A Question for Professional Engineers - Mix level and Mastering level

rodzimguitar68

rodzimguitar68

Fractal Fanatic
I travel constantly for my job. I cannot commit to being in a local band. I sometimes volunteer at church in the band when I am able. I have had a membership on a music collaboration website for 7 years, called KOMPOZ.

I participate when I have time, and go for long periods of inactivity. I've used the holiday break to contribute a few guitar tracks.

Every now and then, someone on there, purporting to be an industry professional, will "edumacate" unsuspecting bedroom musicians, and decry the methods and results of the projects and the contributors to that particular project.

One such incident involving the mix volume (pre-mastered) and the Mastered volume of that mix, recently became a huge matter. It surrounded the philosophy of a real audio engineer, and his quest to gain momentum for his point of view. There is a website, https://www.loudnesspenalty.com that gives the whole philosophy. This was cited repeatedly as the justification for the rebuke.

What I want to know from REAL audio engineering professionals in FractalWorld, is if this a load of crap, or if you can share guidelines that you think are wise to abide by. I will never seek to profit from my hobby and home tinkering projects, or to put up a shingle to mix or master anything by anyone else - but I do want to learn and take constructive criticism when it is applicable.

Thank you
 
I’m not exactly sure what you’re asking. You’re referring to mastering too loud? Yes that’s been a trend for a long time. No dynamics whatsoever. But that’s the way it’s done for the most part. That’s not the way I do it. I look for peaks and try to preserve them. I don’t like to see every wave form flattened.

I’d be surprised if iTunes and the rest reject because music is mastered too loud. Maybe.

I’ll say this: audio engineers can be every bit as pig headed and arrogant as guitar snobs. I try to stay away from both on internet forums. Mostly those who can’t do complian and criticize the most and the loudest. It makes them sound important. But to me it makes them sound silly and somewhat incompetent. I don’t want to generalize. There are exceptions always.
 
Hey! Hope your new year is going well! Not entirely sure what you're exactly asking about but I'll assume that it is just overall master / premix level pre render from your daw?

Feel free to clarify if need be


I'm not exactly a Mixing / Mastering Pro per say but having handled tracks in bedrooms and studios for sometime I guess I can give you a bit of advice where I think honestly for volumes and levels there isn't exactly a hard and fast rule because from track to track it can really differ . I.e You don't wanna slam a soft piano etude into -0.1db and you don't want your edm piece to be wayy too soft cause that's not gonna light the club on fire anytime soon .

So in terms of a finished mix ready to render it's really to your artistic taste and preference most of the time in my opinion feel free to do otherwise cause that is really what music and creativity is about .


Conversely, when it comes to mastering the concept of Loudness Normalisation comes into play cause you can't have your track suddenly burst / sound muted when it's in a playlist on a streaming service or if your album is on a loop. In the case of streaming services what you input usually doesnt matter cause for softer tracks the levels are automatically brought up via compression of some sort in the streaming service and vice versa. Haven't heard of a case where a song was rejected for it's levels but moreso usually it's content .

If you wan to know more about LN , this is where AES's recommended -16LUFs comes into play . In terms of popular streaming services i think spotify is -13/-14 and youtube is -13

(You can counter check these values on the internet cause it's more of a rough feel then a hard and fast measured value on my side)

So what I'd recommend is that when mastering you try to aim for a value around -16LUFs to get a good normalisation value to achieve for use in multiple scenarios but again everything is really a personal choice when it comes to stuff like overall mix and master volume as it is very difficult subject to tackle depending on target audience and systems used .


Simple rule of thumb : As long as your master is not clipping it's all good ! Or whatever man just have fun :)
 
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MarcoB said:
a bit of a long read, but interesting, nonetheless:
https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/end-loudness-war

Regards,
Marco
Click to expand...

Yes, this is a great article.

Never heard of the Loudness Penalty, mentioned in the article in the OP. But I welcome the return of real dynamics in broadcasted material. I get ear-fatigue really quickly when listening to the radio and many music produced in the modern era because of the extreme compression.
 
Not a pro audio person, but I have come across this topic before. Here's a short and easy blog from a mastering engineer:
http://www.kerseboommastering.com/blog-loudness/4593897134

On the loudnesspenalty.com website, "Loudness Penalty" seems to me a bit of a misnomer. It's not so much a penalty as it is that streaming services will just turn it down. There's no penalty, the sound quality and dynamics of your master will stay the same.

What might very well happen though as a result on these streaming services is that a record that's been mastered for loudness-war at the sacrifice of dynamics will likely end up sounding smaller than more dynamically mixed records. But that's not the streaming services penalizing you... the website is confusing IMHO, useful tool maybe but I bet a ton of people are using it wrong :p I don't think anyone who knows what they're doing in mastering would need to use that website, so I dunno what its purpose is.
 
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Sound level is an issue but easily correctable. Dynamics remains the main subject. Use as less compression as possible (you will need some though). On the internet there are many free plugins that allow you to evaluate the dynamic content of your recording.
It's really not that difficult.
Try to take your individual track recordings with the least possible compression and be "economic" with compression in the mastering phase.
Also I'd recommend to do your mastering sessions in the morning and not after a long day of work; as you're still fresh and more alert to bad sound.

Keep on rocking
 
It would be interesting to see the results of multiple files with a constant sine wave at 0 -3 -6 -10 & -20. Wish I had the time and inclination to see if the -20 file had a negative penalty :)
Thanks
Pauly
 
-16 LUFS will sound very quiet compared to an iTunes, Tidal et al playback.

So, while it may be the correct level to submit to the services, you may want to go louder when sending tracks to the client for listening. I usually end up around -9 LUFS.
 
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