Thank you dude!

 

If truth be told, it's a hassle to have to adjust a creation for each platform. I guess, in a way, one is 'guilty' (not sure if that's the right word) because, in the musician's case, one should just stick to recording and then send it to someone to mix and master. But people like me who want to do it all end up getting frustrated

 

I couldn't agree more. The only thing that make me a LUFS "supporter" is that it was a way of fighting loudness wars. Songs were getting pushed harder and harder and squeezed till there was no more dynamics left , only in order to be competitive on the radio. LUFS standards started blurring this s#it. On the other hand , we could agree to just ONE loudness standard and then both sides would be happy. But we ain't the ones who decide, instead , Taylor Swift's promoters do. So yeah. In the end, we bend over.

 

Sometimes to get to the truth of the matter, someone has to be honest with themself first. The fact that, as an artist; you have to even think about this multiple-platform issue should tip you off to how important it really is. What happens if the next self-mastered artist's song plays after yours and it's louder? In the greater scheme of things it means nothing. What is shaving 2dB perceived loudness going to result in? The same as if it was 2dB louder, that's what. Zero difference.

There are plugins which can make this very easy, even though they are not perfect like they would be if you did them painstakingly by yourself. But if you consider doing it yourself a hassle, maybe something like Loudness Penalty, or Streamliner (as examples only) types of plugins are worth checking out. You are giving youtube/free streaming listeners far too much credit. They aren't even going to notice.

 

I couldn't agree more with you. It's a great relief that the loudness war nonsense has disappeared. You used to be forced to squash all your material to sound the same as the majority of songs. I love the dynamics—you have that calm part, and suddenly the chorus hits, and the song explodes. Some modern songs from artists I like got caught up in the loudness war, and while I enjoy their music, it would have been fantastic to hear it with the original dynamics. And yes, establishing a single range, let's say -14 LUFS for all platforms, would be the best solution.

You're right. The thing is, I've been using some measurement VSTs, but I'm stuck in the RMS era. I have a few challenges—I don't know English, and the videos I find in Spanish either I can't fully grasp, or the explanations are too brief. As time goes on, I become slower in understanding content. So, all these measurements are quite confusing for me.

 

how to change PLR a audio track?

 

This might come as controversial but I think -14 lufs-i sucks for podcasts or other types of dialogue-based medias. Mainly because I almost always have to raise my master volume in order to properly listen to it and understand these podcasts and it's annoying. But that's on me, I found a better solution for this problem and now I keep my master knob intact while I just use a browser-based mixing addon to raise levels whenever I have too. If I was releasing dialogue/monologue-based content on my YouTube channel I'd probably make it sit around -12 lufs-i +/-

The loudness war is pretty much still alive, artists are still fighting to keep super loud standards, that's why a Beatles remaster can sound as loud as a Skrillex track nowadays. What really changed this war was the rise of a multitude of independent artists, many which don't really care about this.

 

Last edited: Feb 18, 2024

It could well seem that I am 'canning' something about today's processes or music. This is not close to the truth, so I hope it did not appear as such. The new technology and facilities available to ALL of us are so far ahead of the last four decades. What we have available to us for under $10,000 would have been in the 6 figure and higher range as little as 20 years ago through the digital advancements available now.

It just seems that we all globally allowed a handful of entities to dictate an idiom that now more than ever, needs to stand on its own merits if it is to truly advance. That is why so many tunes sound like they're all the same and I am sure not all of the writers and engineers intended their works to be that way. I believe it was easier twenty years ago for many producers, musicians and engineers to be rejected because the music was not at a standard they could market, than today, to be accepted onto every massive streaming site even if it is crap because it meets the LUFS specifications. There was a quality benchmark standard in the music, not in the specifications.

What makes this method of marketing so appalling, is that as early as the turn of this century, creative writing people could be found here and there, and they were supported. The streaming magnates propagate the same popular music that is musically undynamic, and if you can find anyone trying to do or create something new, it would not be on the magnates sites, only because they likely received substantial likes somewhere else that miraculously still focused on the quality of writing, composing and production, not the money. So now you are dictated to by a forced loudness algorithm, not the quality of something.

 

Last edited: Feb 18, 2024

Anything you ever wanted to learn about LUFS in one video:

 

this sounds pretty cool in theory

but the problem was the change in loudness perceived of some tracks
some were just too low, some were louder

in the digital age, where you dont have to change your vinyls to listen to different albums, this became very noticeable
that being said, i agree with you on one master being enough. at least for the digital world.

oh yeah, the planet and the markets are full.
there's terrible people who call themselves professionals doing the work for almost nothing, there's people doing gigs just for fun on weekends, and theres technology which make things way easier to make and disposable too.
Then theres the new gen with their new lifestyle and short-spam attention

 

Let me see if I understand. Are you saying that despite there being a limitation of -14 on Spotify (for example), they remaster it to sound loud in the short term? And does this give you a sensation of more volume? Because the -14 would still be the same for everyone.

I partly agree with you. It's true that now anyone can find any 'artist' with their crappy music (it could even be me with my crappy music). But the idea that there used to be a quality control, I find it to be a fallacy. In the sense that the pursuit was always beyond talent – do you have a pretty face, can you sort of sing? Okay, let's produce you. Or it could be because they were related to someone or a friend of someone in the music industry, and this also happens in other scenarios, like independent press. What we have now (in my opinion) is more freedom for everyone to express themselves. And what may be garbage to me could be good for someone else; let's remember that art is an abstract appreciation. I prefer the current freedom for everyone to express themselves with their music or have their own channel on YouTube, rather than a monopoly controlled by a group of rich people who say yes to you and no to you.

 

Correct. And the recorded material sounded better, mixes more accurate/transparent, and was more aesthetically pleasing to listen to. This has nothing at all to do with digital vs analog, it has nothing to do with who you are as a musician/producer, nothing to do with genre, etc.. It has to do with a capitalist commercial industry that seems hell bent on making things sound shitty when it doesn't have to...

 

High PLR = high dynamic range
Low PLR = low dynamic range

So to answer your question directly:
More/less compression, limiting, saturation, etc. Another way of influencing PLR is the length of pauses. No silence, the level of the pauses must be above the LUFS gate threshold.

 

Well, I didn't know that. What if those pauses are filled in with some arrangement? Would that compensate then

 

e.g integrated volume: -20 LUFS. Max. true peak -8.0, PLR=12, did I understand you correctly?

 

Hmm... I don't know exactly what you mean

The LUFS gate is floating. It is always 10LU below the current integrated level. This means that if the short-term loudness is regularly lower than the current integrated LUFS, but not equal to or more than 10LU, then the PLR increases. There are ways to take this into account in the editing process and trick the measurement, but it has its limits. Depending on the material.

 

when need use short term loudness ?

 

"Let me see if I understand. Are you saying that despite there being a limitation of -14 on Spotify (for example), they remaster it to sound loud in the short term? And does this give you a sensation of more volume? Because the -14 would still be the same for everyone."

I's not a limitation, it's a feature, you know that you can disable normalization in all major streaming platforms, right? Have you ever had the experience of analyzing playlists with normalization turned off? Well... you'd be surprised.

 

Wow, I didn't know that. Honestly, I use it very little, only Spotify occasionally. But for the average person, that is, the average listener, why would they remove the limitation and listen to a song lower and another higher? Maybe there are specific cases, and maybe they don't even know that option exists. At least, I didn't know about it. I'll look it up now. What a shame about the Beatles, ruining such material

 

they don't. i know i dont.

i don't like spotify either, but i think in most cases they have the different masters..
so you can pick if you listen to the original, or the 2020 remaster
so it's not that bad. its bad if youre buying the CD or smthing