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We know now that all the major music streaming services are using loudness normalisation – meaning every song is played at a similar level, aiming for a “target” loudness, which is different for every service.
Loud songs are turned down, quiet songs are turned up – IF there’s enough peak headroom.
And because the target level for some platforms is pretty loud, that’s a very significant “IF”.
Because when there isn’t enough headroom to lift the level up without clipping, your music either won’t get turned up and will sound quieter than everything else as a result, or it may have extra peak limiting applied to get it up to the target level. Which may or may not sound good.
Neither of these is an ideal situation !
So…
How loud is loud enough, and how loud is too loud ?
The answer is… it depends.
It depends on your views on dynamics, your views on the loudness war, and which platform we’re talking about – YouTube, Apple Music, Spotify – wherever.
To try and shed some light on the subject, I’ve put together an infographic summarising as much as I can about the topic – take a look, I hope it’s helpful !
Click on the image to see a high-res version, or click here for a PDF copy you can download and print.
If the terminology used is new to you (LUFS, PLR etc) please see the end of this post for a brief glossary.
Edit – for those what have been asking, BeatPort and Pandora also use a loudness target to even out replay volume. SoundCloud and Bandcamp currently don’t, however in my opinion it’s only a matter of time. And, I’ve been right about this before.
So how does it sound ?
First I’d like to say Thanks to members of my Home Mastering Masterclass course, who helped me get this infographic right, offering loads of helpful feedback and suggestions.
Next I want to share the first question most of them asked about it:
Where does your suggested mastering level fit into all this ?
And the answer, I’m glad to say, is that I’ve been recommending for years that you master no louder than PLR 11 – that’s roughly DR 8, if you’re a user of the TT Meter.
And if you follow my advice, your music will fit the “green” category on the infographic, meaning it’s loudness will be changed very little when it’s played online – and when there is a larger change, it will sound better than more squashed, “loudness war” masters.
In other words, the loudness sweet spot I suggest to make your music sound great is also a sweet spot for translating well online.
Coincidence ? You decide…!
And if you’d like to find out in detail for yourself what loudness I recommend, and the best way to achieve it, you might like to sign up for the masterclass course yourself. It begins this Friday, and if you get started now you can score 25% off as part of the introductory discount. To find out what’s included, click here.
Maybe I’ll see you there !
Not happy ?
Of course you might be looking at this infographic and saying – “This is crazy ! Why shouldn’t I master my music at really high levels, if I want to ?” – or alternatively, “I love dynamics ! Why should my music be penalised for being less squashed than YouTube or Spotify want ?”
And you’d have a point. The answer is, that large changes in loudness are the number one cause of complaints from listeners, so loudness management of some kind is inevitable from this point on. The best we can do is try to encourage streaming services to implement it in the best way possible.
A while ago, Spotify removed the preference setting that allowed you to disable loudness management, to avoid over-limiting dynamic music. But after pressure from users, they brought it back.
We can do the same for loudness management. Spotify have shown they listen to their users before, and maybe they will again – you can add your name to the list asking them to reduce their playback level here. Apple’s Sound Check is pretty good already – we just need them to pressure them enable it by default. And YouTube ? We’re working on it…
The use of loudness management by all the major streaming services was the first step in the right direction. Hopefully before long, replay loudness online will be standardised at a sane level like Apple’s Sound Check, and we can go back to mastering our music exactly the way we want to !
Glossary
Some of the terms and topics in the infographic may be new to you – if so, this should help get you up to speed:
LUFS – Loudness Units (Full Scale)
The internationally agreed method of measuring loudness, measured in loudness units LU). Loudness units take into account the fact that our ears are more sensitive to some frequency ranges than others. How do LU relate to more familiar measurements, like RMS, dBFS etc ? See here:
LUFS, dBFS, RMS… WTF ?!? How to read the new loudness meters
dB TP – True Peak Level
Normal peak meters only read sample levels, but in some situations the decoded digital signal can generate levels which exceed 0 dBFS, especially if the music is mastered or mixed at a very high level.
“True Peak” meters use oversampling in order to measure these higher values, sometimes giving results as much as 3 or 4 dB above 0 dBFS ! Lossy encoding for streaming or mp3 can also generate extra peak information above zero, so I recommend you don’t exceed -1 dB TP when mastering.
More information in this video.
PLR – Peak to Loudness Ratio
The difference between the peak level and the Integrated loudness in LUFS. “Integrated” loudness is an overall figure for a whole song or piece of audio. PLR gives an indication of the “crest factor” of the music – how compressed or dynamic it is.
So for example, if the integrated loudness is -15 LUFS and the music peaks at -1 dBFS, the PLR is 14. If the music peaks at -1 dBFS but the integrated loudness is -10 LUFS, the PLR is only 9, which means it has probably been quite heavily compressed and limited.
PLR values measure something similar to the “DR” values you may be familiar with from using the TT Meter, but typically read a few points higher – for example PLR 11 is roughly equivalent to DR 8.
Loudness online – how loud is loud enough, and how loud is too loud ? is a post from Ian Shepherd's: Production Advice
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