The decibel was established as "the smallest unit of loudness that a person could hear", though most engineers can hear a difference of just a tenth of a dB. Otherwise, it's just further muddying the waters!Īs you probably know, the standard unit of loudness is the decibel, or dB for short.
LUFS PLUGIN HOW TO
That chart is really helpful if you know what LUFS are and how to measure them. He has a very nifty chart outlining the loudness recommendations from the Audio Engineering Society, along with the target loudness of four streaming services, and how each one handles songs that are louder and softer than the target loudness.Ĭheck out this super useful chart that Ian made, visualizing all of this. This is where the supremely helpful Ian Shepherd (British mastering engineer and author of the Production Advice blog) comes in. And getting your head around this one sticky topic will permanently help you increase your music's volume if you master too quietly, or more likely, permanently improve the sound quality of your music with no penalty for the vast majority of listeners who listen through streaming services, radio, and modern media players. But the volume of your song can't be taken back after release.
I'll have to write a lot more digits and acronyms than I'd like. I'll warn you right now: this probably won't be fun to read. That's great, but if you don't know how loud to make your music under the new rules of the streaming services, it won't do you any good. As of this writing, YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, and Tidal all turn down songs that are too loud, eliminating any benefit from exceedingly loud mastering. Fortunately, there's a glimmer of hope in that many of the popular streaming services are turning down songs that are too loud in order to even out playback volume for listeners. In a previous post, I covered how the Loudness War started, and why it's bad for the sound of music from increased distortion and decreased dynamic range.
LUFS PLUGIN UPDATE
Note: there is an update to this article (August 2018).
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