Your mastering techniques for ambient music?

[Hermetech Mastering]

You know what you're doing is not really mastering, so why fool yourself?

Wow, the last decade of my life must have all been a dream! I will be celebrating ten years of professional mastering tomorrow.

[Butwug]

Stop chasing the numbers! Every track is different and has it's own loudness potential so it's ridiculous to talk about choosing a number first and then cranking everything to fit that. Sign of the times...

Master each track, have a listen to the whole album, drop the loudness of the ones that sound too loud, increase the loudness of the ones that sound too quiet (as long as you can do it transparently). It really is that simple. It could end up anywhere from -8 LUFS integrated (such as a bassy drone album), or -20 LUFS integrated for a very dynamic album, and both could have exactly the same amount of limiting applied.

As I said above, it's kinda genre independent too, you just make it sound good.

Thing is, you can’t just ignore the numbers outright. If you make a song at -20LUFS, streaming sites will put their limiter on it and adjust to their standard, which will change your song. CD’s were mastered with max peak in mind which lead to the loudness wars. With CD’s peaks were hitting -.1db, so people kept smashing the songs louder and louder while keeping -.1db peak. Streaming is another animal where it’s normalized to their standard, and as stated previously, will either be turned down, if louder, or a limiter slapped on and raised. Chasing numbers (correct numbers) is probably a better idea than not chasing them. At least you’ll know how your song will sound on whatever platform it will be on. Choose a happy range that will work for several platforms (might be raised a bit on one and lowered on another) and for at home mastering, should suffice. Just remember, each platform has it’s standards. If your song sounds nice and dynamic at -20LUFS, remember it will be turned up with a limiter slapped on and people will hear the version that was automatically raised 5LUFS in streaming...might as well hit that target yourself and at least you’ll know what the end product will be.

Just messed around today with an ambient track and it isn’t hard really to hit the standardized levels for streaming. Don’t know why I had a hard time doing so last time so despite my rant, the advice of just mix it to your liking and if it is way too low, pushing an ambient track a bit louder with light processing should be doable.

https://www.masteringthemix.com/blogs/l ... -streaming

[Hermetech Mastering]

Thing is, you can’t just ignore the numbers outright.

Yes, you absolutely can, especially after you have set up a calibrated monitoring chain. That's the whole point, it allows you to easily hear when things are too loud or too quiet, and adjust accordingly:

https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques ... ing-levels

Chasing numbers is a terrible idea, especially as they are all moving targets. For example, those figures you linked to are from three years ago, and don't apply any more. Just make it sound great and it will translate. That simple.

[Butwug]

Thing is, you can’t just ignore the numbers outright.

Yes, you absolutely can, especially after you have set up a calibrated monitoring chain. That's the whole point, it allows you to easily hear when things are too loud or too quiet, and adjust accordingly:

https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques ... ing-levels

Chasing numbers is a terrible idea, especially as they are all moving targets. For example, those figures you linked to are from three years ago, and don't apply any more. Just make it sound great and it will translate. That simple.

What are you on about? We’re talking about final LUFS level of a song, yet you post something about reference levels in the studio? Two different things.....Streaming sites don’t care if you have the perfect studio reference levels and can hear the details correctly. It gives zero shits. It will be normalized. And those numbers are still very relevant, probably even more so than ever before as LUFS has just about become the de facto standard and people are streaming more than ever before. Streaming sites clearly tell you what the numbers mean, and what will happen to your song if your numbers are not meeting them. Obviously you can’t make each song exactly -14LUFS, but again keep in mind, streaming sites WILL change your dynamics/loudness. If your song is sounding lovely at -23LUFS, well guess what happens when it is streamed? Automatically cranked to -14LUFS. The song has now been ass blasted into limiter by the site. Sites give options to user to change loudness levels but let’s be real, how many people do you think actually go into settings and say “hmmmm I will like my songs to be more dynamic so will change LUFS normalization to -23LUFS. I’m willing to bet less than 1%. So for the rest of the world, it will be cranked to -14LUFS by some automatic limiter. The numbers are indeed moving targets within the song. But there’s also a number that is NOT a moving target, and that is the final LUFS readout of the whole song.

All of this is assuming mastering for streaming. If you’re mastering for CD’s, thats a different beast as levels don’t get automatically bumped or decreased to a set level and arguably needed much more attention to detail as far as loudness. If you’re mastering for movies, then you probably don’t even need help. So I assume this is for regular diy mastering for streaming. OP. You can listen to what we have to say, or take the info straight from world class mastering engineers (link in my previous post) and from the very people who offer streaming services (next link.) For loudness levels, just remember this. If quieter than -14LUFS, your song will be increased in volume by automatic limiting possibly changing dynamics and sound if the increase is a lot. If louder, volume will ONLY be decreased. A song that’s -14LUFS naturally will in general sound better than one that is loud but decreased to -14. Best of luck OP.

https://artists.spotify.com/faq/masteri ... potify-why

[Hermetech Mastering]

Ears, not numbers.

I've been at this professionally TEN YEARS TO THE DAY, a large majority of my clients making Ambient and Dark Ambient music. I can only report on my own experiences as a mastering engineer. If they don't coincide with yours, that's fine too.

When I mentioned:

Most of the stuff I master for Interchill and Dakini Records, or the modular synth heads, ends up around -14 dBFS LUFS.

I meant just that, beaty Chillout/Ambient and modular synth music naturally ending up at around -14dBFS LUFS Integrated, after mastering, by ear, with my calibrated reference chain/monitors/room/SPL. It was never meant to be prescriptive, just where it ended up. Serve the music, and the emotion behind the music. Let the numbers fall where they fall. These are musical, emotional responses we are dealing with here, for listeners and fans, not maths.

Point me to any of my masters that sounds terrible on a streaming service (with their constantly shifting targets), and I might start to take more notice.

[foosnark]

It was never meant to be prescriptive, just where it ended up. Serve the music, and the emotion behind the music. Let the numbers fall where they fall. These are musical, emotional responses we are dealing with here, for listeners and fans, not maths.

Point me to any of my masters that sounds terrible on a streaming service (with their constantly shifting targets), and I might start to take more notice.

The whole reason some streaming services have a standard isn't because -14dB LUFS is somehow technically superior. It's so that listeners don't have to adjust the volume for every song... and I would argue, it's also to remove any possible advantages of aiming for a specific number and to discourage the Loudness War.

No matter what your numbers are, if it sounds good at the level you have mastered it at, it will also sound good when the streaming service turns it up or down on a per-track basis. But there's no point in murdering your dynamics to squeeze as close to 0dB as possible when they're going to politely turn it down again anyway.

[Hermetech Mastering]

Xackly!