Loudness confusion

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tyrebo
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Loudness confusion

Post by tyrebo » Thu Jun 22, 2017 6:58 pm

Trying to improve my home "mastering", learning more about loudness. Lot's of googling brought lots of info about loudness concept etc,, but this page-

https://ask.audio/articles/how-loudness ... production

seemed to have the hard info I needed, primarily recommended targets.
However when I master to these levels, they are quite low and when compared to professional work, both from cds, and on line, for example bandcamp flac downloads, soundcloud streaming, etc. Also, the results are considerably lower than when I simply mix/master to ~ 0 to -1 db (peaks) in Logic.

I seem to be missing something, googling around reveals confusion seems to abound on this. thanks for any input.
Tyler
Last edited by tyrebo on Fri Jun 23, 2017 7:14 am, edited 1 time in total.

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vvv
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Post by vvv » Fri Jun 23, 2017 4:10 am

First, your link is bad so we have no idear what you are referencing ...
bandcamp;
blog.
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Drone
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Post by Drone » Fri Jun 23, 2017 6:13 am

The previous statement is from a guy who records his own, and other projects for fun. No money is made.

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Post by tyrebo » Fri Jun 23, 2017 7:13 am

my apologies for the bad link and thank you Drone for correcting it. Any thoughts?

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Post by kslight » Fri Jun 23, 2017 8:10 am

Without a sample to compare to, I would guess your problem isn't related to peaks as much as "average" level, as well as perceived level (this has to do more with the overall balance of your mix).

I would import a commercially mixed song that you want to match against and look at the wave form, as well as apply your metering plugin to it and see where exactly they're at.

The question then comes down to how much you want to sacrifice dynamic range and sound quality for "loudness," which is an entirely different discussion.

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Drone
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Post by Drone » Fri Jun 23, 2017 5:22 pm

I've never used Logic, so I don't know how it displays, but I find the two-tone display in Audacity a lot easier to understand than the one I see in REAPER.

The inner, lighter blue, envelope is the average loudness and the outer is the peaks.

Image

versus

Image

Perhaps you can enable such a display in Logic?
Last edited by Drone on Fri Jun 30, 2017 11:14 am, edited 2 times in total.
The previous statement is from a guy who records his own, and other projects for fun. No money is made.

tyrebo
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Post by tyrebo » Mon Jun 26, 2017 6:34 pm

just wanted to revisit this for a moment, thank all for their input. After further reading it seems to me this idea of standards for integrated LUFS targets may not be that helpful, except perhaps for broadcast. If one keeps peaks at acceptable levels depending on requirements, let's say -1 db for true peaks, then the integrated LUFS for a piece may land about anywhere, depending on type of material, compression and brick wall amounts, etc etc.. Seems to me experience, ears, good taste, expertise, etc. dictates those practices more than standards.
If anyone thinks that's off base, or requires expanding upon, any help is appreciated. Still learning.

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Post by Snarl 12/8 » Tue Jun 27, 2017 1:54 pm

Treat your room. Learn your monitors. Use reference mixes. Trust your ears.
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Post by MoreSpaceEcho » Wed Jun 28, 2017 1:38 pm

^^^^^ that.

forget meters. don't look at waveforms. use your ears.

perceived loudness has more to do with mix balance/quality and eq than compression/limiting.

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Post by tyrebo » Wed Jun 28, 2017 4:57 pm

the part of this issue that remains undiscussed is the issue of standards. The article suggests different industry standards for broadcast, EDM producers and independent musicians releasing their own music online, even specific sites _
"iTunes (Soundcheck and Radio): -16 LUFS
Youtube: -13 LUFS
Spotify: -12 LUFS)",
Mastering for CD.

Anyone trying to adhere to these "standards"? Seems to me one would be mastering for specific use then, no?

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Post by MoreSpaceEcho » Thu Jun 29, 2017 10:51 am

spotify just changed their standard to -16.

if you master to that level, it's definitely going to sound quiet compared to cd standard.

of course, the cd standard for the last...oh, almost 20 years...has been Completely Stupid, and hopefully it will just go away soon.

but it's easy enough to make a loud version and a normal version. use the normal version for streaming services.

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Post by tyrebo » Fri Jun 30, 2017 10:26 am

thank you, to the point! Your work on the bandcamp link sounds great.

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Post by MoreSpaceEcho » Sun Jul 02, 2017 5:23 pm

cheers, thanks!

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Post by lyman » Sat Jul 08, 2017 9:25 am

MoreSpaceEcho wrote: forget meters. don't look at waveforms. use your ears.

perceived loudness has more to do with mix balance/quality and eq than compression/limiting.
Good advice. I realized this recently when I was listening to some stuff I recorded a while back and although the levels weren't all that hot, I found myself turning it down because of too much in the 4k dept.

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Post by losthighway » Sat Jul 15, 2017 7:06 pm

Yeah, similar to what others have said, "loud" has so much to do with things other than peaks. You could have a few assertive snare hits where the peak scrapes the top of your ceiling (-0.7 or whatever you want to make it) and have an altogether quiet mix. Aside from the eq presence that Spaceecho mentioned there's the idea of overall mix "density". If you have a number of elements in a mix with a more limited dynamic range, they can be brought up to make a mix where at any given moment more air is moving from more instruments at more frequencies. This can be impactful, or it can be awful while being loud. This is why mixing is so dang hard. It's also why a lot of engineers compress various elements of their mix multiple times to various degrees to subtly sculpt their level of "squish" and affect the dynamics, especially with drums. Then people get into 2-bus compression from there as they bounce (not that I'm so bold).

In theory if the elements of your mix have been carefully compressed according to your sonic goals then in mastering the ME wouldn't need to limit as hard to give you your loud goal.

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