Levels, LUFS, SoundCloud, Mastering (WTF)

[aivoryuk]

If the master is too low then you are at the mercy of streaming platforms turning you up which may involve the wrong form of compression and limiting. If you are loud then then the most that will happen is you are turned down.
As an artist you want to make sure listeners are hearing your output as it is best intended.
In my opinion -14 LUFS is too low and my most recent masters came back louder but not smashed and they sounded great on the streaming platforms.

 

[Bri Doom]

I try to achieve around -14LUFS/-1dBTP for streaming & Vinyl and -9LUFS/-0.1 for CD mastering.
However I find achieving -14LUFS/-1dBTP almost impossible using Ozone 10/11. I'm sure it was much more achievable to get those targets almost bang on with Ozone 9 & earlier.

 

[Will Chen]

Late to the party. I went -12.5 LUFS (with -1.5 DB headroom) on my EP and honestly wish I went with -10 as it's a touch quiet vs reference material.

 

[LP59]

Late to the party. I went -12.5 LUFS (with -1.5 DB headroom) on my EP and honestly wish I went with -10 as it's a touch quiet vs reference material.

Unless you're distributing CD's it wouldn't matter since the streaming services would just take that 2.5 away from you during normalization. You can use loudnesspenalty.com to get the details. You could probably get by with a little less headroom though. Using a true peak meter can help with that.

 

[aivoryuk]

Unless you're distributing CD's it wouldn't matter since the streaming services would just take that 2.5 away from you during normalization. You can use loudnesspenalty.com to get the details. You could probably get by with a little less headroom though. Using a true peak meter can help with that.

If the streaming platform deems your tracks too quiet then they will use loudness algorithms to boost the volume. This may alter how your tracks sound on the platform and not what you intended.
From my experience it is better to be louder and just turned down then too quiet.

 

[Will Chen]

Unless you're distributing CD's it wouldn't matter since the streaming services would just take that 2.5 away from you during normalization. You can use loudnesspenalty.com to get the details. You could probably get by with a little less headroom though. Using a true peak meter can help with that.

Loudness penalty isn't accurate. You can record a Spotify stream and see what the levels look like.

 

[LP59]

If the streaming platform deems your tracks too quiet then they will use loudness algorithms to boost the volume. This may alter how your tracks sound on the platform and not what you intended.
From my experience it is better to be louder and just turned down then too quiet.

Yes, but he was asking about levels that are not too quiet.

 

[fretworn]

“Manual limiting”

 

[Desertdweller]

Late to the party. I went -12.5 LUFS (with -1.5 DB headroom) on my EP and honestly wish I went with -10 as it's a touch quiet vs reference material.

Serious question - vs what reference material?

Everything on Spotify, Youtube, etc., is at -14 LUFS now. If you're mastering to -12 or -9 your music will be quieter on streaming platforms and more compressed than if you master to -14 LUFS because they will turn your music down from -12 or -9 to -14 anyway. Check out 25 minutes into this video I've posted below for what I'm talking about.

Honestly, this is a great video everyone should watch on this topic IMO and changed how I master. It's only 30 minutes long and its on-point throughout.

 

[Will Chen]

Serious question - vs what reference material?

Everything on Spotify, Youtube, etc., is at -14 LUFS now. If you're mastering to -12 or -9 your music will be quieter on streaming platforms and more compressed than if you master to -14 LUFS because they will turn your music down from -12 or -9 to -14 anyway.

This is a great video everyone should watch on this topic IMO and changed how I master:

Yeah...really think that's a gotcha to catch amateurs at this point. My song Round Trip Ticket on Spotify, if I record Spotify's output and compare it to the file I uploaded the peak level is the same around 12.5. But if I compare it to say Plini Handmade Cities, that's peaking at -8.7. Go ahead and literally pick any modern release and record Spotify's output into your DAW of choice and check. I spot checked a few tunes off the Billboard Top 100: Drake and Doja Cat peaking around -10 and Taylor Swift at -8.5. Loudness for the sake of loudness? Yeah, bad. Focusing only on the volume? Absolutely bad. Getting penalized for exceeding -14? Yeah...it's just not true. Modern releases are as compressed as they've ever been and it's easily verifiable. Next time around I'm definitely shooting a bit hotter.

 

[Cirrus]

I can't be bothered to check right now but isn't volume normalisation an option that the user can turn on or off?

 

[Will Chen]

I can't be bothered to check right now but isn't volume normalisation an option that the user can turn on or off?

Only in the app. But that's besides the point. If you do any research about mastering for streaming you will see this -14 LUFS being thrown around and the claims your music will get automatically "penalized" if mixed hotter. But the truth is...plenty of professionally released music is delivered way hotter than that and on the Spotify web interface it is not automatically normalized or "penalized". Sure...in a normalization setting it would get turned down. But, who cares? Everything will sound the same volume. But what happens in a non-normalized setting? Your -14 master will sound quieter than pretty much all professional releases.

 

[Desertdweller]

Only in the app. But that's besides the point. If you do any research about mastering for streaming you will see this -14 LUFS being thrown around and the claims your music will get automatically "penalized" if mixed hotter. But the truth is...plenty of professionally released music is delivered way hotter than that and on the Spotify web interface it is not automatically normalized or "penalized". Sure...in a normalization setting it would get turned down. But, who cares? Everything will sound the same volume. But what happens in a non-normalized setting? Your -14 master will sound quieter than pretty much all professional releases.

In what non-normalized setting?

 

[Will Chen]

In what non-normalized setting?

Web interface, any downloaded music, normalization disabled in app, in the future when companies arbitrarily decide -12 or -10 is the target, etc.

 

[LP59]

Loudness for the sake of loudness? Yeah, bad.

I think that's the most important point. We can now add more dynamics to our music without worrying about that making it sounding too quiet compared to music from other musicians. The end of the loudness wars is liberating. That said, I target -10.5. That way I can use the same master for CD and streaming and it works well on both.

 

[aivoryuk]

Only in the app. But that's besides the point. If you do any research about mastering for streaming you will see this -14 LUFS being thrown around and the claims your music will get automatically "penalized" if mixed hotter. But the truth is...plenty of professionally released music is delivered way hotter than that and on the Spotify web interface it is not automatically normalized or "penalized". Sure...in a normalization setting it would get turned down. But, who cares? Everything will sound the same volume. But what happens in a non-normalized setting? Your -14 master will sound quieter than pretty much all professional releases.

All my releases (which I mixed) were professionally mastered and we're hotter than -14LUFS.

As I said in my previous post - if you are louder, all that will happen is that it will be turned down.

If you are too quiet - you will be at the mercy of whatever loudness optimisation algorithm that they have and your music may not come out how it was intended.

Get it how you want it sounding.

 

[Will Chen]

All my releases (which I mixed) were professionally mastered and we're hotter than -14LUFS.

As I said in my previous post - if you are louder, all that will happen is that it will be turned down.

If you are too quiet - you will be at the mercy of whatever loudness optimisation algorithm that they have and your music may not come out how it was intended.

Get it how you want it sounding.

Yep. Agree entirely. I wanted to go to go around -10 but dialed it back as I had the -14 nonsense stuck in my head and this was my first more serious streaming release. Lesson learned.

 

[Desertdweller]

@Will Chen I appreciate where you're coming from, however I encourage you to check out these two clips. This first vid is this song when I released it in 2020. LUFS was -9 or -10:



Not bad, but very compressed and the vocal really gets slammed as a result.

Now reference that to the remaster I recently did to shoot a little video for it. Other than the drum samples being improved, the main difference between this and the above track is that my LUFS-I for this was -13.8, so very close to the -14 target.



To my ear there's much more space between the instruments, the guitar has more high end, the vocals sit more comfortably in the mix, the beat strikes harder, and the bass drum / bass guitar have more thump. It's also perceptibly a touch louder than the first track as well when played through Youtube, though to your point Will, the .wav file for the first is perceptibly louder on my PC due to the perceived loudness and limiting.

Just food for thought, and I'm not saying I'm right by any means. 99.999999% of music listened to is streamed, and giving yourself some headroom can make a world of difference.

This is the output stats for the second video for reference:

Am I 100% doing it the right way? IDK, but I'm getting better results than slamming it as I did 3 years ago.

 

[DrewJD82]

Serious question - vs what reference material?

Everything on Spotify, Youtube, etc., is at -14 LUFS now. If you're mastering to -12 or -9 your music will be quieter on streaming platforms and more compressed than if you master to -14 LUFS because they will turn your music down from -12 or -9 to -14 anyway. Check out 25 minutes into this video I've posted below for what I'm talking about.

Honestly, this is a great video everyone should watch on this topic IMO and changed how I master. It's only 30 minutes long and its on-point throughout.

Thanks for posting this, this was a great watch. Those null tests were something else and the comparisons towards the end are crazy. It's pretty cool we have the option to steer away from destruction, though. I really wish I tackled this stuff when I first started teaching myself to mix, but it can't be any easier these days with all the meters we have available.

 

[Desertdweller]

Those null tests were something else and the comparisons towards the end are crazy.

Right? It's pretty crazy that all a limiter is doing is putting clicks and pops into our music and he makes a great point about what is this doing to our society if this is in all of our music. Definitely something to ponder, and something that's made me consider how I finalize my own music or any other music I mix.