Mastering to LUFS standards

[junkyardtodd]

I've been recording and mastering (on Ozone 7) my dumb indie rock stuff on a hobbyist level for a long time, and in the last few years I've gotten to a point where the tracks sound like I want them to sound, and I can play them next to commercially produced stuff. But now we want to make it available on Spotify, and I'm starting to learn about LUFS. When I put a LUFS meter on the end of my mastering chain I discovered that I was running -11 or so, much hotter than the -16 that Spotify wants. It's easy enough to get down to -16, but then my peak winds up at -2 or -3db. I've been messing with it all day and can't get better results.
Is this normal? Should I just do a separate master for CD? Should I go into the mixes and try to reduce the amount of compression on individual tracks?

[A.David.MacKinnon]

If it was me I wouldn't change the mixes. If they're doing what you want leave them as is.
I'd compare to other commercial mixes. Are they actually hitting -16 LUFS or is Spotify just turning them down before streaming? Maybe compare a song where you own a hard copy or hi-rez download. What do the meters say on the hi-rez version vs Spotify?
How do your mixes sound with peaks at -2 or -3db? Are you missing anything? Do they sit well next to other mixes sitting at -16 LUFS?

I'd put more emphasis on what my ears are telling me vs what the meters say.

[joninc]

some interesting info here:

loudnesspenalty.com

[MoreSpaceEcho]

If it was me I wouldn't change the mixes. If they're doing what you want leave them as is.
I'd compare to other commercial mixes. Are they actually hitting -16 LUFS or is Spotify just turning them down before streaming? Maybe compare a song where you own a hard copy or hi-rez download. What do the meters say on the hi-rez version vs Spotify?
How do your mixes sound with peaks at -2 or -3db? Are you missing anything? Do they sit well next to other mixes sitting at -16 LUFS?

I'd put more emphasis on what my ears are telling me vs what the meters say.

Ears over meters all day every day.

Nobody is putting out commercial masters at -16, I can assure you of that. Spotify is turning them down.

I personally don't pay much of any attention to LUFS numbers, I master at a fixed monitoring level and I know if I make things sound good at that level they'll be loud enough to make most clients happy but not so loud that everything's totally crushed and ruined.

So my advice would be to forget about the numbers, just make it sound good to you, and if it gets turned down by Spotify/youtube/whatever, then fine.

Another thread on this here:

https://www.gearslutz.com/board/masteri ... ot-do.html

[Nick Sevilla]

Just lower the overall gain of your already mixed masters, so they conform to that -16 LUFS standard.

Forget about the peaks, that is useless for this purpose.