Lufs vs multiband compression…

[Jac459]

So, I am in the process of finishing the mastering of a personal album.
I am generally pretty happy with my mix and the final result (of course there is a but).

I am doing electronic music, I use a bit of side chain compression/filtering for my drums and bass and also a bit of isotope unmask for the conflicting channels.
A part from that, I am trying to not process too much in the mix.

Then for mastering, I use izotope ozone suite. I usually use the AI and then tweak it, add a bit of the “low end focus” plugin, tweak the eq and set everything to 14lufs and -1 hard cut.
When I am AB testing with a reference track I am pretty good with the result.
But when I am exporting as flac and listen to another player and compare with another reference (say last chemical brothers album), the reference sounds much louder and with more bass….
I am a bit puzzled because when I am looking at izotope visualiser it seems my track has already a lot of bass.
And also, being at 14lufs I was not expecting a commercial track being much louder.
What am I missing?
I know I am not doing any multiband compression, because I don’t feel the need but am I missing something on this area?

[Frantz]

It turns many artists are not following the 14 LUFS guideline for streaming. This thread goes into a lot of detail: https://gearspace.com/board/mastering-f ... ot-do.html

[Spin Boyz]

You should check out streaky mastering on YouTube. He masters hotter than -14 lufs.

[Jac459]

It turns many artists are not following the 14 LUFS guideline for streaming. This thread goes into a lot of detail: https://gearspace.com/board/mastering-f ... ot-do.html

Very interesting, thanks. I spent the weekend moving from -11lufs to -14lufs.... I think I will go the opposite road....

I have RX10, I will test a few tidal electronic songs, see at what lufs they are....

[Jac459]

You should check out streaky mastering on YouTube. He masters hotter than -14 lufs.

Thanks for the pointer.

[BertKoor]

Yes, there always will be other artists that are louder, going into single-digit LUFS territory indeed.

Do you care about how it sounds (it can sound good or bad, or somewhere in between), or do you care about joining the pissing contest called Loudness War?

If what you have is indeed an album, people will put it on, adjust volume to taste and leave it there.
If you put your tracks on a Streaming service like Spotify, you're at their mercy regarding what they do to your volume.

So at the end the volume is total moot. People have a volume knob and know how to use it.

[Jac459]

Yes, there always will be other artists that are louder, going into single-digit LUFS territory indeed.

Do you care about how it sounds (it can sound good or bad, or somewhere in between), or do you care about joining the pissing contest called Loudness War?

If what you have is indeed an album, people will put it on, adjust volume to taste and leave it there.
If you put your tracks on a Streaming service like Spotify, you're at their mercy regarding what they do to your volume.

So at the end the volume is total moot. People have a volume knob and know how to use it.

Yeah, I think we are all saying the same at the end... don't push your loudness if it is detrimental to the sound quality.

On the other hand, on some genre, compressing the sound can make sense musically.

[legendCNCD]

You can push the mix instead of limiting in master to loudness if needed really. I mean doing most of stuff in mix like clipping individual channel peaks etc.

[osiris]

You can push the LUFS but anything going online below -9 will probably sound distorted.

[Frantz]

Very interesting, thanks. I spent the weekend moving from -11lufs to -14lufs.... I think I will go the opposite road....

I moved to -11 LUFS for mastering currently in progress. I might go back to -11.5 not all the way back to -14.

[Jac459]

Very interesting, thanks. I spent the weekend moving from -11lufs to -14lufs.... I think I will go the opposite road....

I moved to -11 LUFS for mastering currently in progress. I might go back to -11.5 not all the way back to -14.

I tried the new chemical brothers, it is 9.5 integrated lufs….

[Frantz]

I tried the new chemical brothers, it is 9.5 integrated lufs….

Right, it's a Wild West situation. Personally I think 9.5 is too loud but it is genre dependent and a matter of taste. Of course, you may be turned down depending on the streaming player used.

In short, do what's right for you.

[osiris]

I think -14 is kind of low, I usually try for -11. Knowing the Chem Bros they wanted that kind of distortion. Block rocking beats and all.

[MidnightRunner]

Very interesting, thanks. I spent the weekend moving from -11lufs to -14lufs.... I think I will go the opposite road....

I moved to -11 LUFS for mastering currently in progress. I might go back to -11.5 not all the way back to -14.

I tried the new chemical brothers, it is 9.5 integrated lufs….

Just curious. What did you use to measure? That seems very loud for a major label release.

[Jac459]

Very interesting, thanks. I spent the weekend moving from -11lufs to -14lufs.... I think I will go the opposite road....

I moved to -11 LUFS for mastering currently in progress. I might go back to -11.5 not all the way back to -14.

I tried the new chemical brothers, it is 9.5 integrated lufs….

Just curious. What did you use to measure? That seems very loud for a major label release.

I used izotope RX10, flac version of "no reason" a (fabulous) new track from the chemical brothers. Just to be clear it is -.9.5 lufs (obviously ).

I can also extract flac and mp3 from tidal to test if you want.
I can do that this week-end.