Mastering Chains 2023

[JerGoertz]

I pipe all my music through an AI-generated simulation of an acoustic space in which everyone on KVR is arguing all at once.

[Frankie.T]

That's the point, what i say isn't subjective. Are just facts.

... Let's just take a quick look at the first 4 positions

... And this is POP music, shoudn't even needs to be loud, expecially some vibey music like Swift's songs, but it is!

If you keep searching you find close to none -14LUFS music in the top charts, even if the song, like the quieter one from Swift is pretty empty.

It doesn't work like that. Different streaming services, radio and physical copies will all have different loudness values, depending on their own rules. They may want you to submit at -14 LUFS for some technical reason, probably because they will process it further and if you give them something louder than -14, it might end up sounding awful once they've processed it. Our streams from Bandcamp, for example, are way louder than the mastered audio we upload.

The reason they make Pop loud is to make their song sound better than other Pop songs, because if something is louder it is always perceived as sounding better.

I took the liberty of doing the same for the first four entries of the Beatport Top 10 (all genres), to cover the base for the most popular electronic music releases too...

Now go and source the same songs from another source and see what you get. It's not an absolute any more.

You are confusing different things.

I'm talking about what engineers does. If you disable loudness normalization on Spotify, you can hear how the big labels (Universal, Sony, Warner...) sent the song loud even there, not at -14LUFS

They can say or require whatever they want, but this is not what big names and majors are sending to them.
Again these are facts. Disable normalization by yourself then listen to their tracks.

[Frankie.T]

Read up about it before telling me what is world class. That is a subjective opinion

That's the point, what i say isn't subjective. Are just facts.

That's an important chart
https://www.billboard.com/charts/billboard-200/

Let's just take a quick look at the first 4 positions

1) Speak Now (Taylor's Version) is -5LUFS
https://tunebat.com/Info/I-Can-See-You- ... O9NBy0ku4v

2) One Think At A Time is -5LUFS
https://tunebat.com/Info/One-Thing-At-A ... RN64jXzIxo

3) Genesis (it's an album, i just searched for the most played song inside this album on Spotify and it's PRC) -6LUFS
https://tunebat.com/Info/PRC-Peso-Pluma ... npY14rsTR2

4) Midnights from Taylor Swift, another album it's between -7 to -12
and it's a soft kind of music!
Anti-hero (again the most played on Spotify) is -7
https://tunebat.com/Info/Midnight-Rain- ... GsjB49SxLl

And this is POP music, shoudn't even needs to be loud, expecially some vibey music like Swift's songs, but it is!

If you keep searching you find close to none -14LUFS music in the top charts, even if the song, like the quieter one from Swift is pretty empty.

I don't understand how can you call chart analysis subjective. That's what it is, not mine or your opinion.

We can discuss if we like it or not, we can talk about how saturation, compression, clipping and limiting affect music. We can say what we like and dislike. How music could sound different with different way to master or mix it.

We can politely discuss on everythings, without calling troll who is saying something different from you.

But talking as the loudness war is over, it's just like blindly say yours is "the real religion" and that's pointless.
If pop music, even soft music is so loud, it just means loudness war it's more alive than ever.

You may like it or not, that's personal. But it's what it is

If you want to keep this discussion constructive, feel free to say your opinion that i totally respect.
But if you want to talk about what happens in the real world, where the charts and money are, and more importantly what most people is listening, let's take a look at facts.

I just picked the most famous chart and watched the first positions, i cannot be more objective than that.

It's a strange conversation for sure. I made a post on the mastering forum over at GS with some fairly specific details, one of which was that I was shooting for around -8 LUFS for my tracks because the well known hip hop label I am mastering songs for has that target for their masters.

Almost ALL the responses were from people telling me I should "educate" my clients and tell them that loudness doesn't matter and other such nonsense. Some even suggested I should refuse the job because they are being unreasonable.

Honestly it's just bizarre.

If you don't want to master your music at a level that is competitive with commercial releases in the genre you are in, that's fine, but don't act like people are insane for doing so. There are plenty of reasons why a louder master sounds different even when (some) streaming services are normalizing them via LUFS (in certain cases).

I don't want to sound rude, but to me looks like these forums kvr and gs, are populated with people with no knowledge that talks just because they don't know how to make music, and trolls. Or at least this is what looks like.

I remember in a discussion over GS, a seasoned user wroted as in the past real and famous engineers were part of the community, but after some rude, trolls they just left.
I'm not anything near to be famous, but i started my music journey in 1999, i signed contracts with Universal, Warner and other important labels. Since i'm still very passionate about music and i engineering music for clients (both mixing and mastering) i like to share my passion with people, but tbh it's not just hard, but i'm keep asking myself why i'm trying to doing it in a so unfriendly places.
I'm even considering to leave that places cause suggestions are never welcome, discussions neither, since i got attaked just because i was reporting an objective data.
I just found lots of angry and probably frustration by people.

Why should i stay here? Tbh i don't need any help, i mean i know how to do stuff since i'm doing that for decades at a professional level. Here the less people know, the more (seems) they want to impose their own idea, and this is something i don't even try myself, i don't think to impose an idea is good and constructive.
Internet doesn't looks anymore a good place for discussion, i hoped to be something different in this world, cause music is art and a passion that should belong to everyone here, but doesn't really looks like.

[Synthman2000]

Try to have fun Frankie that's all forums amount to, you can hardly blame people, the internet is filled with wet behind the ears know all's.

Not to say that there is not much questionably released audio, some that does very well but makes you wonder how it got to sound like it did. I suspect the strength of the song carries it at the end people are so tired of it, it gets signed off.

Listing a load of plug ins is about as much use as a chocolate fireguard.

[sqigls]

but WHAT industry?
the pop industry.
who buys or listens to that shit anyway? if you answer "me", then good luck to you.
But I buy plenty of music and most of this nonsense is just normie Taylor Swift MK Ultra crud to me.
McDonalds sells a f**k load of burgers too...

What's your target market?
ok fairly well be the says I
obviously i'm not in the majority, but i buy a lot of music, from all kinds of 'genres'.
And the mega compressed nonsense is none of it, pretty much.

I get that some styles benefit from a lot of limiting etc, but outputting all your music - catering to a particular extreme compression that will be listened to on crap speakers... this "industry" is not a blanket standard unless you're just a music merchant. Big bucks for string pullers who already have big bucks, it's not really an art or artist friendly standard.
It's handy for normies who like don't wanna like have to turn music up and down like.

[Frankie.T]

Try to have fun Frankie that's all forums amount to, you can hardly blame people, the internet is filled with wet behind the ears know all's.

Not to say that there is not much questionably released audio, some that does very well but makes you wonder how it got to sound like it did. I suspect the strength of the song carries it at the end people are so tired of it, it gets signed off.

Listing a load of plug ins is about as much use as a chocolate fireguard.

You are right, but if i want to have fun, i turn off the devices and enjoy the nature. Would be nice to have a good place to share a common interest. But again, you are right, the internet is what it is

[imrae]

I assume the target audience for these hyper-loud Beatport tracks is DJs who "need" to be louder than the last guy - and the last guy already had the volume controls at max.

Unless you are looking to take their money, there is no reason to encourage this behaviour.

[vurt]

some examples of works would be handy, alongside the chat.
anyone can appear to know what they are talking about, but the proof is in the pudding, as they say.

[PieBerger]

I assume the target audience for these hyper-loud Beatport tracks is DJs who "need" to be louder than the last guy - and the last guy already had the volume controls at max.

Unless you are looking to take their money, there is no reason to encourage this behaviour.

People who want to experience loud music are the ones who need encouraging first, DJs are just meeting the demand. I've been to a fair few festivals in the UK, where they've had to turn down the PAs in the small hours and it killed the mood almost every time. I was at a festival two weeks ago and for some unknown reason they turned the DJ down for the last 10 minutes of their set and it decimated the energy on the dancefloor. You can say people are idiots for wanting music to be played so loud, but it is what it is and no amount of encouraging alternative behaviour at the production end will change this.

It's an arms race and unless all parties involved agree at all times, on an amnesty, nothing is going to change. DJ B won't want to risk playing after DJ A, if B's material is mix/mastered to -14LUFS and A's is -6LUFS, not unless FOH (assuming there is one) knows about this in advance and makes the necessary accommodations. Playing significantly quieter music after a loud set, is not likely to be well received by your average party-goer on the dancefloor, based on my own experience anyway.

[mystran]

It's an arms race and unless all parties involved agree at all times, on an amnesty, nothing is going to change. DJ B won't want to risk playing after DJ A, if B's material is mix/mastered to -14LUFS and A's is -6LUFS, not unless FOH (assuming there is one) knows about this in advance and makes the necessary accommodations. Playing significantly quieter music after a loud set, is not likely to be well received by your average party-goer on the dancefloor, based on my own experience anyway.

I feel like -6LUFS tracks are also safer, both at home and at clubs, compared to -14LUFS tracks.

If you set both at the same target level and clip both at 0dB, then the -14LUFS setup can get 8dB louder (intentionally or accidentally) all of sudden, before you have a chance to touch the fader. At home that's the part where you upset a neighbour with a loud commercial break in the middle of a quiet movie. At club levels it's 8dB less margin until we cross the threshold of pain.

When there is no headroom, you don't need to worry about things getting too loud quite as much.

[bundoo]

Interesting logic.

[Synthman2000]

Void

[vurt]

[Deisss]

I'm not anything near to be famous, but i started my music journey in 1999, i signed contracts with Universal, Warner and other important labels.

That already put you way above the average members here...

I'm even considering to leave that places cause suggestions are never welcome, discussions neither, since i got attaked just because i was reporting an objective data.
I just found lots of angry and probably frustration by people.

I think it comes down to the fact there is just not much going on in the audio world, multiply by the fact when something happen (like a new VST), people overlook it very quickly and run the GAS at max speed. You get a combo where the majority of talks are bland.

The other day, I decided to go back to my original roots of electronic music, which is 90s Trance. I was baffled by how many empty topics exists with "how do we do X", following 200 replies of "Trance is shit" and absolutely 0 useful information. Not to mention people confusing various very clear style of Trance because they just talk about something they don't even know.


Back to the topic, it's 2023, and I still run a good portion of my mixes and even stems through a Focusrite Red 3 I bought couple of years ago, and still happy with it so why bother to change I do have included like many a lot of software now over the years, very little hardware gears remains... But this ones stays, it gives a 90s touch, and I like it so I stick with it.

[imrae]

I assume the target audience for these hyper-loud Beatport tracks is DJs who "need" to be louder than the last guy - and the last guy already had the volume controls at max.

Unless you are looking to take their money, there is no reason to encourage this behaviour.

People who want to experience loud music are the ones who need encouraging first, DJs are just meeting the demand.

In a sane world we would get that loudness with the volume control. In a world where DJs dime every volume control they can reach, each increment in the loudness war just means the PA needs to be turned down a bit more.