I couldn't hope to have a better answer than your two messages. Thank you so much for taking the time and explaining everything in such detail!

You're right, maybe I shouldn't be mad about the vague answers. I just thought those conversion mechanisms are more open and known not only to streaming platform programmers, but also to music makers

I also wonder if any distributors can mess up with the master file on the road to the platforms. I know that CD Baby will convert everything to 16 bit/44.1 kHz and they prefer FLAC. But do others do their own conversions even before the streaming platforms? What distributor would you recommend?

 

That's beyond my scope of knowledge to be honest

Glad it was useful!

Edit: Just wanted to add: The thing to remember is that loudness is a "sound". Forget the numbers, if it sounds good, it is good. All compression/limiting does is make a song more loud more often. For some songs more compression/limiting gives it more energy, for some it takes away some its liveliness. It depends on the song, and that's the reason why you ignore the LUFS readings.

The only thing normalization changes is that nobody needs to OVER-compress/limit anymore in order to make the song stand out. But regardless, music today is as loud as ever. Why? Because loudness is a sound that people like.

If you wanna get into the modern day "loudness wars", think about how you can get more "perceived loudness" without it triggering the LUFS meter....
Just don't place too much importance on it. Optimizing the LUFS/loudness wont make people connect with the music more or less, and that's the main thing that matters. If the song is hitting you in the feels, or it's making you groove in your chair, then it's done.

 

Last edited: Jul 28, 2023

Thank you. I did Hackintosh myself like 11 years ago. And I completely forgot that my parents still have a mid-2011 mac Mini from that time. The latest possible upgrade there is OS X 10.13 as far as I understand. So I'll have to test if those options work on that version

 

One of my previous Intel macs ran on 10.13.6 for many years without hiccups and ran the plugins aswell. The "master droplets" plugin work on any system prior or after 10.8 so you should be OK there. Here is the link to this information coming from Apple themselves.

 

MP3 is based on a floating point algorithm, it's neither 16 nor 24 bit. But Spotify uses Vorbis and AAC instead. I'm sure they also based on floating point. It's always favorable to use the highest bit depth available for the conversion, as encoders will be able to use the additional dynamic range instead of dithering noise etc. where it's necessary.
24 bit has a higher dynamic range, i.e. more headroom during production, but it sounds the same as 16 bit. For a audible difference you would need to have more than 96 dB of DR in your music as well as recordings and playback systems that can process a DR like that.

 

A total waste of my time.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Jul 29, 2023

What's the real honest truth? That I can use any settings and make any decision I want to see what happens? Thank you, but everyone can do that and they don't need to have any prior experience and expertise for that.

I provided the very specific pool of references in the first post (2021-2023 tracks by Sub Focus, Pendulum, Skrillex and Noisia). Do you really think they adjust bit/sample rate for each track? I'm 100% sure they don't. But I can't ask them directly whether they export in 16/44.1 or 24/48, so I'm asking experienced people here

What's so bad about having a shortcut? I would gladly share one if I was asked the same questions. In fact many people here gave their shortcuts already and nobody is pretending to be a kung-fu master with secret knowledge.
You call it laziness but I see it a little bit different. I would call it "a fear of making a mistake due to lack of practical experience". What's so bad about it?
I'll give you an analogy. I can buy a PCIe 3.0 SSD for my laptop and it will work just ok. But if I know that my motherboard suppots PCIe 4.0, I would buy a PCIe 4.0 SSD to get the better result. Both options will work, but the latter will work better. Why miss out?

I do. But I appreciate people that are saying everything more directly. If you think any opinions are horrible here you can just say which ones and why you disagree. That would be more honest to those people than leaving them wondering whether you talked about them or somebody else.

I'm happy with the mix, loudness, dynamics, wideness, frequency response and all that. I just had some uncertainty about sample rate, bit depth and true peaks on export. I didn't feel like making errors because of those things, that's why I started this topic

I can hear the problems if they occur. Oversampling doesn't sound bad to me. 16/44.1kHz file doesn't sound bad to me. True peaks don't sound bad to me. But machines won't listen. They have specific algorithms and compare raw numbers. So I need to know which numbers I need to feed to the machine in order for it to be happy. That's it

Spotify is the most popular music streaming app globally. You lose 30% of potential listeners. Your decision, but not mine

 

Apparently asking for information is lazy. That's a new one.

 

I knew my reply will fall on the deaf ear so please do always record and print everything in 16x44.1 at -1db and convert to match Spotify spec and you are golden!

 

Last edited by a moderator: Jul 29, 2023

Ok, I see that my point of view shakes your beliefs and makes you doubt. Otherwise you wouldn't waste so much time on a random stranger from forum

I've read everything carefully and I only have three questions:

1. Which two of those four artists did you work with?

Because Pendulum, Skrillex and Noisia have their own professional studios. And they probably don't need to "hire out the world class studio for mix and master". That makes me doubt you actually worked closely with them. I'm not in any way assuming that you try to lie, just want to clarify that

2. All of their music is on Spotify (the company you despise). So if you worked with them, you are also there anyway. How does that feel?

3. Do you work only with artists that boycott Spotify and consciously don't allow their music to be placed there? That seems like a rather small pool of clients

 

Just take a look at the screenshot from Reddit that I've attached
Is it hard for everyone to be that cool and direct?
And not pretend that "it depends, you're lazy, you need 10 more years of experience and hire professional studio"
Asked direct question - gave direct answer. From Noisia themselves

 

It all depends on the material. If you are unsure how your track will sound after encoding, just export it in required format and listen, analyze it. If DAW doesn't allow export of such formats, I recommend Nugen MasterCheck, which has more than enough lossy formats to choose from. From personal experience and analyzing with MasterCheck, I found that -1.3 dBTP is the sweetspot for my material on Spotify (AAC formats in general), because it doesn't introduce too many artifacts in the encoder's lowpass filter region. This gives clearly more tactile high end for percussion and less audible smearing.
TLDR just experiment with MasterCheck and find what suits you best.

 

Boring. You are the lucky one I had time sitting in the airport to do nothing for 1 hours. I try to explain clear for you to help you and again your reply is nonsense logic, argument, ridicule and more "but why?" question. I will delete my valuable advice and move on.

This thread is about the Spotify and anyone who makes the music according to Daniel Ek rules and supports the destruction he does to humanity in this world is the fool. You reap what you sew. ty

 

That screenshot is a post from 8 years ago, 2015. Lots of things change much faster than that. On Mac, we were mostly using a 32 bit Operating System and plugins. That is a huge change, unlike deciding to use a possible new session sample rate and bit depth. It's meaningless.

 

You facepalmed me, called lazy, compared to children, called some advice here "horrible" without explaining anything. How else did you expect people to treat you back?
Even if you possess the valuable knowledge and really worked with those artists, your arrogant attitude here crosses out all of that. Maybe you're a good person just having a bad day. I have nothing against you. I appreciate your input and I agree with you regarding royalties, artists that are never going to earn a dollar and the economic part of you reply. But you could have been nicer, calmer and less edgy
I actually saved your replies, so don't worry about deleting
Cheeers!

 

Seems like a great tool having presets for everything. I already see +0.7 overshoot on mobile. Thanks for sharing. I'll experiment with that
P.S. Nice userpic

 

That's why I like Bitwig. It natively supports 32 bit plugins without jbridge/32Lives or other wrappers to make them 64 bit. As for the screenshot from Reddit - it was more to show the attitude and style of communication than the info from 8 years ago

 

Apparently elitist snobbery is valuable advice. That's a new one.

 

It's amazing that every time on this board people either take things too seriously or pretend to do things they never did. How could a well-articulated question thread derail into some egomaniac bs?
The subject was never about Spotify and how "devilish" their music publishing is, it's about not catering to their requirements and making the track sound as best as it could get.

 

Last edited: Jul 30, 2023

Because people do not know how to communicate properly neither do they stay on point or know anything about this on a technically fundamental level.

It's all hearsay. But no one can explain it on his own from his own fundamental understanding as you can see with all this name calling.

 

Last edited: Aug 1, 2023