The invention describes a method of automatically adjusting the loudness of an audio signal, which method comprises calculating loudness measures for samples of the input audio signal (1), identifying a number of distinct loudness lines (L1, L2, L3, L4) over 5 time among the loudness measures and altering the samples of the input audio signal (1) according to the identified loudness lines (L1, L2, L3, L4) to give an output audio signal (5) with adjusted loudness.