Lufs - mastercheck plugin

davecg321

New member
So I've got the new Nugen mastercheck plugin to monitor my loudness levels and have started to wonder about a few things.

For instance Spotify's new lufs normalisation has been lowered to -14 lufs, So from what I can gather from the manual this would be a good starting point for printing our masters. It states that if a mix is beyond this recommendation then the streaming source (Spotify) will turn it down/normalize. what is being said here is that there is no point in compressing our tracks heavily to achieve super loud mixes as this is now futile due to streaming platform's normalization. Ok cool...

But, what if our mixes are not heavily compressed to begin with in the first place?
Let's say 2db of gain reduction on the compressor and another 2-3db on the limiter...

For example I was pushing up the gain on my limiter whilst monitoring mastercheck and was getting the above gain reductions in both compressor and limiter, master check was reading around -10 lufs on the loudest peaks.

Now correct me if I'm wrong, but Spotify would only be turning down my mix, not compressing It? I can understand what they're saying if I was getting tonnes of gain reduction on my compressor and limiter, because Spotify would effectively be turning down an already highly compressed mix making it sound thin and lacking in punch.

in my case a printed master at -10 would be suitable for both CD and Spotify right? As there isn't a a huge amount of compression/limiting being applied... who if spotify turn it down, as long as it's not getting compressed even more I don't see an issue.

I probably haven't worded this very well but hopefully you catch my drift

Any help would be much appreciate on this one ;)
 
LUFS is a measure of the entire piece's loudness, irrespective of whether it's compressed or not. A highly compressed piece of music would have a much smaller dynamic range is all, e.g. probably the peaks are not much above 14, where an acoustic piece might have much higher peaks because the low parts will bring the integrated LUFS down to 14.

You can continue to compress the snot out of your stuff and make the sense of it being very loud, but it will get dialed back in many places if your LUFS is higher than 14.0. You can still master wherever you want, really.

P.S. Just take something you've already mastered and capture the integrated LUFS for it. If it's above 14, say 11, just slap a gain plugin on at the very end of your mix/stereo bus and dial it back 3dB. Re-play the entire piece and see what the integrated LUFS is, and you'll also get a sense for what will happen if you submit your original master, as is, to Spotify.
 
Now correct me if I'm wrong, but Spotify would only be turning down my mix, not compressing It?

From what I understand and there is a lot of misinformation on this, it would be compresses. Kinda like Skype or any other VOIP systems does. My phone line that comes in via my cable company sometimes gets real wonky when I run it through the AI doing interviews. They make a box to uncompress VOIP phone lines, but they start around $800.00 for one line.

The pic below is from Ian Shepard. Just keep clicking, it gets real big. He wrote a post on his blog about spotify back in May of this year. The pic shows what most platforms are spewing at and where to find the sweet spot A lot of good infor for those who care about quality. His post.

View attachment 100795
 
Trying to not add misinformation here, but I think it's a moving target to some degree. And still, the services where you hand over your music to can certainly do WTF they want with your stuff (read the fine print in whatever you agreed to), but my understanding is that if you turn in something that is "too loud" for their target you will see the volume/gain reduced, and there will be no need for compression (as OP states). Doesn't mean they won't do it - heck you know they're not streaming the original even if it was exactly on the nose for whatever LUFS they're shooting for today.

Now, if your LUFS is below (as in a bigger number), at that point the dynamic range of your music will determine whether it gets compressed/limited or not. If they can raise you from 16 to 14 and your peak stays within their peak, I would expect the file to remain uncrompessed/limited. From what I've read, how they get from your LUFS to theirs is really up to them, though, so it's almost better to (perhaps test-) master for every target (including bitrate/depth), at least to convince yourself it's all going to be Ok everywhere. What you deliver is up to you.

I've honestly just started paying attention to this, but usually don't find it too tedious to get close enough I am not hearing anything weird going on.

I'd love to read some links from the actual providers about this and what they do - it is confusing!
 
I've honestly just started paying attention to this, but usually don't find it too tedious to get close enough I am not hearing anything weird going on. I'd love to read some links from the actual providers about this and what they do - it is confusing!

Your explanation/opinion/theory or whatever anyone wants to call it, is better than most I have read. For years all these providers kept all this info in the vault. I read something a long while back that some kid stumbled onto a way to pin point what they we doing behind the curtain and he tried to hold them hostage or he would release their information, or something crazy like that.

Some say they don't touch it and some just don't say. We have not even talked about all the streaming services for lectures, podcast and audio books. I got to much going on to give it to much thought so I just let the bigger dawgs take the lead. Again, your reasoning was as good as anyone elses.
 
Some of the loudest parts of my song are hitting -9lufs but everything else is well under. I'm guessing this would bring down the overall integrated lufs?

Also, how do I check the overall lufs for an entire piece. Master check seem to only detect peaks

D
 
Some of the loudest parts of my song are hitting -9lufs but everything else is well under. I'm guessing this would bring down the overall integrated lufs? Also, how do I check the overall lufs for an entire piece. Master check seem to only detect peaks D

I use the Orban meter just about daily. It's free and used by most broadcast companies for radio,TV and Cable. When a platform is set to lower or compress once the audio hits a certain level, they are looking for the "Peaks" to activate their process. Just like any audio compressor. As far as I know the only way to check the entire song would be to remove all the peaks, and spend months doing sound level automation.
 
Some of the loudest parts of my song are hitting -9lufs but everything else is well under. I'm guessing this would bring down the overall integrated lufs?

Also, how do I check the overall lufs for an entire piece. Master check seem to only detect peaks

D
The overall # is the one right above the "Offset to match" button. You have to play the entire piece through to get the overall loudness. There's no shortcut.

I found this long-ish review (on the Nugen site) pretty good. At the very end he shows how to use the plugin to A/B before/after your final mastering FX using the plugin's matching, which is pretty interesting. (I know there are other ways to do this, but it's a nice feature IMO.)

YouTube

P.S. Just checked the price ($!) - I'm going to keep poking at this with Logic's built-in plugins/metering and my old version of Ozone...
 
The overall # is the one right above the "Offset to match" button. You have to play the entire piece through to get the overall loudness. There's no shortcut.

I found this long-ish review (on the Nugen site) pretty good. At the very end he shows how to use the plugin to A/B before/after your final mastering FX using the plugin's matching, which is pretty interesting. (I know there are other ways to do this, but it's a nice feature IMO.)

YouTube

P.S. Just checked the price ($!) - I'm going to keep poking at this with Logic's built-in plugins/metering and my old version of Ozone...

Yep, I've just re-read the manual and it does indeed state to play the song in its entirety to get the integrated loudness of a track.

Yes that's definitely a feature I'll be using when mastering, super easy to do as well.

I've seen the youtube and found it very helpful. Is this also the one where he states to set the output of the limiter to -3db!?

Is this going to be the new standard?
 
...Is this also the one where he states to set the output of the limiter to -3db!?

Is this going to be the new standard?
The -3dB number was the reviewer's opinion of what your "true peak" should be if you planned to render to MP3, and wasn't a standard.

It's clear there's not a "standard" that spans all formats and streaming services. You either master for each one specifically, or, what I expect a lot of us home-recording folks will do, is "split the baby" and develop a rule of thumb kind of internal standard for what we do, and master once and (probably/should) test that when applying the different standards where you'll be sending the output, to check that whatever is done next doesn't sound bad. (If you really expect to master 5 or 6 different ways, then a tool like this is going to pay back in time saved, if nothing else.)
 
Some of the loudest parts of my song are hitting -9lufs but everything else is well under. I'm guessing this would bring down the overall integrated lufs?

Also, how do I check the overall lufs for an entire piece. Master check seem to only detect peaks

D

Mastercheck measures integrated lfks (LUFS) Read the manual and it tells you a couple of clicks how to get it showing the integrated LUFS.

THAT's the entire point of the plug in.
 
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