You finished the song
and wanted it to compete.
So you pushed the limiter
until it was as loud
as anything on the radio.
The drums got flatter.
The chorus stopped
getting bigger than the verse.
But it was loud,
and loud felt like winning.
Then you put it on a playlist
next to a song you love
and pressed play.
Yours sounded smaller.
Not quieter.
Smaller.
Most of the big streaming services
measure every track before they play it.
Not the peak.
The loudness,
averaged over the whole song,
the way an ear hears it,
in a unit called LUFS.
Then they turn every track
up or down
towards one target,
somewhere around minus fourteen,
so the listener
does not reach for the volume
between songs.
Your master measured near minus seven.
So the app turned it down
by about seven decibels.
Everything you gave up
to get loud
was still missing.
The punch of the snare.
The lift into the chorus.
The space between hits.
Only the loudness
was taken away.
The song next to it
had kept its peaks,
and after the same adjustment
it sat at the same level as yours
with all its movement intact.
That is why it sounded bigger.
There is a second problem
hidden at the very top.
Your meter shows samples.
The real waveform
passes between them,
and it can rise
above the highest sample.
When the file is turned into
the compressed format
people actually stream,
those hidden peaks
can go over the top
and crackle.
So meter what the services meter.
Put a loudness meter
on the master bus
and read the integrated number,
not just the peaks.
Set the limiter ceiling
around minus one,
measured as true peak.
Then do the honest test.
Bounce it,
turn it down to the target,
and compare it with a record you love
at the same loudness.
Now you are judging the mix,
not the volume.
Loud is a setting
the listener controls.
What survives the turning down
is the music.
– Serguey Asael Shinder
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