Mastering Chains 2023

[donkey tugger]

You sinth lads aren't even trying. Iggy wins the war every time.

iggy.jpg

[jamcat]

Iggy Pop didn’t do that. The remastering engineer did. There was zero digital clipping in the original recording from 1973.

[donkey tugger]

Iggy Pop didn’t do that. The remastering engineer did.

Him and Bruce Dickinson allegedly 'remastered' it when pissed up;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_an ... oges_song)

"..."Search and Destroy" (along with the rest of the songs on Raw Power) was remixed and remastered by Pop and Bruce Dickinson. The result was far more aggressive and stripped down than the original release, which had been mixed by David Bowie."

Know thy Stooges.

[jamcat]

THE Bruce Dickenson?
Where’s the cowbell?

[donkey tugger]

THE Bruce Dickenson?

Indeed! Was trying to find the interview with Iggy where he told the story. Basically they just got leathered and kept pushing the faders up and up....

[vurt]

2023-07-27.png

nice bit of ambient is what the thread needs

[jamcat]

As it turns out, that infamous Bruce Dickinson was a mid-level manager at Columbia Records, not the singer of Iron Maiden.

[donkey tugger]

[vurt]

bruce, did buy his car insurance from iggy though.

[thecontrolcentre]

[Musik Hack Sam]

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.

I agree with this, but also from a quality standpoint when normalization is enabled by streamers, provided you like your master going in. The argument as I understand it against going louder than -14LUFS is that in pushing the volume too loud, you will destroy your mix all by yourself. I don't think that's always the case, but that's the argument.

If a streaming service sees your mix is louder than their LUFS target, say -14 LUFS, they will apply gain reduction. Gain reduction does not in any way degrade or distort your signal, so I don't see the argument that it's bad to submit at a louder target if you like your master. It's only bad if, in reaching for that higher LUFS target, you killed your mix already.

If a normalizing streaming service sees your mix is quieter than their LUFS target, they may raise the volume of your mix, pushing your peaks into overs. So, they apply a true peak limiter that you do not control (for example, https://support.spotify.com/us/artists/ ... alization/). This is sub-optimal. In that link, Spotify recommends -14 LUFS, then says that for users that select the "loud" normalization setting, they will push up tracks to -11 LUFS, regardless of peaks. That means anybody submitting a -14 LUFS track to Spotify will have their track run through a true peak limiter they don't control pushing their track 2-3 dB for users with "loud" normalization.

Would you rather have Spotify apply simple gain reduction down 2-3 dB from -8 LUFS, or apply gain at 2-3 db from -14, and apply a random true peak limiter (you probably paid $$$ for yours)? Different streaming services say they do different things, but we don't know what the future holds as they change those things. What I do know is when looking at LUFS normalization alone, the quality risk is when your track is too quiet for the target, not too loud.

Happy to listen to counterpoints if I misunderstand something, I've been reading a lot of AES and EBU guidelines lately

*I am actively looking at this, but the bonus is that after the streaming service has lowered your volume, your true peaks have more headroom. Fancy that. Whether or not the peaks turn into clips depends on the processing chain the streaming client uses, but any decent chain would also prevent those true peaks from becoming clips before the normalization (encoding lossy formats does not necessarily clip for overs, it's only if you reduce to 16-bit depth before normalization).

-Sam

[t3toooo]

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.

Excuse me?

By that logic I could say. Wouldn't it be practically to nuke three-quarters of the world's human population to finally solve the climate change?

Or: Why do we not start globally eating insect Pizza and insect meat to solve the food problems?



By the way. Often a modern quiet movie has the dynamic already built in and disturbing the neighbours is a question of the overall loudness, so no need to give a loud commercial break example, there should be no difference in loudness. If the loud commercial break is too loud it is because they are cheating with the first second of audio, it is often way too loud ( at least here in Germany private television channels )


Now, I would like to turn it around and ask a question instead.

What could be done to adjust the level -14 and -6 LUFS automatically in a DJ setup?


A train driver also can't drive a train through a station by his own will without stopping. So plenty of safety measure everywhere.

[jamcat]

By that logic I could say. Wouldn't it be practically to nuke three-quarters of the world's human population to finally solve the climate change?

Or: Why do we not start globally eating insect Pizza and insect meat to solve the food problems?

Those aren't the plans already?

[vurt]

pretty sure "solve global warming with nukes" isn't a plan.

[thecontrolcentre]

pretty sure "solve global warming with nukes" isn't a plan.

I hope you're right ... not so sure myself