btw stairway to heaven is overrated hahaha

 

People talking to microphones, sometimes wearing headphones.
Like in a radio.

 

Then I assume you meant should not be louder:

And that you meant "restriction on loudness, not dynamic range":

Otherwise the entire statement makes no sense.

 

Last edited: Feb 19, 2024

No composer or musician of several decades and I fit that description, would ever agree that production techniques define ANY music. No educated musician would either. The composition/song/performances defines the music. The way something is made and created is far more important. If engineering and production were related to food, it would be relegated to the oven and the cream on the cake. It never has and never will make the cake, only bake it, the ingredients (music/composition/performance) make the cake. Last, yes, they would still have been great artists and never think someone doesn't know where to look. Everyone has that capacity. Compressing the crap out of something where everything is the same volume is unmusical and at a high level of musicianship, it is considered poor musicianship if a musician played like that.

Putting production before the music is like putting the cart before the horse and believing the cart drags the horse. A shit piece of music even with incredible engineering and production, is still a shit piece of music, similar to polishing a turd.

BOOM. Gold star. A lot of people forget this is a lot closer to the original benchmark for Radio in the prior decades. Pleasantness is often what most people prefer when listening to anything. If they want to be shocked, and have their sensory perception completely disrupted, they can always stick a fork into a light socket

You are correct at a Radio popularity level only - Sorry I took a while to reply Lois From memory, that was more the radio stations not wanting anything to exceed 3 minutes and 45 seconds because otherwise, it messed up their show programming.
That said though, "Hey Jude" completely defied that logic though did it not? Coming in at 7mins.
something - There was a shorter version apparently, but many stations still played the longer version.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Feb 19, 2024

Just look up what mr. Worall has to say on the matter of normalization if you don't understand my way of putting it.

Or these guys.
https://www.production-expert.com/production-expert-1/learn-how-to-master-for-streaming-platforms

 

I don't have to.

The YouTube loudness specification says -14 LUFS.
YouTube does not care about DR. It doesn't touch the DR, but the loudness.

Let's assume our material has a dynamic range of 10dB.

1. Upload material with -14 LUFS / -4 dBTP and nothing happens. It remains at -14 LUFS / -4 dBTP.
2. Upload material that is +1 LU louder and YouTube lowers it by -1 LU to -14 LUFS / -4 dBTP.
3. Upload material that is -1 LU quieter and YouTube does nothing. The material remains untouched at -15 LUFS / -5 dBTP.

The DR will always remain 10dB in this example.
And 15-20 dB DR, as another example, is perfectly fine for a podcast. Any modern playback device has more than enough power to play a -24 LUFS podcast loud enough.


This is the opposite of what you wrote!

 

Last edited: Feb 19, 2024

Loudness??? Eat this!Ya filthy publishing platform

 

sorry, my bad. i just said that because you talk like theres no good modern artists (so it felt like you didnt know where to look)

i'm not saying that you're wrong. i actually agree with you in this.

but not everyone who listens to music is a musician. actually most people who listen are not.

so they really don't care about dynamics, composition, compression, talent, or if the whole track piece of cr*p that was made of samples
what they really care is if sounds good to their ears. and it does, otherwise these artists with "unmusical" music wouldn't get millions and billions of streams
you might not even consider that music. but there's tons of people that do

 

Dan Worrall - I Didn't Win The Loudness War:
https://youtube.com/shorts/5xEaDKd9siM?si=EIp1cdJYOLYLqgx4

 

PLR = TP (max) - LUFS-I
PSR = TP (current) - LUFS-S

 

Ah I see, with pictures too, like in a TV...

 

No, you're in dire need to : (
Let's try again.
1) If your song is louder than -14 LUFS, it gets attenuated *to* -14 LUFS.
2) If your song is quieter, it does *not* get adjusted up, cause true peaks prevent it.
3) This means that you want your song to be louder than -14 LUFS, otherwise it'll be quieter than the rest of the songs on the platform.
4) This also means that, since all the loudnesses are normalized, that what you're really dealing with is dynamic range. And too much dynamic range means too quiet a music piece.

See that's the sad part. This is the reason behind what I wrote, there are well-respected people who explain the same thing, and you, well, decided to be the usual. Please just block me and never answer to me again. I'm not your psychiatrist.

 

Video is not mandatory. There is a lot of podcast with audio only.

 

Is this about helping people understand the topic or muddying the waters with inaccurate statements? It's not about comparing who has the longest dick, it's about getting the facts right, isn't it? Put your ego aside. We are adults, aren't we?

And this statement is objectively wrong.
Yes, I'm sure "there are well-respected people who explain the same thing", but in most cases they at least get the facts right. So if it makes me "the usual" to add some facts and correct some nonsense, I will gladly plead guilty.

It's just that YouTube doesn't care about the True Peak. Otherwise, it would normalize material quieter than -14 LUFS to -14 LUFS or -1 dBTP, depending on the PLR.

In fact, the YouTube loudness target is nothing more than a program loudness reference as an upper limit. On radio and TV, not every type of program material plays at the same loudness. Music, commercials, movies, news, educational programs, etc., all have their own loudness target in reference to the loudness limit. Sometimes it even depends on the time of day/night. Sometimes this is even regulated by law. But these laws will not apply to you.
So just make your material sound good and put it in the right loudness pocket (for the type of program and to your liking) in relation to YouTube's loudness target.

Why aim for -8 LUFS / -0.2 dBTP? Just aim for what sounds good for the material.

But this thread is explicitly about podcasts, isn't it? -8 LUFS / 0.2 dBTP is too crushed even for most music genres, and actually podcasts should be a bit quieter than music program. Quieter than -14 LUFS.

->

What was Dan Worral's statement? Was it "Crush your dynamics to compete in the loudness war"? Or was it "Just make it sound good"?

The restriction on YouTube and other platforms is on max loudness, not dynamic range. The DR is completely up to you. Whether you choose PLR8 or PLR28 doesn't matter. What sounds good?

 

Last edited: Feb 20, 2024

Yeah no, look around. It's about loudness normalization in general now, not even YouTube normalization, and this is what I was talking about. YouTube indeed doesn't normalize up, other platforms do.

Yes, which means, make it as loud as you can without sounding shit.

-8 is tame, what are you talking about? The era-relevant contemporary loudness is about -3 LUFS. What "most" music genres are you even talking about, elevator jazz? Even pop is all -6 to -10.

My point stands. Don't want to be quiet - shoot above the normalization target.
Want to be quiet - OK boomer you do you. Nothing I said here should concern those who're into HDR music and they know that.

 

Last edited: Feb 20, 2024

Do we live on the same planet?
EDM doesn't dominate the music market, afaik. The rough average of pop, hip-hop and metal is currently between -7 and -13 LUFS-I. Titles that are louder than that tend to be the very loud exception. Most being around -9 LUFS-I or quieter. Tendency towards -12 and -13 LUFS-I on quiter titles.

EDIT:
Not exactly the latest title, but modern pop. 13.9 LUFS-I / 0 dBTP. #5 on Billboard200. So what are we talking about here?

You mean... Like Spotify, for example? Which normalizes tracks that are quieter than -14 LUFS to max -1 dBTP ?
So what? It won't do anything to your title if you upload it with, say, -23 LUFS-I / -1TP.

 

Last edited: Feb 20, 2024

At first I thought "Most probably", but then I read along and

EDM, LOL. Is this your conception of electronic music? Also I didn't said anything about the market. Only about what's widely achieved by contemporary producers.

THAT'S THE FUCKING POINT
Shit, man. For real. Learn to read. This is exactly why uploading a track with such a high dynamic range is bad. It will *not* be adjusted up to the loudness standard of the platform, it will *remain* way quieter than the normalization target. This is *exactly* the restriction on dynamic range I'm talking about. And if your TP in this example were at 0, it would've attenuated your track a dB further.
I'm making an assumption here that you would always want your track to be normalized by the platform instead of beeing yee-yee ass high dynamic range weirdo. You seemingly don't make this assumption and think that it's completely normal and not a punishment for being an audiophile. No idea why would you want to self-exclude like that, but okay, I guess?

 

LOL Where is the ominous restriction? You have the freedom to decide how loud/quiet, dynamic/undynamic your track is in relation to others. -14 LUFS (or -16 LUFS on some platforms) is the upper limit of loudness, below that you decide. And nobody is telling you what to do with your dynamic range. Where exactly does a restriction of the dynamic range takes place here? It's in YOUR hands. Look up the word restriction.

No. If at all, the platforms will only apply upward normalization to material when its quieter than their loudness target. On Spotify, if the True Peak value exceeds -1, no action is taken. Some others normalize up to -0 dBTP.

The track with the highest dynamic range on Kendrick Lamar's latest album has the following values:
-0.2 dBFS / +0.2 dBTP / -14.5 LUFS-I

Spotify has not made any changes to the loudness, as the True Peak is already above -1.
Apple has made the track even quieter because their target loudness is -16 LUFS-I.

If you want to squeeze your music onto 2.8 PLR, do it. Nobody's holding you back! And if it sounds good, you have my respect. But that's not the norm. The norm is in the 9 to 11 PLR range for most genres. Some tracks louder, others quieter. And then there are scores, which sometimes have a slightly larger dynamic range and enjoy great popularity on streaming platforms, despite sometimes exceeding 20 PLR. Does that trigger you? Then go to John Williams and tell him that his music is bad because it's too quiet.

And the recommendations for podcasts are still at -16 LUFS (or -18 LUFS in the latest AES paper), thus 15-16 PLR. For good reason.

 

Last edited: Feb 21, 2024

Hey!
I have problems with my mastering that is not at the level of other competitive masters on streaming platforms (especially youtube)
Im not a beginner (+12 years mixing and mastering) Tried multiple chains at considered levels (-14 etc) Normally mastering at -6 lufs while comparing with other producers that masters at -5, -4 lufs (Lance Prenc, Buster Odeholm etc and obviously youtube is penalizing their master but still sounding in a good volume) I still not getting there and is so frustrating

 

There are lots of apps and plugins since the dawn of mankind that do exactly this ... (Little bit hyperbolic, but nonetheless ...) E.g look ate iZotopes plugs, MasterinTheMix, Youlean and so on and on and on and on. You can do it fully automated in REAPER.

(Interestingly people bashing mindless on AI have nearly all of the time no clue what they are talking about. But that's normal nowadays I assume ... blabbering without having a clue.)