Forget about LUFS! all Bullshit!!!

[donkey tugger]

There was a good discussion about all of this over at Gearspace mastering forum many years ago and the overall consensus seemed to be that the overall sweet spot for most modern genres lies between -10 to -8 LUFS short term (meaning a window of 3 seconds). It's also worth noting that LUFS intergrated is very often quite useless as a measure, especially if you compare one track to another. You'll be way better off using LUFS short term in the loudest sections of each track.

Very, very true!

I cover a fairly wide range in terms of dynamics and if I were to normalize a group of songs to a set integrated LUFS level then they would sound widely disparate in terms of volume. I use the method you've outlined there using the short term measure as a guide (to about -10 in my case), and get pretty close to an even result across the group, with only minimal manual fine tuning then required, mostly for softer acoustic stuff.

[legendCNCD]

oh Jamcat, I'm sure its music. It can be beautiful as hell, it can be very doom and gloom.
Personally I love this one still:


And this new one also hit nicely <3

[Vortifex]

I don't know any successful producers who care about the loudness recommendations or even the 'rules' in general. Eg., "lower the ceiling on the master limiter to prevent ISPs otherwise the track may be rejected by streaming services". People clip the master just because they like how it sounds and they get away with it. If it sounds good...

[metaside]

I had this discussion a few years ago since I also checked DNB tunes and some of them were hitting even -4 LUFS. The summary of that discussion was similar to this one I would say:
- streaming services might turn your track down if it's "too loud"
- when people play your track directly (so without the interference of streaming services) and you mastered it to fit best with streaming services, it might be very different from other tracks in some genres

My personal conclusion: I mostly stick with the genre, but don't push it to an extreme. For DNB, I master tracks between -7 and -9 LUFS. It might be an alternative to use different masters for different platforms, but I haven't done that yet.

Oh, and you can usually change the target settings for referencing tools, so you should be able to make a preset that uses a different LUFS target...

[Caine123]

im checking some hospital records stuff out, really awesome stuff there, didnt know them somehow. and they hit a lot of time -4 LUFS and still you read, "waoh awsome tune" and so on, also when i listen to them they dont sound like they would be badly distorted and so on.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... r4C_vlvXe0

so yeah i stick mostly to -8 to -9 LUFS overall cause i still like more dynamics but seems things in the digital world seem to be a lot of times not cared.

one thing i just mixed up....

top is a DnB track below is mine atm


i get alsways confused by short term and integrated, which should i go for? the integrated correct? if so im ok with -8 LUFS?
but short term is 5.6 LUFS.

[ampetrosillo]

Yeah, it's just like what they say, "5" is all you need", but Caine123's mum loves my big fat 7"+ sausage. So play to your audience.

Is it an Italian sausage? Pork? Did you buy it in a store pre-cooked, or make it yourself? I do enjoy a good Italian sausage that’s got a lot of fennel seeds. Seems harder to find in California than NY.

Us Italians do know how to make a good sausage.

[ampetrosillo]

My opinion on the topic: leaner masters might have a place, but it's not for the streaming targets, but for feel. Yet, listener expectations these days do require more compression, if only for the added "glue". I find that integrated -10LUFS with about 2/3LUFS distance between weightings (ie. Momentary 7-8LUFS, short term 5-6LUFS, or is it the other way round? Can't remember) is a good sweet spot for productions that don't want to sound overly "radio-ready" (whatever that means these days). Otherwise just smash it and f**k it. (In that order, or also the other way round works).

[bmanic]

(ie. Momentary 7-8LUFS, short term 5-6LUFS, or is it the other way round? Can't remember)

Yup, other way around.

Short term = 3 seconds window
Momentary = 400ms window

[carrieres]

Yeah, it's just like what they say, "5" is all you need", but Caine123's mum loves my big fat 7"+ sausage. So play to your audience.

Is it an Italian sausage? Pork? Did you buy it in a store pre-cooked, or make it yourself? I do enjoy a good Italian sausage that’s got a lot of fennel seeds. Seems harder to find in California than NY.

Us Italians do know how to make a good sausage.

It is called finocchiona and it is from Toscana

[kritikon]

Normalizing from streaming services was mentioned...don't think I've come across any tracks that pay attention to it whatsoever. 5dB at the bare minimum seems to be the thing. I used to aim for the -13 LUFS thing and tbh, as bmanic mentioned, it's actually pretty difficult getting an electronic track that low without it sounding pretty weak. Maybe if I was making flugelhorn music...

I suspect I still underdo it as most of my stuff ends up at -9 or 10 and I'm not overly happy with it. Old fart syndrome I suspect...I had it drummed into me about not overdoing squashing. I just can't help myself. Even dub sounds good with a jolly good threshing imo, and maybe I need to retrain myself to throw caution to the wind. I know when I compress the f**k out of tracks I'm happier with the sound, and I need to do less limiting then. Sausages are good. Especially with Chipotle sauce.

[Caine123]

thanks so much guys! i always got my output ceiling at -0.3 dB. where do you check your dbfs?
and if i got for example -8 LUFS int and am happy with it but short term is below -6 LUFS st, like -5.6 or so, might it be still a bit too much at some section which i should check for too heavy compression/distortion? (i always care/check normally to have a max of 3db comp though)

[osiris]

I don't think people pay enough attention to Dynamic Range. You can see even the Oslo file with the low LUFS has a DR of 8. Most recommendations for modern music is 6.

[bmanic]

I don't think people pay enough attention to Dynamic Range. You can see even the Oslo file with the low LUFS has a DR of 8. Most recommendations for modern music is 6.

Dynamic Range measurement can also be done over different periods of time. A song can have an apparently huge dynamic range when you measure it over the whole track, but if you measure it only on short term basis (let's say 10 seconds) then you'll have much bigger variance between tracks.

There's also no real good data nor studies, in my opinion, when it comes to actually measuring dynamic range and where it actually counts in terms of how it emotionally affects the listener. There is a difference also in how the dynamic range is distributed frequency wise. If you just measure the whole spectrum (or C/D weighted) it's not telling the whole story. For instance, in my opinion, you can have a really dense track in the mid register but if you keep the bass region rather sparse and highly dynamic then the whole track will feel like it has a higher dynamic range than it may perhaps measure with traditional means.

Same goes for macro dynamics. If you have very distinct differences between macro dynamics yet the overall longer term levels are rather squashed (or "normalized", everything peaking at close to 0dBFS) you can still have the perceived illusion of a lot of dynamic range even if it wouldn't register on a typical DR meter.

[Aleksey Vaneev]

LUFS is a perceptional science without a doubt, but it does not have anything to do with musical genres. Do whatever you want with your sound - it's now up to streaming services to level your tracks, which is not your sphere of influence. Targeting LUFS twice is unnecessary.

[briefcasemanx]

Some genres sound really compressed and bad, so if you want it to sound like everyone else than you you should copy what everyone else in the bad sounding genre does.