Loudness Targets for Mastering (...It's not what the streaming services tell you.)
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- Опубліковано 24 січ 2022
- How loud should your master be? It's a common question, but the best answer depends a lot on your genre, production style and goals.
Streaming services like Spotify would have you believe that shooting for -14 LUFS in your masters should be good enough, once their automatic volume normalization does its job.
But most producers working in popular styles of music find that this target doesn't allow their music to stand up to their favorite releases on playlists. And as they investigate further, they find out that practically none of their favorite records are this quiet.
What are some better real world targets for mastering levels? Justin Colletti advises.
Spoiler alert: Some good "safe" targets for mastering are:
Pop and Rock: -13 to -10 LUFS (possibly louder)
Hip Hop: -10 to -8 LUFS (sometimes louder, sometimes quieter)
EDM: -8 to -6 LUFS (sometimes louder)
When, why and how should you go outside these ranges? And how can you get loudness without squashing the life of your mix? All that and a lot more in the video.
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Go nerdy, go technical cause it is not time wasting. All information is a blessing. The more we know the merrier.
Theres no rules with mixing and mastering! That’s why I aim for -60 LUFS, crank up my amps and bliss to the hisssss.
amplifiers get things "loud" not waveforms
Well, this still isn't that clear. Suppose you have a song that sounds good at -14 and also at -8 and everything in between, what are you going to choose? You get more dynamics with -14, so then that? It seems like the pros aren't doing that, and are just going for louder. Why? Is it just like you said, that the quieter sections of that louder master will sound louder on streaming services? Or does it have nothing to do with streaming services at all? It seems the rule is "as loud as you can get without losing fidelity." Why? For vinyl, or CDs, or radio?
Would love a metering video. Especially how and what metering to use during gain staging, before and after analog plugins, setting static mix levels, bus processing, and mastering, etc. Also, would love your thoughts on managing and optimizing crest factor for increased perceived loudness and how to measure and monitor that properly. (Sorry, that’s a lot of stuff, but would be very helpful-this stuff gets confusing).
The more info, the better. WE ARE THE NERDS.
Took me sooo long to get loudness right, Like over 10 years. It’s such an accumulation of things it’s hard to teach someone how to get Loud clean punchy mixes as it stems back to choices you make early on many different things. Gone are the days I used to throw an L2 limiter on the master bus and push it 😂. Now I generally get pretty clean -7 on rock and -6 on dense electronic without distortion or pumping. I never thought I could be able to do that even like a year ago and can now dial it back a bit to be safe.
I 100% need more of this
I'll take technical and comprehensive, aka nerdy, over under-educated any day. Thank you!
there is only one answer: LOUDER THAN YOURS
I usually don't comment videos but this is probably the best video I've seen on loudness. Great job!
I really appreciate the detailed, clear, well edited explanations. Thank you.
Thanks Justin, awesome episode!! It”s really helpful information. No. 1 mastering video on YT 👍
Thanks so much Justin! Awesome information ... I love pretty much all of your Videos that I've seen so far.
This was, once again, most excellent!! Thank you Justin!
Thank you for saying it how it is! I agree. It changed my life when I just started compressing and more important
Thanks for this video. After uploading some songs to spotify, which I mastered to have an average LUFS level of -14 o -13, because they normalize each track to that level anyway, it was still apparent my tracks were a little bit lower than many other commercial tracks. I looked everywhere for videos explaining why this happens and how to work around it but none were found. They just would stick to the script "everything is normalized to -14 LUFS playback so you dont need to compress more your track" without addressing the obvious fact that even with normalization many spotify songs have different perceived levels. You are the man.
Hey Justin! Thanks for talking about this stuff!! Good stuff!! Please don't be afraid of going too nerdy and technical!!
Probably the best video you have ever posted about music production. I love the honesty, bravo. The streaming services need to do better loudness analysis before penalties matter. Obviously, distortion for a music audiofile is outside of all this conversation.
I loved this.Thank you for the nuanced explanation.Great ! I think you explained things just right for me.