Oh yeah, that can happen when you heavily clip. You seem to have droven your output so high, that there a several samples with 0dbfs in a row. You have to see it from the point of a DAC. after the samples there is a reconstruction filter that gets rid of the 'steps'. Imagine it as smooting out of the steps from the bits, creating one continuus waveform.
Image 4 samples as bars, first -60dbfs then 2 samples 0 dbfs and the fourth one -60dbfs again. No draw a line and make a smooth waveform over those 4 samples. See? You will overshoot at those two 0dbfs samples to get to a smooth waveform.
True peak means "all right, we do not measure what any of those samples value is. we measure what the actual waveform would look like after it is converted back to analog." this is not at all about different compression algos that is just what needs to be done to get the true (after DAC) peaks of any signal that came from digital and went to analog. But lossy compresson can make it worse, or fuck it up in other ways.
Unfortunately I can't tell you what spotify does when you upload such a track.
Could you find out by uploading it and recording it back?
Would be highly interesting.

//edit// oh my dark lord, I replied to an ancient post. never mind

 

Lol, it's ok. I'm actually glad you guys resurrected this topic

So I tried Loudness Penalty site and plugin and it's not very helpful to be honest. I see that it just takes integrated LUFS of my wav file and calculates the difference between -14 LUFS and my value. So if I have -6, it shows -8 spotify penalty. I can do that math myself.
I hoped the plugin would do it this way:

Meaning they would do ogg or whatever conversion, emulating each service's real pipeline. Because two different tracks with the same -0.1 dbtp will most likely have different penalties after their conversion

Anyway, I remembered that last time I uploaded my track I had to reuipload it with -1dbtp setting instead of 0dbtp. It helped, but not much. Might actually try -2dbtp next time

 

mix music properly, then you do not have -6.

problem solved.

 

Last edited: Jul 1, 2026 at 5:55 AM

That plugin Loudness Penalty was decent at the time for people trying to estimate how each streaming platform would handle their masters. It's coming up on 10 years old or so. Maybe that's not very old for something you use in your DAW to be considered obsolete, but the platforms it was designed for are much more of a moving target than your DAW, where changes are generally considered a problem. There are better tools for it now.

 

If by "mixing properly" you mean uploading masters at -12 or -14 LUFS, that will not work for the genre

I would gladly try them if you recommend some

 

i highly doubt that there are genres of music which require you to press everything to +30db and then put 17 brickwall limiters on top.

and even then there is still no reason why you needed to send -3db peak on the master to the DAC and export your master files like that.

"mixing properly" in my sense means that you should give a fuck about technical specifications during mixing. simply because that it not what mixing is about.
i dont even think about such nonsense during arranging and mixing audio.

 

I appreciate your input. But nobody here was talking about "+30db and then put 17 brickwall limiters"
We are just talking about stuff like Noisia, Pendulum, Sub Focus. They achieve -5.5 integrated LUFS easily and their mixes sound good at the same time. Cheers

 

and you really think they would sound worse if you lower the gain for 10 db?

 

I didn't say that. What's your point? You are saying that "you should give a fuck about technical specifications during mixing". Unfortunately you didn't specify what technical specifications exactly you are talking about. If those are Spotify guidelines, the artists mentioned above obviously don't care about those. They don't submit at -12-14 lufs integrated with -1-2 dbtp peaks. They submit at their -5.5db integrated with 0dbtp and even with +1/+2dbtp (at least that's what I see from Deezer-ripped flac files).
So I either misunderstand your initial statement "mix music properly, then you do not have -6", or those artists prove that wrong
I'm not at the level of technical skill and acoustic treatment of the studio with those artists. I'm just a bedroom guy trying to do something similar with trial and error. And I get pretty close results when comparing their loseless wav to my losesless wav. But on Spotify my stuff sounds lowered in gain after their conversion. So I was just trying to understand how to minimize that Spotify penalty

 

I don't get why people hate so much on true peak. In my experience my most accurate results on streaming were using true peak limiting. When i didn't use it, my track got smaller and i could experience artifacts as well. I see it as a safe net to help codecs and i don't see why it could harm my audio. I mean, any limiter will harm dynamics anyway. I'd like to hear others experiences regarding that.

 

Yes, I'm in the same boat. This is an old topic and I pretty much got my answer like 3 years ago. But guys resurrected it and I was not against to hear other experiences too
In a nutshell: I upload 44.1khz, 24bit, around -6 integrated lufs, -0.1/-0.3dbtp and it works ok. But with Spotify loudness normalization I feel like some stuff sounds 1db quiter than it should. And I also often hear similar effect in "Release Radar" for other artists. Some just sound a bit quiter than the others. When you turn off "equal loudness" option it gets ok, but 90% of people have that on. So nothing fatal, but disappointing sometimes

 

Are you on Mac or Windows? What alternatives to Loudness Penalty do you already have, and are you open to buying anything or are you only interested in things which have been shared, or are free?

 

I'm on Windows and mostly use "Mastering the Mix - Expose" to analyze exported files. I tried Orban Loudness Meter yesterday. It shows "Highest reconstructed peak level" value - pretty useful info that I didn't have before. I'm open to whatever you think works best. Preferably free/shared on sister site, but if something is paid and beats other options, I would like to have it on my radar too. Thanks

 

well, whatever you think what you needed to do. i am always referring to your original post.

as far i understood it, you are producing and mastering music and end up with specs such as -0.1 true peak and -5 LUFS.

and then you are wondering why spotify lowers the volume.

at this point it is already clear that it will be very ineffective to only explain you the reason for this. you obviously already failed the point of loudness and peak standards and what their existence should mean for someone who produces music.

instead i rather reply such posts with a counter question which is basically "why the heck are you doing that."

because if you cant explain the reason...

yes, because you are not the only one who does not understand these things, the majority of people do not understand it.

it is absolutely no problem to submit tracks with a higher LUFS.
it is also no problem to submit tracks to platform with a lower peak.

the only thing you have to obeye is that the difference between the loudness and peak values in your music is not greater than the requested difference.
only then dynamics processing on the platform happens.
in all other cases the platform only has to change the gain.

that is the main point you must understand, that this is not possible.

you can of course lower the gain yourself to reach -14 LUFS.
that i what i meant by "proper mixing" - ignore the specs and concentrate on other things.
it makes no difference in the end.

fiddling around with abstract numbers is not getting more right only because there are 10,000 youtube videos about it.

if you for some reason think it is important to be the loudest, you must publish CDs or use your own website to stream. television or streaming services use loudness standards, because that is better for the listener.

 

Last edited: Jul 4, 2026 at 1:26 PM

Yes, pretty much. Between -5.5 and 7 depending on the track.

I perfectly understand why it lowers down to -14db. I understand thast if I have -7 integrated, it will be lowered 7db if in my app settings I have "Normalize volume" swithed on.
But I feel like something else is going on there besides that. And seems like it's dynamics processing that you are referring to.

So you are talking abour PLR (Peak-to-Loudness Ratio), right?
PLR = True Peak − Integrated LUFS
And in your opinion it should be 14. Did I understand that corectly?

Man, as much as I would want that to be true, I think there's a big difference. Let's say I ignore the specs and just do good mix that is -12 integrated LUFS. It will not be competitive with commercial EDM/DNB/Hip-Hop/Metal/whatever live or on the platforms like Soundcloud,
where there's no normalization.

Not because of "10,000 youtube videos". Because I want to sound like Pendulum/Sub Focus. And when I analyze their tracks, I get those values. If they have -6, I can't have -11. On Soundcloud or in live DJ set my tracks will sound weaker that theirs.

Again, not to be the loudest. But to be close to loudness level of those artists. They are quite loud. And they upload to Spotify too

So guys like Noisia, who have 25 years of experience of producing their own music, other artists, game soundtracks do not understand something that you are trying to convey? I don't mean to be ironic in this question. I am sincerely trying to understand your point of view

If I pick modern rock tracks like Bad Omens or recent Linkin Park album, they have -5.5-6.5 in choruses. That's all I'm trying to say. That commercial engineers pay attention to those numbers. You don't chase it, but you want to be in the ballpark. I don't know how to explain it other way

 

So with me being on Mac, I was going to say Nugen Mastercheck2; but if you have to buy it, a $250 option probably is not advisable. It's on sale at Sweetwater now for $174, which is about average anyway. If you don’t want to spend Nugen (or Flux) money, just grab Youlean Loudness Meter Pro and be done with it. It's $39 to unlock the Platform specs information features, but you can find a version 2.4x from R2R. VR released something called "Ultra" but that's not even listed on their website. You would have to check the 2.4/2.5x to later versions changelogs to see any differences, but I doubt they are some dramatic differences.

Everything else people will list (Metric AB, Expose, True:Level, etc.) is basically the same job with a different UI and a few extras. You don’t need 4 opinions telling you your mix is loud. ADPTR Streamliner is the only one that’s actually different because it simulates streaming codecs. Keep that separate if you care. But the main point Obineg makes is true, none of these fix loudness. Your mix and clipping/limiting chain does. The meter just confirms what you already screwed up or got right.

 

Yes, man. Thank you so much! This one seems like a tool I was looking for. Simulating streaming codecs is the thing. And it has target loudness presets for Noisia, Skrillex and Pendulum.Woo-hoo

I was under the impression that he's fundamentally against those kind of loudness/dynamic range levels. But we even see presets for that in the plugin you've mentioned. So I feel like it's a misunderstading probably.
I totally get that meters don't fix anything. And I do use a lot of limiting/clipping on groups, subgroups and master. Step by step getting to that commercial level loudness. But I feel like Spotify does something else besides just converting to ogg and turning it down to -14db level. That's why I'm in this rabbit hole, wondering if anyone else had the same feeling. Maybe they use some extra unknown psychoacoustic algorithms, idk. It's strange to me that nobody can tell for sure what happens to your file after distributor passes it to Spotify. And how exactly their "equal loudness options" work

 

I don't think it is exactly the loudness targets that people quibble about, it's how you get there. A track can be produced well, mixed to sound good, but when you are shooting for something like Subfocus' output levels, you're looking at subjects like CTZ strategy from Baphometrix, Kclip3 vs Goldclip vs StandardClip, TDR Ultrasonic making sure you have no low end frequencies rumbling and eating headroom but basically invisible, DMG Limitless vs whatever other transparent limiter you are using (Pro-L2, Waves L4 Ultramaximizer, IK Stealth), uneven crest distribution, on and on it goes. Their output is surviving platform specific normalization and not triggering gain reduction. You are just trying to compare your output with someone whose production is doing everything right.

 

Yeah, pretty much. StandardClip, DMG, Pro-L2 - amazing tools. I would say that Invisible Gen 1 is still my favorite. Crazy how it's 15 years old already. I'll check out that CTZ strategy. I think I watched some Sytrus tutorials from that guy back in the day