hi,
The recommended LUFS target for mastering is -18lufs (for spotify) as anything louder will just be turned down. So, in theory there is no point in heavily compressing/limiting our songs. To coincide with this, a quieter track (perhaps a reading of -21 LUFS) will get turned up.
However, from a little test I carried out an mp3 ripped from disc (a particularly loud track, registering at -11 lufs after playing the track in its entirety on NugenMastercheck) I compared this with the Spotify version and they sounded equally as loud. I was using VLC to playback the mp3. Any idea why this might be? I was fully expecting the Spotify version to sound somewhat quieter.
Having said all this, SOS recently done an article about LUFS. It said to listen to both the remastered version of 'Sharp dressed Man' and the original by ZZ Top. The remastered version - which was done at the time when CDs were the major listening format, and subject to the 'loudness wars' - sounded as loud as the original version, except all the dynamics were lost due to more compression being used. So unsurprisingly the original had more punch/dynamics.
What is everyone mastering to? every recent song (mp3/wav) by commercial artists (last 2-3years) that I've loaded into my daw for analyzing using master check, has given reading much louder than the now widely accepted -18 LUFS.
The recommended LUFS target for mastering is -18lufs (for spotify) as anything louder will just be turned down. So, in theory there is no point in heavily compressing/limiting our songs. To coincide with this, a quieter track (perhaps a reading of -21 LUFS) will get turned up.
However, from a little test I carried out an mp3 ripped from disc (a particularly loud track, registering at -11 lufs after playing the track in its entirety on NugenMastercheck) I compared this with the Spotify version and they sounded equally as loud. I was using VLC to playback the mp3. Any idea why this might be? I was fully expecting the Spotify version to sound somewhat quieter.
Having said all this, SOS recently done an article about LUFS. It said to listen to both the remastered version of 'Sharp dressed Man' and the original by ZZ Top. The remastered version - which was done at the time when CDs were the major listening format, and subject to the 'loudness wars' - sounded as loud as the original version, except all the dynamics were lost due to more compression being used. So unsurprisingly the original had more punch/dynamics.
What is everyone mastering to? every recent song (mp3/wav) by commercial artists (last 2-3years) that I've loaded into my daw for analyzing using master check, has given reading much louder than the now widely accepted -18 LUFS.