LUFS Mastering Explained

hey guys it's Luke from mixamate simple and today I want to be talking about lufs or luffs which is the standard unit of measurement when it comes to measuring the loudness of your music first I want to talk about how the levels that you should be aiming for should really be based off your genre and what other Professionals in your genre are going for and not based on what Spotify does or you know if Spotify is going to turn your music down to negative 14 lufs or something like that then you know why should I go any louder that's nonsense I want to talk about that and I'm going to show you some real examples from some actual Pros in a few different genres and I think that'll really help to know what you should be aiming for when mastering your own music or if you have your music Mastered by a master engineer before we get started if you're a music producer and you're a beginner or you're intermediate and you're just struggling to mix your music maybe you're just struggling with understanding mixing in general or even producing for a while and you're just not mixing your tracks in a way that's getting them to that professional level sound go ahead and look in the description below there's a link where you can book a zoom call with me I'm actually working on a mixing course right now and I'm interviewing music producers to try to get feedback that way I can make the best course possible it's going to be really in-depth I've had several calls so far and they've gone really well and if you're seeing this in the future it's possible that this course already exists so go ahead and book a call and we can discuss getting you enrolled and just you know really get you good at mixing as fast as possible okay so in case you don't know lufs or luffs stands for loudness unit relative to full scale and basically it's just a way of measuring loudness that takes in electrical signal intensity and human perception into account and so it's like the most accurate way that we can measure loudness essentially to be completely honest I don't know exactly how it works but I do know what numbers that you need to shoot for when it comes to your music and one of the reasons I'm making this video is because I follow a few Muse music production subreddits and you know if you log in I think at least once a day you'll see someone posting like hey I don't know what loudness level to master my music to you know Spotify is going to turn it down to negative 14 Nelly Fest so does that mean I I should only Master to negative 14 and the quick answer is no and here's why okay so when you master something and say if you have a Bass track and you master it to Extremely Loud negative four lufs which you should do if that's the genre of music you're making you should just do whatever everyone else in your genre is doing if you do that it's going to be not very Dynamic it's going to be really loud it's gonna be really in your face it's not going to be that Dynamic and all Spotify is going to do say if this is your track and it's and you've squashed it down like this and so it's Extremely Loud and not very Dynamic all that Spotify will do is take the entire track and lower it down to negative 14. essentially normalizing it with all the other music on Spotify but the dynamic range is going to stay the same so if you make a Bass track and you only Master to negative 14 lufs it won't make sense because every other track in that genre is still going to be mastered to negative 4 or you know negative 6 negative 4 Lu of s so you'll meanwhile you'll have your Bass track that's too Dynamic there's too much range in there it's not as hard hitting and meanwhile every other professional they still match Theirs to negative four and it's you know and so it just the Spotify thing really just doesn't matter I've even seen replies to post before where it's kind of go the opposite way where they'll say hey it's EDM music and you should just Master everything to negative five or negative four lufs or whatever which I also heavily disagree with because as you'll see in a second even in EDM music it's very genre dependent in a second look we're gonna go ahead and jump in the DAW and I'm going to show you four different examples and uh of different genres uh three are EDM and one is actually in any track there was actually mastered surprisingly louder than expected I wanted to grab a random non-edm track to use as an example because I figured oh it's not going to be mastered as loud but actually it was mastered fairly loud as well and this is like a you know an acoustic track you know with soft vocals and everything like that so I'm going to show you that example so let's go ahead and jump the doll and we'll listen to the examples right now and for whatever genre music you make you can do this yourself go on beatport purchase one of your r's favorite tracks throw it into your Dove Choice and then put like a you lean loudness meter on there and then see what lefts they're hitting and then you can see for yourself and then that's what you should be shooting for when it comes to your own music anyways let's jump on the Daw right now okay so we have four examples here and unfortunately when I play them you're not gonna be able to hear the Audio I don't want to deal with the YouTube copyright claims or anything like that so but you can still visually see I've got yulin loudness meter here and the examples I'm using are uh I got melodic dubstep Seven Lions ocean I've got this Marsh track called Blue so that's he's an anjuna deep uh artist and that's like a this particular track is like a I think you would call it like two-step or something it's not four four or it's four four but it's um it's like a halftime track and then we have this uh yours vorn remix called safe and that one's an interesting one which we'll get to in a second and then we have this track and this is the Indie acoustic track that um I really like the artist Lizzie McAlpine and I was trying to find one of her songs on this uh website but you couldn't because I was buying I was trying to buy like a high quality wave but you couldn't um you could only buy her songs like by the album and so I found this one though by someone named Tom Rosenthal featuring her and it's like a acoustic you know kind of soft acoustic indie track um and that one I found interesting and we'll get to that one in a second but first let's go ahead I'm gonna play a little bit of this uh oceans and then let's take a look at the lufs and see what's going on and I'm going to start a little bit ahead I'll start right here if you look at the waveform it's like the very first verse and there's not like you can see it's the waveforms skinny right there there's not much going on but you'll see how quickly that it shoots up to like negative five um lufs and then let's go ahead and take a look look foreign ERS came in right here I'm gonna skip ahead a little bit I'm gonna go skip to the drop you can see the drops right here okay so you can see it's just getting past like it's just jumping past negative four lufs and that makes sense you know it's a Seven Lions track he's like a big melodic dubstep guy he makes psytrance sometimes um you know it's very like epic interface like you know it's not like the craziest Bass music like some of those artists but um clearly it's mastered really loud and that works for him so let's jump to the next track and so this one's cool and I'll show you the waveform you can see that this was mastered in a way or let's jump if you look at the seven lines track right it's mastered to where it's really thick and then um it's the they're getting the waveform is getting it's not super smashed but you can see that those little transients are cut off a little bit and then this one the marsh track I'm just going to skip ahead to like the loudest section around here and you can see that a lot of the transients are preserved during the mastering which is nice let's go ahead and Skip ahead and I'm going to play it so there's a vocal playing right here and it's kind of like the loudest section so you can see that it's getting up around seven doesn't go past negative seven so this is more of like a chill track you know um like I said I've heard people say that all EDM should be mastered super loud this is loud but it's not like Extremely Loud definitely not as nearly as loud as that Seven Lions track and then this one's interesting so this is uh I'm gonna jump ahead to the drop section this is that yours foreign and this guy's you know really popular artist uh melodic techno this is kind of a chill track and if you look at it you know it's mastered in a way where all the transits are preserved and if you look even a close like like you can see compared to like the Seven Lions track if you look at the waveform I know it's it's skinnier for sure and watch when I play it it doesn't get that loud so let's go and play it this is the loudest part of the track and you can see it's not even it's barely getting past negative 9 lfs and this is one of the most popular melodic techno artists like at the time right now okay so it's just getting up to like negative eight and so there you go um and then lastly we have this and I'll kind of see if I can find what would be like the loud part but I'll just play at the beginning but this is really interesting so this is this acoustic track and I'll play from the beginning let's check out the loudness I'm going to skip ahead to where vocal comes in and you can see that this is getting up towards uh you know fairly loud and if actually if you look at the waveform oh wait look right here okay look right here whoops it actually almost gets up louder than the uh uh yours foreign track and if you look at the waveform actually when this was mastered you would think that a track like this they're going to try to preserve the transients and make it as dynamic as possible but it's actually mastered fairly loud so there you go um you can do this with any genre that you're working in find your favorite artist download it on those tracks you know go buy it of course and uh throw it in your doll and then just check out and then you know get Julian lauder's meter it's free I think they have a pay version as well but there's also a free one and you can put that on there it's really helpful it really comes down to having a really great mix by the way I'm always a big proponent of this that don't have a crappy mix and then try to just make it Extremely Loud really focus on having a good mix and if you're making Bass music if you want to have really really loud music I highly recommend looking up the clip to zero method there is a really there's a whole series of videos on it by someone named baffle metrics I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right but baffle metrics you'll if you just type clip to zero into YouTube if you're a bass music person and watch those videos it's like a whole it's like a I don't I'm not to be honest I'm just wrapping my head around it um but it's a way to ensure that the music you're making if you're making Bass music and it works for other genres but it's a way to ensure that your uh you can get your mixes Extremely Loud and you kind of know going into it that it's going to be loud it's like as you're producing you know that it's the things your work your you know the sounds you're using are going to work loud just the way that the clip to zero method works so anyway uh so yeah Bass music go check out clip to zero method everyone else find your favorite artist and see what they're doing you don't have to make it Extremely Loud there's some examples here that are clearly in the negative nine negative eight personally I always try to aim for at least negative eight lufs at the louder sections probably negative seven that's what I do and also I also send my music out to get mastered I have a really good mastering engineer I don't want to name them here because he's already busy enough as it is but yeah find a good mastering engineer master your music compare the two you know maybe have an idea of the the lufs level that you want your music to be at and let your mastering engineer know and then yeah make sure that you have a really good mix uh before you get it mastered so I hope that helps and I hope that clears things up uh when it comes to mastering your music for streaming platforms and all that stuff if you like this video please like And subscribe and feel free to book a call with me and look in the description below you can book a call with me and I'd love to talk with you if you are struggling to mix your music and you need some help with that so yeah I'll talk to you soon and see you next time

Channel: Mixing Made Simple

Views: 2,699

Keywords: lufs, LUFS explained, LUFS mastering, LUFS mastering levels, LUFS meter, what is LUFS, how to use LUFS, what is LUFS metering, metering plugin, LUFS plugin, what are LUFS, mastering, loudness, will darling, EDM Tips, loud mastering, lufs mastering, lufs explained, lufs meter, what are lufs, lufs mastering levels, spotify lufs, music production, 14 lufs, youlean loudness meter, rms, what is lufs metering, what is lufs, how to master -14 lufs, best lufs level

Id: pAQLar4o6Hc

Length: 14min 5sec (845 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 12 2023