Hey Audio people this is my very first OP here.

Spotify claims that they use loudness normalization to adjust the volume of all tracks to -14 dB LUFS for playback, according to the ITU 1770 standard. They also claim that they normalize an entire album at the same time, so gain compensation doesn't change between tracks. They also claim that they adjust individual tracks when shuffling an album or listening to tracks from multiple albums (e.g. listening to a playlist). They also claim that they leave 1 dB headroom for lossy encodings to preserve audio quality and that they apply a limiter to prevent distortion and clipping in soft dynamic tracks.


So, I made some measurements:


Some songs on Spotify streamed through Audio Hijack and measured with special loudness meters like Expose 2, sound as low as -16.2db LUFS Integrated and others sound as loud as - 6.8 LUFS Integrated. It is a significant difference not even close to their claimed -14db LUFS Integrated that every song uploaded to them is actually adjusted to -14db LUFS Integrated. I also used some other measuring apps and plugins and they are all giving me very similar LUFS results with the extreme differences, on these tracks.


What the heck is going on here?

 

The normalization is an option in spotify app... If you don't activate it in options/preferences , the original audio is played.

https://www.androidauthority.com/wp...udio-quality-tweaking-in-spotify-settings.jpg

 

Thank you for your reply but I simply used the Chrome web browser and streamed the songs from there into Audio Hijack.
I will make some measurements with the Spotify App too. However, the Spotify app is an end-user application and Spotify is not talking about their application but in general that they adjust every song automatically from the get-go to -14dbLUFS Integrated. Meaning it is adjusted already and streamed this way. If not then their wording is very confusing and or maybe even misleading.

 

1) Yep. Web browsers don't apply loudness normalization, so what you hear on the Spotify webplayer is what was uploaded (as it was mastered).

2) Spotify is talking about loudness normalization in their app (-14LUFS at default, that 85% of the users use).

3) They will not apply a limiter at default (-14LUFS), but they will apply a nasty limiter at "loud setting" (-11LUFS) if the material has low loudness which needs to be brought up. So if you set Spotify to "loud" and listen to classical music (or even modern movie soundtracks which has lots of dynamic range) it will sound like shit.

 

Last edited: May 16, 2023

I recently watched a good video by Streaky on this. He still masters to -8 LUFS and accepts the compression down from Spotify. This seems to be because non-normalised allows for louder and more dynamic audio, but even if compressed down to - 14 LUFS it retains the original perceived loudness and most listeners won't recognise the compression as abnormal due to the past 10 years normalising people to that expected compressed and loud sound. This is obviously mostly relevant to electronic, pop and hip hop type of tracks. He does clarify he works to less 'loud war' goals when mastering things like rock, orchestral, piano etc to retain the dynamics as these genres and instrumentation have the dynamics as a priority over perceived loudness.

Therefore, I guess it depends what you are mastering in regard to the approach, but personally I have normalise turned off in app and don't really notice a difference between streaming on my computer to listening on my Android phone when using the same headphones.

 

Last edited: May 16, 2023

I think (correct me if I'm wrong) , but there's no "compression" on the -14LUFS normalization, they just lower the volume down, just like a fader so that the -14LUFS Int ( the whole lenght of the file's loudness) is Ok. As said before, the only time when they will use a limiter is when you choose the normalization option "loud" (-11 LUFS) .

 

everything is here : https://artists.spotify.com/help/article/loudness-normalization

And once again , this is ONLY if you enable normalization in the app (maybe it's enabled by default, I don't remember)

In case you didn't see on the link I gave, this is also important : "Note: The web player and 3rd-party devices (e.g. speakers and TVs) don’t use loudness normalization."

 

You are correct. I also did the same measurements this time through the Spotify App (default settings) and indeed all the songs are now streaming at exactly -14db LUFS Integrated. Good to know. Thank you!

 

I've been measuring music on Spotify for a year or so now, most of the material engineers send to Spotify is loud as a big FUCK. I was just listening a Smiths remaster last week and the track reached -6 LUFS-M during a chorus like it was nothing. I don't remember listening to anything in that platform that was actually -14 LUFS-I with the exception of classical music so you probably have your normalization turned off.