chosen ceiling. Loudness normalization changes gain according to an average program measurement. Sound Forge's documentation also warns that converting to a compressed format such as MP3 can clip peaks sitting at or near 0 dB, and it suggests normalizing to about −0.9 dB as a starting point. That's a reason to leave margin rather than aiming blindly at 0 dBFS.

• Measure the full program. A highlighted excerpt won't do.
• Check sample peaks and true peaks when the destination specifies them.
• Confirm the loudness measurement mode and gating match the requested standard.
• Listen after any limiter, normalization or codec stage for pumping, distortion and softened transients.
• Don't raise a quiet master just to make the waveform look bigger.

5. Verify channel layout and polarity

Open the rendered file and inspect it as a new asset. Confirm that mono hasn't turned into dual mono by accident, left and right aren't swapped, and a multichannel file follows the expected order. For stereo material, check both channels separately and do a mono compatibility listen if the destination may sum them.

The left/right speaker test helps you check the playback path. You still need to check the channel metadata and waveform inside the delivered file.

6. Reopen the actual export

Don't approve the timeline and assume the render matches it. Close the render dialog, import or open the output file, then listen to the start, several transitions, the loudest section and the end. Check duration, silence, fades, sample rate, bit depth or codec, channels and metadata on the exported asset itself.

7. Test the delivery copy

• Play it in a second application or on the destination device when practical.
• For a lossy encode, compare it with the lossless master at matched loudness.
• Confirm the filename, extension and version number are unambiguous.
• Check that album, episode or reel assets use the same naming pattern.
• Create a checksum when files move through a formal handoff or archive.
• Keep the master, delivery file and notes together so the export can be reproduced.

A compact sign-off block