I tried Safari Audio Meaw, AI agent. It said the track needed more LUFS among other issues, eg True Peak. OK, the track has not been mastered yet. So I added some gain, almost full dbfs. AI agent said I needed still more LUFS. It was still too quiet. Hmm.. How? I am almost clipping the master. I am in Ableton in Windows. It doesn’t show LUFS or TP. Any practical suggestion how to deal with it?

 

Last edited: May 20, 2026 at 2:56 PM

Try installing this: Youlean Loudness Meter - https://youlean.co/youlean-loudness-meter/

 

First, do you have any limiter of soft clipper on your master bus?

 

PulseWave as always being less useful than the AI used by the OP to get non-mixing advice. Crazy times, it's almost like reading is a problem. But yeah, get the loudness reading plugin since you don't have it, but that's not the problem here.

I'll help you out, OP, but you have to promise me you'll seek out the knowledge to really understand it, because that's something that I can't drill into your head or the AI will be able to, at least without a very long reading and transplanting experience into your soul.

First things first, loudness is decided at track level. And level in this case is not volume, it's the plane it works in. Each track has a peak number and that number adds up eating your headroom to a louder master. I can push -8 masters without any compromises without even trying, but that's because my workflow got to a point where I'm eating away those peaks without thinking about it.

The simplest way you can get your track louder, or maybe LOUDER if that's your thing, is by starting with those peaks. Get StandardClip and use soft clip pro mode if you want really think about it. I only use clippers like this in places where I have transients eating headroom, I see no reason to waste my time trying to clip a vocal. The second way you can do it is with SPL Machine Head or MBS Mixhead. They are "tape emulations", but the effect is incredibly subtle and subtle here goes a long, long way. The effect is also essentially free on the CPU, so you can have it on every track. Try 2 drive with -2 output, 0 HF boosting. You don't need to touch anything else.

Then we go further by using an Inflator-like plugin into a bus (or buses). There are way too many to count, including a 1:1 clone of Inflator for free. I've been using Puff Puff Mix Pass by Korneff Audio a lot. It also comes with a clipper, so you can skip the previous paragraph and just use one plugin for everything, but I would advise against using too much of clipping/obvious saturation as that will add distortion to the track, and distortion builds up a lot if you keep adding deliberately into it. I've come to accept that most of the time, if a plugin has saturation, I might put it ON, but I won't push the knobs anymore. Learned that after too much trouble getting vocals done.

Lastly, we need to further reduce crest factor, and at this point there shouldn't be a lot left to take away at the mixbus/master track level. We can use something like Purafied 5420 or something like Soundtheory Kraftur. Both plugins are very powerful, but they WILL introduce obvious distortion if you don't know how to handle them. You'll probably overdo it a lot and the controls can be very confusing, so maybe take a 30 minute break and come back with fresh ears to see if the mix became a mess (these will surely bloat the low end easily, and you might not even realise). With all of this processing, you should be able to get a mix to a pretty good level without a limiter. With a limiter, you can push it even further. I think that getting a -10 LUFS reading is healthy enough and still very transparent.

Just to point it out since it might not be obvious, I'm telling you how to get louder without sounding like crap. You can surely go take a clip to zero mix course and 100% love it. It's all taste. Most of the music that I mix and master benefit from not pushing things too hot. If I was mixing metal or EDM, I might push things further. The only way to understand this stuff is by trial and error and a lot of experience.

Hope that helps!

 

Need to run your track through this!

 

The transient to RMS ratio is out with something in your mix, at its core somewhere. Honestly, if you're seeking advice from an AI agent, you need to do more work honing your mixing skills. Sounds patronising I know and I apologise, but it sounds like it is that way. Subgroups within your mix help, so how one element or group is processed to deal or not deal with transients won't affect other elements or groups in your mix. Loud RMS mixes are that way because the right things have been done from the ground up.. I mean a good question for us to help you is what style is is? Also.. what shinjiya said! Good advice there.

 

The loudness meter is not a bad suggestion when someone is clearly mixing up measurements. OP is mixing up peak level and loudness.

dBFS / clipping only tells you how close the signal is to digital overload. LUFS measures perceived average loudness over time. A track can peak near 0 dBFS and still have relatively low LUFS if it has a lot of dynamics or sharp transients.

That’s why a loudness meter helps. Ableton’s stock meters don’t really show integrated LUFS or true peak clearly. A free meter like Youlean or something like it makes this much easier to understand.

I like Izotope Insight 2, and it would give immediate clarity about what is actually happening. Only after you know what you are trying to do should you start throwing plugins at your problems.

 

You can raise LUFS without raising the dBFS and that's when the True Peak comes in. Set it to -1dB (use this value for a mastering standard) and raise the voltage until you reached the LUFS you are searching for (or the AI is telling you).

 

first make sure your mix is good before you start mastering then you won't need much on your master i've realized that now through practice i only use a Proq4 for lowvcut midsides and high cuts then a standard clipbsometimes a little compression but usually not and Oxford inflator at 25% tops then my limiter where I leave 2 or 3 db of headroom for the newfangled audio elivitate plugin to enhance my transients
don't overdo it and it's not always necessary

 

Loudness Wars are gone. You can make you track louder with everything @shinjiya mentioned, and you can choose to not go that way and still have a really solid and musical mix. It will be normalized any way

My final limiter does well the job of taming nasty peaks and setting the dynamic range i want, and i stopped using compression on my master fader. Limiters are very powerful nowdays and they can handle that task well.

 

compression, clipping, limiting, you can check for ex. how Dan Worrall made more than -0 LUFS using distortion,
many CDs go less than -8 LUFS so it's just about how much dynamic range do you want to sacrifice for lazy listeners not being able to turn volume knob up

 

I just wanted to say. I love you <3

I've been managing to hit -10 LUFS or so consistently lately with my music, but I was never too sure how I did it or what worked exactly. It was always a game of throwing shit on the wall until the Mona Lisa appears suddenly, then don't touch anything.

Your explanation gave me a much better understanding on how a master chain should look like and what the exact purpose of stuff I usually throw on there is.

And, mods, please, can we have a facepalm rating for posts?
You know:


Because every time Pulsewave tries to give advice to someone, or basically replies to anything. I feel like giving him an award for the effort at least. You know, he's trying. Doing his best over here. He deserves one. Just not a good one.