I was literally just trying to figure out this exact information last night and my fav. engineer so happens to put out a video. THANKS! CC ! the value you provide in every single video consistently helps me grow as an aspiring engineer!
The loudness wars are definitely not over and the facr is Spotify doesn’t matter anymore. Streaming as we know it is about to change completely. Direct to consumer will take over for everyone outside of the system and many within. Great video. thanks fam..
BIG FACTSSSSS!!!! I've actually made the best honorable decision to stop releasing to Spotify instead of other stores due to how horrible they're treating the Songwriters & Artists with their pay system for all of our hard work that's respectfully due. Point aside from this video but your comment stood out to me and I completely agree with you so Big Ups to you!!
Finally! Thank you for posting this Colt! One of the most bizzare things is when people ask you to LUFS match compressors and saturator plugins or hardware- where they increase the LUFS level by design and is the asset you want to use in a mix in order to…mix. ❤
Agree with your take on this, I want to hear how my transients are coming through with saturators as those will be affected the most due to the nature of the plugin/device. So I want to have them come out at the same level so I can hear what's happening there.
All I can say is “Amen!” There is SO much misinformation and misunderstanding on this subject. “Level Match!” has become the tiresome catch cry of internet trolls and RUclips contrarians everywhere. Fantastically clear explanation!
The way you use saturation on the mixbus as mentioned around the 9 minute mark, it seems that it would make sense to mix into a clipper, and placing that clipper very early in the mixbus chain (if not flat out first in the chain), or at least before your bus comp. When set for the specific purpose of catching peaks, clippers will do exactly just that and have the potential to be FAR more transparent than anything else I've heard.
Thanks for doing this one dude! So many of the online explanations for peak/rms/LUFS are very convoluted (and often badly informed😮). But yours makes actual, logical sense of all of it! Thanks again, this rocks
good to know. thx colt! looking back to my favorite recordings, I dont think rudy van gelder stressed too much about peak metering. he just made shit sound good
Thank you. When I was up to my neck in Electronic Engineering I was always searching for books that would disseminate technical info into comic book terms I could understand rather than an author trying to impress you with his unworldly knowledge. You have that same ability. Which is true knowledge!!
Great point re loudness. A by-product of mixing a track to be full, dense, powerful is an LUFS value that's inevitably louder than -14 LUFS for nearly every genre out there that's not jazz, classical or other genres which actually utilise high dynamic range by design. However, pushing louder than -8 LUFS is nearly always going to be to the sonic detriment of the music in question and should only be done for reasons of genre appropriateness relative to the music platform (I.e because everyone else on Beatport is super loud and Beatport doesn't level match)
This is a great explanation. Now - Try explaining LKFS to producers on a Film/TV mix stage 😂. I’m going to use the first part of this video as one way to quickly show them how their perception of loudness can be manipulated and why we have to be mix a certain way to be in spec for “broadcast”.
Most AB comparisons are the clean signal to the processed. And that's why using lufs makes the most sense in that regard. Why? Because a clean signal may have a high peak and low loudness. The saturator will have more loudness and less peak. So knowing it has MORE loudness and then ALSO boosting to where the peak of the clean unprocessed signal is, is not allowing the ear to judge fairly. In this case, the MORE lufs would see the processed get turn down to match the clean signal lufs. The way you compare 2 saturators via peak level, yes, then the clean signal is no longer in play, and you're comparing process to process to discern and it makes sense what you describe. And your experience and reasoning toward the end goal which is louder, makes sense as well. But in the case of testing plugins against a clean signal, that's why lufs makes sense. Cheers.
I have noticed this too with mastering tracks to -14 LUFS… I was always too concerned with making sure it won’t distort on Spotify (or any other platform for that matter). What should we master at if -14 LUFS seems more notional now?
thanks for all this info ,i personaly get better mix and mastering with luf,,respecting of course the input of every channel leaving some headroom -minus 18 dbs etc eqs and compressor work great with headroom,this info is for unexperience mixxers ✌
You are one of the few that has, in my opinion, shared the brutal honest truth about the loudness wars! Thanks most of all for being unafraid! Wonderful content as always
Hey Colt, great vid as usual, could you try to make a video with a song that beats the +2.3 Lufs of a youtube video that has some time already ? maybe the genre has to be a specific one without getting into aparent nasty distorsion, otherwise anyone could just turn up anything. We should decide what distorsion level is good for everyone, like taste everyone has its own. Maybe that the distorsion acquiered is club friendly meaning its playable at big big speakers (clubs, festivals, concerts ) and people dont get ear bleed, not by loud, but by distroying the signal process. *(Change distorsion with saturation where needed here)
Thanks Colton. This is great information. Perhaps you can share the names of the plug-ins that you use for this process? I would love to know what you use. Thanks!
So that’s a hard one, because it totally depends on the song… For an acoustic/vocal thing it might be -10 LUFS. For a metal band it might be -5 LUFS. And both of those would play back at about the same perceived, volume because of how the source material affects the meter. I hope that makes sense!
@@ColtCapperrune I can understand why this subject has resulted in much misinformation online as there is no ‘set rule.’ I too made the mistake of mastering to -14 LUFS only to discover how quiet my tracks were! I think what confuses me most (and not many people seem to explain this) What is the standard db ceiling to set the final limiter to? I hear people say -1db peak with a target -8 LUFS loudness, but that would surely obliterate the track with compression in order to hit that target! I need a general rule to work towards because the information online is so contradictory. Thanks - mostly mastering for Rock music I should add?
I've always wondered, if you mastered your songs to like -10 lufs or -9.5 lufs or even higher, would you set your peak level to -2db, or much much higher? I've only seen one video on this, and after I saw the video, the creator took it down.
I’m listening on my phone. I could tell the low eq one was the loudest, even though the hi eq one sounded louder. I have sensitive hearing sooooo yeah, I could easily tell. EDIT: I really enjoy your content. Keep doing it!
Hi Colt, here is why music mastered at -14LUFS sounded quieter on spotify than competition. Spotify will bring down everything to -14lufs only when user activates Normalize Volume in their settings. Otherwise it will play at the real level. If your normalization was Off, then your -14lufs master would have sounded quieter than the rest. Here is a video showing it at 3:30. ruclips.net/video/NNCylx61yRM/видео.html. Cheers.
Nah, a -8LUFSi version of a song turned down 6dB will sound louder than the same song mastered to -14LUFSi. Try it and you'll see... well hear, for yourself. This is even more noticeable in real life listening scenarios like listening in noisy environments, but applies also to a quiet mixing room.
@@kelainefes Did you watch the video ?? The link I put in my comment. I strongly invite you to watch it to understand how much your comment is irrelevant bro. Cheers.
“the loudness war is over, loudness has won”. We can agree or disagree but the reality is (well… my reality) is that, with electronic music, -14 LUFS is most often way to quiet. And as a composer, sometimes when looking for a particular texture for a song, i can reach (+/-) -9 LUFS without any plugins on the master. Like many others, i think that, just like the LUFS measurement is based on tonality, well obviously the LUFS target can be based on the song or genre... not on convention. No matter how hard or quiet. Remember, there is no “it should be” in art :-)
It depends on the source material. But if it is any sort of pop, rock, country, etc.… Not an acoustic vocal, -14 LUFS will leave your master incredibly quiet once it is distributed.
Every professional song usually runs between -10 and -5. Normalization can be turned off in settings for both apple and Spotify so you can hear the songs original volume
Spotify has a setting that is called "loud" and levels everything at -11LUFS integrated and if a track is quieter than that they will use their own limiter which sounds horrible and pumps like crazy. So I would say do not master less than to -11LUFS integrated as a way to at least avoid that from happening. That being said, analyse a few recent major label releases in your genre with similar arrangements and see where they are and go for something similar. Right now most modern genres are coming out louder than -9.
Damn bruh. These senheiser momentum 3s really pump out some bass lol. Lower one is way louder for me. Either that or Warren Huart was right and I have some hearing damage (; Could also be both I suppose
There's only one thing that complainers need to understand: by level matching based on RMS or even worse, LUFS, you're not hearing the effect that clearly. By level matching only using a PPM meter, you're 100% only hearing the effect knowing that you're not tricking your ears.
Great. You just show how Lufs does not measure how we listen. We are more sensitive to mid high freq, than low freq. and lufs measurement is sentí I to low freq that is energy but we do not here as loud.
Good explanation and yeah, the loudness wars are still raging and the -14 master is a die hard urban legend but that doesn’t mean that an A/Bing without using LUFS and RMS doesn’t trick the ears…even yours 😉. It’s great that you took the time to raise and give your answer to the question, though. Anyways, I’d love to test those preamps IRL, they do sound amazing (even when level matched 😜). Keep up the good work, your channel is one of the best out there in the audio world 👍👍👍.
At the risk of sounding harsh, I think these meters and measurements have become a crutch for a lot of people. Don't get me wrong, meters and measurements are important tools and definitely have their time and place BUT, in my opinion, the best method for level matching is still to just use your ears.
I hope this helped someone, thanks for watching!
capi should've built 500 of your signature preamps at minimum
I was literally just trying to figure out this exact information last night and my fav. engineer so happens to put out a video. THANKS! CC ! the value you provide in every single video consistently helps me grow as an aspiring engineer!
I'm not sure when to use what so thanks for the info
Me. Im someone. Hi, and thanks for the help.
Thanks so much!
The loudness wars are definitely not over and the facr is Spotify doesn’t matter anymore. Streaming as we know it is about to change completely. Direct to consumer will take over for everyone outside of the system and many within.
Great video. thanks fam..
BIG FACTSSSSS!!!! I've actually made the best honorable decision to stop releasing to Spotify instead of other stores due to how horrible they're treating the Songwriters & Artists with their pay system for all of our hard work that's respectfully due. Point aside from this video but your comment stood out to me and I completely agree with you so Big Ups to you!!
Finally! Thank you for posting this Colt! One of the most bizzare things is when people ask you to LUFS match compressors and saturator plugins or hardware- where they increase the LUFS level by design and is the asset you want to use in a mix in order to…mix. ❤
Agree with your take on this, I want to hear how my transients are coming through with saturators as those will be affected the most due to the nature of the plugin/device.
So I want to have them come out at the same level so I can hear what's happening there.
Couldn't agree more. Saturation used tastefully is king for achieving a mix that has the potential to become a loud master. :)
Exactly! Thanks for watching!
All I can say is “Amen!” There is SO much misinformation and misunderstanding on this subject. “Level Match!” has become the tiresome catch cry of internet trolls and RUclips contrarians everywhere. Fantastically clear explanation!
The way you use saturation on the mixbus as mentioned around the 9 minute mark, it seems that it would make sense to mix into a clipper, and placing that clipper very early in the mixbus chain (if not flat out first in the chain), or at least before your bus comp. When set for the specific purpose of catching peaks, clippers will do exactly just that and have the potential to be FAR more transparent than anything else I've heard.
Thanks for doing this one dude! So many of the online explanations for peak/rms/LUFS are very convoluted (and often badly informed😮). But yours makes actual, logical sense of all of it! Thanks again, this rocks
This was a fantastic illustration. I'm forwarding this to sooooo many peeeeeeople! Well done Brutha!
Hope it helps everyone! Appreciate you!
good to know. thx colt!
looking back to my favorite recordings, I dont think rudy van gelder stressed too much about peak metering. he just made shit sound good
I'm leaving two comments on this one - the saturation tip for less compression is SUCH A GOOD tip for beginners. Especially for drums
Fantastic vid, thank you!
Man, such a great and thorough explanation. Thank you!
Thanks for watching my friend!
Excellent topic!! Thanks for sharing!! Much ❤ Colt!!
Thank you. When I was up to my neck in Electronic Engineering I was always searching for books that would disseminate technical info into comic book
terms I could understand rather than an author trying to impress you with his unworldly knowledge. You have that same ability. Which is true knowledge!!
the new arturia tube culture, is great, and The Oven. Both are so good at doing what you're talking about with saturation.
Great point re loudness. A by-product of mixing a track to be full, dense, powerful is an LUFS value that's inevitably louder than -14 LUFS for nearly every genre out there that's not jazz, classical or other genres which actually utilise high dynamic range by design. However, pushing louder than -8 LUFS is nearly always going to be to the sonic detriment of the music in question and should only be done for reasons of genre appropriateness relative to the music platform (I.e because everyone else on Beatport is super loud and Beatport doesn't level match)
4:00 - This brings up another avenue of discussion, what's the best way to level match your sub with your studio monitors?
Thanks Colt for another great one ✌🏽
This is a great explanation. Now - Try explaining LKFS to producers on a Film/TV mix stage 😂. I’m going to use the first part of this video as one way to quickly show them how their perception of loudness can be manipulated and why we have to be mix a certain way to be in spec for “broadcast”.
Most AB comparisons are the clean signal to the processed. And that's why using lufs makes the most sense in that regard. Why? Because a clean signal may have a high peak and low loudness. The saturator will have more loudness and less peak. So knowing it has MORE loudness and then ALSO boosting to where the peak of the clean unprocessed signal is, is not allowing the ear to judge fairly. In this case, the MORE lufs would see the processed get turn down to match the clean signal lufs.
The way you compare 2 saturators via peak level, yes, then the clean signal is no longer in play, and you're comparing process to process to discern and it makes sense what you describe. And your experience and reasoning toward the end goal which is louder, makes sense as well.
But in the case of testing plugins against a clean signal, that's why lufs makes sense. Cheers.
Hey Colt! Do you ever use a clipping plugin before the final limiter? And congrats on the preamp!
Thank you for the great explanation! It was always a grey area.
Hope it helps! Thank you for watching!
That was excellent Colt!
been waiting for someone to take this serious ✅
Thanks for watching!
great vid
Great info and perspective. Thanks for sharing.
I couldn't agree more. The loudness war is still raging big time!
I have noticed this too with mastering tracks to -14 LUFS… I was always too concerned with making sure it won’t distort on Spotify (or any other platform for that matter). What should we master at if -14 LUFS seems more notional now?
Whatever serves the track best.
Keep an eye to what major label releases are coming out at in that genre that have similar arrangements.
Great vid. The Spotify thing kills me! I wish users knew they can turn off the volume normalization in Spotify too.
thanks for all this info ,i personaly get better mix and mastering with luf,,respecting of course the input of every channel leaving some headroom -minus 18 dbs etc eqs and compressor work great with headroom,this info is for unexperience mixxers ✌
You are one of the few that has, in my opinion, shared the brutal honest truth about the loudness wars! Thanks most of all for being unafraid! Wonderful content as always
Great video 🔥🔥 quick question, In what scenarios would you use clippers instead of saturaters and vice versa?
Very educative video...
Hope it helps!
Can we please do another run of the signature pre amp please? I want 8 of em!!!
@ColtCapperrune maybe you could add gear links to thomann and music store for us european guys ;) As always amazing content !
CC with the fire
Hey Colt, great vid as usual, could you try to make a video with a song that beats the +2.3 Lufs of a youtube video that has some time already ? maybe the genre has to be a specific one without getting into aparent nasty distorsion, otherwise anyone could just turn up anything. We should decide what distorsion level is good for everyone, like taste everyone has its own. Maybe that the distorsion acquiered is club friendly meaning its playable at big big speakers (clubs, festivals, concerts ) and people dont get ear bleed, not by loud, but by distroying the signal process. *(Change distorsion with saturation where needed here)
Thanks for sharing, this is very helpful!!! Btw, where can I get that 🔥🔥🔥T-shirt??
Thanks Colton. This is great information. Perhaps you can share the names of the plug-ins that you use for this process? I would love to know what you use. Thanks!
Word 👌
🔥🔥🔥🔥 මරු බොසා!! Great!
🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻
I need that tee shirt your wearing!! Where did you get it?
Great explanation. Could you please share what your target mastered LUFS and true peak level is? A lot of confusion about this online it seems. Thanks
So that’s a hard one, because it totally depends on the song… For an acoustic/vocal thing it might be -10 LUFS. For a metal band it might be -5 LUFS. And both of those would play back at about the same perceived, volume because of how the source material affects the meter. I hope that makes sense!
@@ColtCapperrune I can understand why this subject has resulted in much misinformation online as there is no ‘set rule.’ I too made the mistake of mastering to -14 LUFS only to discover how quiet my tracks were! I think what confuses me most (and not many people seem to explain this) What is the standard db ceiling to set the final limiter to? I hear people say -1db peak with a target -8 LUFS loudness, but that would surely obliterate the track with compression in order to hit that target! I need a general rule to work towards because the information online is so contradictory. Thanks
- mostly mastering for Rock music I should add?
Where'd you get the shirt
nice.
How loud should a mix be going into a mastering session
Where is that vocal chain t shirt from?
I've always wondered, if you mastered your songs to like -10 lufs or -9.5 lufs or even higher, would you set your peak level to -2db, or much much higher?
I've only seen one video on this, and after I saw the video, the creator took it down.
True peak doesn't matter on streaming platforms. 99% of the world's greatest masters of all time have at least +1dB of true peaking.
Where can I get the t shirt
that bend 3:28 in solo is trolling
dude sorry for the interruption but what could be a optimal L.R.A level for a rock song?
I’m listening on my phone. I could tell the low eq one was the loudest, even though the hi eq one sounded louder. I have sensitive hearing sooooo yeah, I could easily tell.
EDIT: I really enjoy your content. Keep doing it!
Hi Colt, here is why music mastered at -14LUFS sounded quieter on spotify than competition. Spotify will bring down everything to -14lufs only when user activates Normalize Volume in their settings. Otherwise it will play at the real level. If your normalization was Off, then your -14lufs master would have sounded quieter than the rest. Here is a video showing it at 3:30. ruclips.net/video/NNCylx61yRM/видео.html. Cheers.
Nah, a -8LUFSi version of a song turned down 6dB will sound louder than the same song mastered to -14LUFSi.
Try it and you'll see... well hear, for yourself.
This is even more noticeable in real life listening scenarios like listening in noisy environments, but applies also to a quiet mixing room.
@@kelainefes Did you watch the video ?? The link I put in my comment. I strongly invite you to watch it to understand how much your comment is irrelevant bro. Cheers.
“the loudness war is over, loudness has won”. We can agree or disagree but the reality is (well… my reality) is that, with electronic music, -14 LUFS is most often way to quiet. And as a composer, sometimes when looking for a particular texture for a song, i can reach (+/-) -9 LUFS without any plugins on the master. Like many others, i think that, just like the LUFS measurement is based on tonality, well obviously the LUFS target can be based on the song or genre... not on convention. No matter how hard or quiet. Remember, there is no “it should be” in art :-)
Where can I get that T-shirt?
🤣🤣🤣🤣
so, when I master my song to spotfy should I always master a bit louder than -14db LUFS?
It depends on the source material. But if it is any sort of pop, rock, country, etc.… Not an acoustic vocal, -14 LUFS will leave your master incredibly quiet once it is distributed.
Every professional song usually runs between -10 and -5. Normalization can be turned off in settings for both apple and Spotify so you can hear the songs original volume
Spotify has a setting that is called "loud" and levels everything at -11LUFS integrated and if a track is quieter than that they will use their own limiter which sounds horrible and pumps like crazy.
So I would say do not master less than to -11LUFS integrated as a way to at least avoid that from happening.
That being said, analyse a few recent major label releases in your genre with similar arrangements and see where they are and go for something similar.
Right now most modern genres are coming out louder than -9.
Damn bruh. These senheiser momentum 3s really pump out some bass lol. Lower one is way louder for me. Either that or Warren Huart was right and I have some hearing damage (;
Could also be both I suppose
There's only one thing that complainers need to understand: by level matching based on RMS or even worse, LUFS, you're not hearing the effect that clearly. By level matching only using a PPM meter, you're 100% only hearing the effect knowing that you're not tricking your ears.
Great. You just show how Lufs does not measure how we listen. We are more sensitive to mid high freq, than low freq. and lufs measurement is sentí I to low freq that is energy but we do not here as loud.
Awww c'mon, so what LUFS level do you send to Spotify??
Good explanation and yeah, the loudness wars are still raging and the -14 master is a die hard urban legend but that doesn’t mean that an A/Bing without using LUFS and RMS doesn’t trick the ears…even yours 😉. It’s great that you took the time to raise and give your answer to the question, though. Anyways, I’d love to test those preamps IRL, they do sound amazing (even when level matched 😜). Keep up the good work, your channel is one of the best out there in the audio world 👍👍👍.
Multi-Band LUFS Integrated measurements is the way to go instead of single band LUFS Integrated measurements.
You made a little mistake in this Video. - 4:14 You said Integrated LUFS, while you had it on Short Term LUFS 😉 But still a great Vid tho'
🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏
🤘🏻🤘🏻🤘🏻
Why only 50!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??????!!!!!!
Thank you for the depth of this video.
yup -14 is quiet
I don’t level match.. I match levels!
At the risk of sounding harsh, I think these meters and measurements have become a crutch for a lot of people. Don't get me wrong, meters and measurements are important tools and definitely have their time and place BUT, in my opinion, the best method for level matching is still to just use your ears.
Thank you Colt for Explaining this! 🎚🎧Geo