How to properly reference songs

davecg321

New member
What's the best way to do This?

Does VLC player normalise/compress audio? It appears to be the same loudness as what my DAW is at... so, I often find myself referencing a track playing in VLC, especially when mastering...

With Spotify now normalizing at -14 lufs I found it a bit odd that a track I have peaks in my DAW at -10 lufs but the same track didn't sound any lower in volume on Spotify.
 
I prefer to rip lossless off of a CD and then drop that into my project.

You want to look at the integrated LUFS, not peak, if I understand your question.
 
^^ What he said.

The important thing is to remove as many variables as possible. So importing a lossless file into your DAW is the best way to use a track as reference.
 
Vegas Pro can have multiple iterations open at once, so I can bring references into a second project. That way, if I'm doing something on the master bus, the references aren't affected.
 
I drop the audio into my project as well and I use Greg's tutorial to setup a reference in cubase that doesn't route through the master bus. Really nice because it doesn't go through my bus comp and I can set the volume to be similar.

All DAWs should have something like this in my opinion.

 
What's the best way to do This?

Does VLC player normalise/compress audio?

As far as the information I have, VLC does not alter the audio in any way. Most players do not do this as well. You can download the Orban Meter for free to check your LUFS. I use it all the time and it is deadly accurate.

I drop the audio into my project as well and I use Greg's tutorial to setup a reference in cubase that doesn't route through the master bus. All DAWs should have something like this in my opinion.

You are correct that every DAW should be able to do this. In Reaper, you can add any reference track, uncheck the master send, add a hardware out send to the L/R Outs and bypass the master buss completely. 5 sec set up time.

 
Don't think too much about it. I just do it on QuickTime or inside my DAW and adjust the volume. After all if you are mixing, you are probably gonna be referencing to a song that has already been mastered so... it will already be different from what you are trying to achieve. It will help if tho if you create a Sub Master in protools where you put your Master plugins, so you can send your reference track to a different output so it doesn't get processed by your Master plugins.
 
As far as the information I have, VLC does not alter the audio in any way. Most players do not do this as well. You can download the Orban Meter for free to check your LUFS. I use it all the time and it is deadly accurate.



You are correct that every DAW should be able to do this. In Reaper, you can add any reference track, uncheck the master send, add a hardware out send to the L/R Outs and bypass the master buss completely. 5 sec set up time.


We've been able to do this in SONAR since at least 2006 when 6PE came out.

Not that anyone will be buying SONAR in the near future, if at all :mad:
 
Back
Top