Audio levels between -10 and -15 but upload is too quiet

Hi,
I'm new to audio processing so I might have miss-understood some terms wrong and am happy for a correction

In Fairlight I got all my levels in the meters to between -10 and -15 LUFS, no clipping, all fine.

Now when I upload the video to a platform (e.g. vimeo in my case), the audio itself is very quiet compared to other videos on the platform.

What is actually the workflow for this? If I have a person speaking, he is ~ -15 LUFS in davinci, and his peaks are -10 LUFS.

Should I compress and limit this audio to about -1 LUFS in Bus 1 before final rendering?

I mean I am not planning a heavy processed music clip where everything is compressed to the max and limited so it does not clip but I feel I am missing an important step with audio when uploading it somewhere.

Vimeo seems not to normalize the audio during upload to pull the levels up to where they want them and I don't know whether youtube does it, for instance (but afaik they recommend the -10 to -15 LUFS range)

A hint on the audio processing step before uploading would be appreciated

In Fairlight I got all my levels in the meters to between -10 and -15 LUFS, no clipping, all fine.

Which metering are you referencing? Channel, Buss, or Control Room?

Vimeo does not provide specific guidance for target loudness level and so there will be variance between content on that platform.

The AES recommendation (refer to: TD1004.1.15-10 / AESTD1008.1.21-8) of -16 LUFS for programme and a maximum true peak level of −1.0 dBTP meets targets required by services such as Apple Podcasts, and Apple Music.

Spotify, YouTube, Amazon Music, for example target programme loudness of -14LUFS and -1dBTP.

What is the content being delivered? Dialogue weighted programme, music only?

Are you following Curtis Judd on Youtube? If not, you should. This video and it's intro (link in description) take you on a deep dive into getting your audio loudness right:

I was checking Loudness on output Bus.

What confuses me about these things (even after research):

I've set Fairlights loudness level to -14 and checked my previously set levels on my output bus, which were now at +3.0 Integrated.
As seen here

minus14-lufs-plus3.jpg (32.17 KiB) Viewed 867 times

Now I've uploaded a test piece to youtube and expected its normalization to kick in because I am way too loud.

But stats for nerds say something else

youtube-no-normalize.jpg (28.25 KiB) Viewed 867 times

Can somebody get me a hint? From the loudness videos so far I regard my audio to be too loud and above -14 LUFS. Davinci confirms this. But I am confused why youtube seems fine with it, saying I have ~6db room left.

@Håkan Mitts I will check your recommended video in depth again.

Thank you all so far.

My habit is to Normalize to the A/85 standard, with Integrated at (or very near) 0, and then for upload I bump the Bus 1 fader to +8.

(For client delivery I leave Bus 1 at 0.)

I've solved my problem. Here is my post-mortem:

Prior to this post I did not know that the Loudness meter was relative to the settings in the Project-Manager. Or I knew and then forgot. This setting is located in Project-Manager > Fairlight > Target loudness level.

So previous me cranked up compressors and levels to something that had a similar loudness than other videos on say vimeo.

Now, with all the hints and help of you (big thanks) I've done the following:
* Setting Target loudness level to -14 LUFS. This is youtube's current thing, above where it compressed audio. Vimeo is undefined, but I take youtube's numbers for that.
* Run loudness meter on my mix and see for Integrated values to never go above 0. For talking head videos various sources recommend -3 resulting in -17 LUFS overall.

Why I had +3 Integrated is a mystery to me. I know integrated in davinci takes about 30 seconds of history data but as you can see from my screenshot below this was about a minute of clip where it said +3.

I had issues with Davinci not recognizing settings changes and after I changed the Meter Type in the Fairlight settings to Digital VU and then back to IEC, my integrated meter values were rendering correct data. -5.9 in my case which is exactly what youtube said

So don't forget to set target loudness level in the settings, future me. And if you have tools that can calculate loudness without playing the entire thing, use it.

Also: Found out about Curtis Judd, which is a bonus

Thanks for all helping me to get a grip on that!

Thanks,
Sam