12-04-2017, 08:12 AM (This post was last modified: 12-04-2017, 12:31 PM by Jostein.)
Hi Folks!
Here I have a mix I delivered to a Nashville based project a while ago. The song is a ballad and my mix have an integrated loudness of -18.2 LUFS and loudness range of 6.5 LU. After the massacre in the mastering house, the numbers are now -9.2 LUFS / 3.8 LU.
I fired up Mixbus and normalized both versions to have an Integrated Loudness of -11.2, which is close to where YouTube, iTunes, Spotify and the other media automatically will do it when someone upload that material to them. This means that the mastered version is reduced with 2 dB and my mix is gained with 7 dB and the wave forms in the attached screenshot below shows clearly what's going on.
Now, have a look at them, which one do you think sounds squeezed, stressed and like it's coming trough a local radio station and which do you think sounds detailed, transparent, expensive and good when it sounds like they have the same sound volume?
The CD came out at least 6 months after YouTube started to normalize all audio. Up to this day, a lot of producers and engineers still do not get it.
EDIT: Specifying in the text that the attachment is a screenshot in order to avoid misunderstandings.
After checking bunch of different videos and sites which of course includes info from Ian Shepard, Bob Katz and other, I can only say: My oh My!
Additional to the loadnes analyzer, there is for example PLR and God knows what. So what is the safest bet for mastering one master for all streaming media? I think that an Integrated Loudness: -12 LUFS with peak no bigger that 6 dB might be a good starting point? Anyone?
The histogram view (Mixbus post-export analysis or region/range analysis) shows short-term LUFS.
@Jostein: Could you provide two short snippets of the audio, say 10-20 seconds each to A/B listen? In context of loudness analysis that'll be fair-use.
(12-05-2017, 10:53 AM)x42 Wrote: @Jostein: Could you provide two short snippets of the audio, say 10-20 seconds each to A/B listen? In context of loudness analysis that'll be fair-use.
Hmm, MP3 will not work here and FLAC is not allowed. I can send the snippets to you in private. I really do not want them to be public here.
12-09-2017, 02:11 PM (This post was last modified: 12-09-2017, 02:15 PM by Chris A.)
(To the OP) Did you consider suggesting to the client that for downloads, an option be made available online that includes finished mixdown tracks in addition to the one-size-fits-all tracks from mastering studios? There is at least one place that I'm aware of that advertises "no mastering download" currently.
The added cost is essentially zero to do this. In fact, it may potentially save the client money in mastering that the client could put into better mixing services (far term), and provides increased fan base potential in terms of the hi-fi listeners with much better listening setups than the typical "mastered products using nearfield NS10Ms in a tiny studio space".
I find that there is a lot of one-size-fits-all thinking that's occurring in the industry which is not really applicable to the music download business.
I know this may seem presumptuous of the business position that you're in but it's clear that the current mastering practices will continue to degrade if the thinking doesn't change.
12-10-2017, 10:33 AM (This post was last modified: 12-10-2017, 10:34 AM by Jostein.)
(12-09-2017, 02:11 PM)Chris A Wrote: (To the OP) Did you consider suggesting to the client that for downloads, an option be made available online that includes finished mixdown tracks in addition to the one-size-fits-all tracks from mastering studios? There is at least one place that I'm aware of that advertises "no mastering download" currently.
...
I know this may seem presumptuous of the business position that you're in but it's clear that the current mastering practices will continue to degrade if the thinking doesn't change.
No, they know all the options very well and the know very good what they want. They are sitting on the multi-tracks, my mixes (ordinary + TV-tracks) and the master someone else did.
In this particular group/environment of people, they and the producer usually rejects dynamic mixes as mine and want even the mixes nearly as load as the final master will be, but they luckily liked the way the voice of the lead singer sounded very much.
The mastered example in the OP is actually not sounding too bad, but served as a good example of what's going on even to this day. Which one that will sound best on normalized media of the two examples above is quite obvious, I think. If played on radio, especially local radios (at least, as it is here in Scandinavia ) the mastered version will even sound much more badly because they compress everything they put on air very hard, a compressed song that is even more harder compressed when going out the air sounds really bad in my opinion. Even the stuff that's streamed and also casted via DAB from the radio stations are heavy compressed!
