#388

For physical releases for sure, but the issue is streaming platforms, where most music is listened to these days, enforce these numbers :man_shrugging: sucks for those of us opting out of the loudness war to have our stuff manipulated, but honestly overall I’ll take it so that we can finally deescalate the loudness war and get a hint of dynamic range back in our mainstream culture

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#389

I’ve heard great things about Youlean (above). But also, I use Logic Pro and the multimeter and loudness meter do the job just fine for $0.

I’m looking at some of the VU meters as well because they do much the same thing if dialed in correctly. There is a digital VU emulator that also has some handy monitoring switches (phase/LR flopping/MidSides/etc) but I’ve forgotten the name. Or maybe I’ll make a standard patch to hit my Nagra with the monitor signal and use the Modulo there.

I think there are many ways to do this part and whatever you start with is probably alright.

I think some of this comes down to whether the music will be listened to in a playlist or whether it will be listened to on its own/as an album. For the listener, they’ll have to mess with the volume knob every track if we’re not consistent and that won’t be much fun for them. Streaming services will automatically turn the volume up or down to match their target LUFS because they don’t want to lose listeners due to fatigue.

When we’re mastering, we usually are trying to make it sound good for the levels the listener will be receiving. If our masters sound good at our preferred level as well as a few db up and a few db down then it’s probably no big deal where we are on LUFS. But Fletcher-Munson tell us it will always sound better the louder it is and if we don’t use something (whether our intuition or a LUFS target) then we’ll be right back at loudness wars and the accompanying lower dynamic range (which is fine for some tracks of course).

It’s simpler, in my experience, to have a standard target to start with and then make decisions based on the program material, intended effect, and target delivery device. It just takes a lot of the guesswork out if I start from the same place each time.

Definitely a “your mileage will vary” thing though and I’m glad there are people advocating for an entirely intuition-based approach.

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#390

The trouble with following streaming guidelines for loudness is that they are a constantly moving target. I stand by my original point, don’t worry about the numbers, just make it sound the best it can be. Mastering is about enhancing the emotional contact between an artist and a listener, not “hitting targets”, IMHO.

I’ve also been using a pair of really big Sifam VU meters for the last decade, they really do help a lot. I haven’t found any plugin versions being nearly as good, although the Klanghelm was the closest.

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#391

Thats the whole point of the EBU R128 loudness algo though as it doesn’t specify stringent limits apart from peak. Otherwise you can hit the averages in whatever way you see fit creatively which makes it a much more interprative standard.

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#392

Yes, that’s right, but then you see audio forums full of people recommending certain LUFS “targets” all over the place recently, so they don’t incur a “penalty”, without even having HEARD the music they are recommending it for… I just think a lot of people aren’t seeing the wood for the trees, or are forgetting why they loved music in the first place. Emotional engagement, not numbers.

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#393

Yes, because if you aim to release for spotify you might as well mix to their target which they are going to adjust it to anyway.

#394

Why though? What happens when they change their “target number” again in six months time? I’d rather not keep having to chase my tail. I try really, really hard to serve the music, not the streaming platforms.

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#395

They’ve moved their target 3db once. The difference of a bot changing your master 3db (maybe if you’re caught on the change) is going to be way less drastic compared to just doing whatever you want.

#396

The thing to know is that some of these services only turn down if you are above the target (they don’t amplify). so for example with YouTube if you master quieter than their LUFS target it will sound quieter than other videos.

I use HOFA’s free 4U meter plugin which does both integrated LU, as well as offline checking (when you drag a file onto it). It can also allow you to turn one side of the stereo field down which is a nifty utility sometimes. I find LUFS a useful figure to know sometimes, but don’t master to a specific value. What works for me the best is having a target monitor setting I use consistently, getting close to -12 RMS on ableton’s meter (ball park) and then getting it to be the right volume now that I know that monitoring value

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#397

I think of LUFS numbers as a handy ballpark way to keep an album levelled fairly consistenty, given that I can’t do the whole thing in one session with the same “ears” throughout.

Of course perfect equality of all the songs on an album isn’t the goal. If something sounds right in context at -15 when everything else has been closer to -11, so be it.

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#398

Thanks so much for the help from everyone :point_up_2: there!!!
I am going with Youlean Loudness Meter 2 and at 39$ for the pro version it seams well worth it. And with it having the file drop analyze and being a visual person I’m just sitting here dropping songs into directly from iTunes and getting a good sense of what music I would like to compare to number wise and visuals. Im finding that for this project -12LUFS is about as high as I would like to go as its kind of chill kind of minimal kind of beats and kind of ambient all mixed up into one album and it was all written on the op-1 so its not the most hifi sounds to be amplifying.

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#399

This was new for me…

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#400

I’ve been recently using ADPTR AUDIO Streamliner for checking streaming service ”compatability”. I’m no mastering engineer and don’t really know anything, but I feel it gives me certain verification that the tracks should not suffer from streaming service loudness standards (at the moment) dynamics wise. For one master to rule them all I think I would prioritize Bandcamp because the biggest drop in quality comes from streaming bitrate, and focusing on Bandcamp would at least give me one place to stick best possible product, as Spotify even on Premium is quite notable difference to my ears compared to Bandcamp downloads.

#401

so if i put a song into this “Loudness Penalty” that is already on spotify it tells me its going to lower it by -3 db’s if i open spotify play the track and route it into ableton with loopback what my meters tel me is its has not been turned down and the number are like 99% the same as the master but maybe there isn’t something im understanding here.

#402

There’s a lot about this that I don’t understand. Most importantly none of us (not even loudness penalty) knows the algorithms the various distributors use.

The main thing I took from discovering this is that I should not try to push gain to be louder than everyone else anymore (actually never did). As far as I understand it, the streaming services with their algorithms have ended the loudness war, and music can go back to being dynamic again.

But as I said, I don’t know much about any of this :slight_smile:

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#403

maybe I’m misunderstanding it too, but I feel like if you don’t get a small negative number or 0 on this loudness penalty site and you are targeting one of these services, realistically, you are putting the music you are mastering at a “disadvantage” (as if you play stuff next to each other, music that is played louder is more “engaging” than music that is played quietly…same reason why when you A/B changes it’s very important to do so at the same volume to actually be able to hear the difference and not just pick the louder one) , as some/(all?) of these services do not turn things up to reach their loudness target, they just turn stuff down if it’s above.

so in essence, I think there still is a reason to master “loudly” (enough), it’s just that it’s not based on peak limiting anymore, it’s based on a more complex algorithm.

for some music/targets this is probably not a big deal at all, as “loudness” is not the most important thing, but I think it’s important to understand what is going to happen so you can make that decision.

also, if someone knows more and sees some fault in my logic here, please let me know

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#404

Ended the loudness wars or loud won and these are the rulez :wink:

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#405

When I’m mastering for streaming I always like having my music around -10lufs - still dynamic but not brickwalled, and a max peak of -1dB. I’m still surprised when I see people go louder than that. I’d rather streaming services make my music a little quieter than louder since I don’t fully understand the streaming compression algorithms.

I’m happy there is a general standard of -14lufs though. It’s especially helpful for music from different albums/artists playing b2b in a playlist or whatever.

#406

I believe this is very true. Maybe it’s more of a function of the music I’m into these days but I find there’s a lot of variety in the mixes and masters that I come across. I have set up a loopback channel on my audiocard software so sometimes I just record some snippets from Spotify to analyze them and I saw some surprising stuff, like mixes that are kinda pinched with very little low bass and high frequencies, mixes that are very compressed but with a very low ceiling and other general not by the book approaches.

#407

Just to chime in on this. AES publishes a pretty good read on the subject: https://www.aes.org/technical/documents/AESTD1004_1_15_10.pdf

They are to my knowledge the best standardization of LUFS, but yes the different streaming services could have their own standards. One thing to note is that on Spotify you can actually turn this feature off in the settings.

I personally settled at -14LUFS being the loudest I’m willing to go anyways. I have pretty decent HiFi listening gear and love the way music with a lot of dynamic range sounds(classical). So for most material I work on I try to capture that same listening experience. It’s actually hard to get to -14LUFS most of the time.

● It is recommended that the Target Loudness of the stream not exceed -16 LUFS: to avoid excessive peak limiting, and allow a
higher dynamic range in a program stream.1
● It is recommended that the Target Loudness of a stream not be lower than -20 LUFS: to improve the audibility of streams on
mobile devices.
● It is recommended that short-form programming (60 seconds or less) be adjusted by constraining the Maximum Short-term
Loudness to be no more than 5 LU higher than the Target Loudness: This ensures that commercials and similar short-form
content are consistent with the stream loudness.
● It is recommended that the maximum peak level not exceed −1.0 dB TP: to prevent clipping when using lossy encoders.

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