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Post by Johnkenn on Nov 20, 2017 18:25:57 GMT -6
I think most of the theives streaming services ask for around -14 LUFS, right? So no point in going louder?
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Post by swurveman on Nov 20, 2017 20:23:31 GMT -6
I think most of the theives streaming services ask for around -14 LUFS, right? So no point in going louder? What happens to commercial releases that are louder? Or do the mastering engineers master for Spotify at - 14LUFS as well as CD?
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Post by popmann on Nov 20, 2017 20:46:20 GMT -6
I always mix to 99 LUFS balloons.
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Post by EmRR on Nov 20, 2017 21:04:35 GMT -6
-16 and -14 seem to be the competing standards, anything hotter will be turned down, AES recommendation is minimum of -20 for streaming, which acknowledges the weak wattage and gain of most consumer systems when combined with the -14 to -16 standard. -23 is broadcast. I don't have any LUFS tools and don't think about it, that's the mastering guys job.
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Post by wiz on Nov 20, 2017 21:07:45 GMT -6
I always mix to 99 LUFS balloons. Oh well played sir.... (wiz doffs cap) cheers Wiz
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Post by wiz on Nov 20, 2017 21:08:21 GMT -6
-16 and -14 seem to be the competing standards, anything hotter will be turned down, AES recommendation is minimum of -20. -23 is broadcast. I don't have any LUFS tools and don't think about it, that's the mastering guys job. -16 for stuff I am uploading to youtube myself cheers Wiz
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Post by popmann on Nov 20, 2017 21:40:12 GMT -6
I think most of the theives streaming services ask for around -14 LUFS, right? So no point in going louder? What happens to commercial releases that are louder? Or do the mastering engineers master for Spotify at - 4LUFS as well as CD? All modern releases are attenuated by streaming services. This isn't new. iTunes has been using a K14 scale for....what a decade? There can't BE streaming services without volume calibration of some sort.
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Post by Johnkenn on Nov 20, 2017 22:36:23 GMT -6
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Post by adamjbrass on Nov 23, 2017 18:38:10 GMT -6
no higher than -14 for me. There is almost no way I'll make anything louder than that.
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Post by svart on Nov 23, 2017 19:30:48 GMT -6
What's a LUF and why should I care about it?
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Post by joseph on Nov 23, 2017 20:30:46 GMT -6
What's a LUF and why should I care about it? Libertarian Un-Friended. That's why. It's pretty technical.
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Post by johneppstein on Nov 23, 2017 22:20:12 GMT -6
Loudness Units relative to Full Scale
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Post by chasmanian on Nov 23, 2017 23:09:48 GMT -6
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Post by Bob Olhsson on Nov 24, 2017 8:59:35 GMT -6
It's hard to go wrong with a VU meter set for 20 dB. of headroom.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 24, 2017 11:27:55 GMT -6
Agree with Bob, have your digital chain/interface calibrated nicely to 0VU, which will show you 20dB of headroom with room for 3dB of overs. Stick to that when tracking. Mixing becomes much easier and more fun when you are not worried about hitting digital zero all the time.
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Post by EmRR on Nov 24, 2017 11:39:11 GMT -6
I'm not entirely sure the value of LUFS as questioned, in regards to mixing. I shoot for peak levels at or under -6dBFS, and any question of LUFS is downstream...mastering guy, etc. Where am I off? There's nothing I deliver directly to streaming, some things I occasionally deliver to broadcast, and even broadcast will have another engineer after me who adjusts levels.
I also do pretty dynamic mixes by modern pop/rock standards, many would say under compressed. So I'll be at a lower relative LUFS anyway. There's never been a time I've tweeze compressed a set of tracks and a mix that I didn't go to mastering and hear all the problems I'd created for any listener with a hi-res system.
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Post by svart on Nov 24, 2017 16:57:59 GMT -6
What's a LUF and why should I care about it? Libertarian Un-Friended. That's why. It's pretty technical. Libertarians are always your friend!
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Post by M57 on Nov 25, 2017 11:09:33 GMT -6
So pretty up until now, I've been using the TT Dynamic Range Meter to check my "mastered" mixes (which go to SoundCloud). For continuity's sake, I've been trying to get in them in the 10 DR range, give or take 1 db, depending on the style, etc. Recently however, I've been looking at them using Logic's LUFS meter, and for the most part, with the more folk/rock oriented stuff, I've noticed that the "Integrated" LUFS reading comes out in the -11 to -12 range with LU (dynamic) ranges around 7 or 8. (compare that to 10 on the TTDR meter) But things don't always line up nice and pretty. For instance, I just remastered a more orchestrally oriented track to LUFS -12.5 that the TTDR meter pegged at 9db DR. I did notice that the Medium range part of the LUFS meter was hitting -9 during the loudest sections, but I'm not sure that isn't coincidence.
On the one hand, and for my purposes the numbers are somewhat meaningless. Ultimately I let my ear decide the balance of loudness to dynamic range, but on the other hand I do like to check the numbers - and now I'm wondering which numbers I should be looking at. My first impressions are that the TTDR's meters align better with my perceptions, but maybe that's because I've trained/calibrated my ears to that meter.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 25, 2017 11:46:29 GMT -6
The so called "DR" figure is not that closely related to perceived loudness, and only used by online audiophiles to moan about modern mastering. Forget "DR" and stick to industry standard LUFS integrated for whole tracks. It's not a perfect correlation to perceived loudness, but much better than "DR".
For anyone interested, here's the info on how DR is calculated from the Foobar2000 "Dynamic Range Meter" plugin's help file, as this information doesn't seem to be listed anywhere else:
The EBU specs for LUFS and how it is calculated are already widely available.
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Post by M57 on Nov 25, 2017 12:59:29 GMT -6
The so called "DR" figure is not that closely related to perceived loudness, and only used by online audiophiles to moan about modern mastering. Forget "DR" and stick to industry standard LUFS integrated for whole tracks. It's not a perfect correlation to perceived loudness, but much better than "DR". For anyone interested, here's the info on how DR is calculated from the Foobar2000 "Dynamic Range Meter" plugin's help file, as this information doesn't seem to be listed anywhere else: The EBU specs for LUFS and how it is calculated are already widely available. Thanks for this info. It's helpful to know how the DR meter works. I have to say, the DR calculations as you have described them seem somewhat arbitrarily constructed (e.g. the 3 second window), but I've been reading up a bit on it, and yes, as you say audiophiles use it as reference, but traditionally, so have engineers. If I may play devil's advocate, it still seems to me that DR was designed for and may still be a better reference for "perceived" loudness, while LUFS was designed to ensure that a mix passes through the broadcast chain as unfettered as possible. Now I will agree that for engineers the value of both in practice are not mutually exclusive, but I have to admit that LUFS doesn't correlate to what my ears hear nearly as much as DR does. Case in point. I just passed two mixes through Logic's adaptive limiter, pulling down the input gain 0.5 db on one of them. Now to my ears, that's a lot and the DR meter shows it to the tune of ~0.25, but the integrated LUFS number didn't budge. Honestly, I'm a bit baffled. I feel like I should go back and run it again to make sure.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 25, 2017 14:23:31 GMT -6
You need to do lots of tests to find out which is closest to perceived loudness, two mixes is certainly not enough. In my experience (thousands of tracks mastered using VU, peak, RMS, LUFS and occasionally DR meters), LUFS is far closer to what I hear than DR (or any of the others). The only engineer I know using "DR" is Ian Shepherd, and that's because he has a commercial interest in it, there is no 'traditional' use by engineers that I am aware of. LUFS integrated 16dB is usually great sounding, but far far lower than what many clients are requesting for masters these days.
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Post by M57 on Nov 25, 2017 15:08:22 GMT -6
There's no question that LUFS is the more valuable of the two from a practicality standpoint, but I plan on using both until my ears figure out what's going on. Right now my sense is that DR is more easy to discern aurally precisely because it's weighted/focused on the top 20% of "windows," which is where most of the compression has been applied, while LUFS looks at the entire range and weights things more evenly, which makes much more sense when it comes to bringing different program materials in line for broadcast. My reasoning may very well be flawed, but that's where it is right now.
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Post by EmRR on Nov 25, 2017 15:18:38 GMT -6
I've never heard of DR, FWIW. more research.
Find the automated system that the human ear agrees with at multiple volume levels across multiple speaker and headphone sets, and we'll have a winner.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 25, 2017 16:34:25 GMT -6
I've never heard of DR, FWIW. more research. Find the automated system that the human ear agrees with at multiple volume levels across multiple speaker and headphone sets, and we'll have a winner. It's not really worth researching. Far more of an "online audiophile" thing, than actually used by any jobbing audio engineers I know. LUFS ain't perfect, for sure, (and one should of course always rely on ones brain/ear/room/monitor interface), but it's the best we have so far if you want to play the matching numbers game.
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Post by cowboycoalminer on Nov 26, 2017 8:32:15 GMT -6
It's hard to go wrong with a VU meter set for 20 dB. of headroom. Would that be -20db under +4? Trying to learn here. Thanks.
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