MASTERING your MUSIC for Streaming - How To Get It Right

let's talk about mastering especially loudness i'm going to explain to you today the difference between l ufs and the peak level metering and i'm going to share with you a very cool tip that i do all the time so i can get my masters loud enough for streaming services what is going on my friends are chris salim here from mixdown online if you're new here on the channel subscribe to the channel click that notification bell share and the like if this video is helpful okay let's talk about mastering first let's check the difference between l u f s a metering and peak level metering now if you're wondering what l ufs is or if you're confused about lufs you've seen that on some plugins even in your own daw like cubase pro but you're just confused about how an lufs meter works so i'm going to explain to you everything that you need to know about this type of metering lufs is a metering system that will measure loudness like perceived loudness in a period of time if we compare that to true peak it is quite different true peak levels like we have on our channels we'll measure the volume at any time okay compared to a l ufs meter that will measure the uh perceived loudness over a period of times which is different it first started in broadcast when lufs was first introduced um basically you know back in the day uh when we're when we were watching a tv show i don't know if you remember but you know you get to a commercial and the commercial was so loud we needed to just you know take the remote and bring down the volume every time we hit a commercial um and so that was a big of a problem so that's why they introduced l ufs to balance that out and so basically balance the loudness between the tv commercial and the tv show so for example you take two signals two different signals that are reaching a ceiling of -1 dbfs for true peak level that doesn't necessarily mean that you will perceive those both signals the same way chances are that one signal is going to sound louder to you even if it has the same peak level so let's jump in cubase and let me show you an example so i'm going to use the test generator plug-in that i have here in cubase just to generate a sine tone i'm going to start by generating a 440 hertz sine tone my output level is set up to minus 1 db okay so i'm going to activate that so now i have a sine tone that is at -1 db now if i bring that down to 100 hertz it reaches the same output level but we perceived that sound quieter so it sounds a bit more quiet than the 440 hertz if i uh you know select 1000 hertz it's gonna sound louder than what i had at 440hz and same if i go up to 10 000 hertz now it's going to sound super loud all right so this is basically what loudness is same output level but different different levels of loudness and this is when l ufs is very useful so if we look at the side of my cubase this is where i have access to my lufs meter in cubase if you're using cubase pro you will find the lufs meter on the right zone of your mix console or project window so once you have the right zone activated you click on the meter tab on top on the top right and then you go down and you click on loudness and that will bring up the loudness meter i'm going to reset it by clicking on the reset loudness and then i'm going to explain to you later on what those parameters are but first let's bring back that sine tone and look at the parameters that i have here so at 440 hertz i have my true peak level at -1 then i have let's look at the all those parameters which are going to be the same in this case so i have the the integrated lufs set up to minus 1.7 so this is the lufs measurement for this sine wave at this specific frequency if i bring that down and i reset my values now i'm getting a quieter loudness signal at minus 2.8 lufs if i bring that up to a thousand hertz it's going to do the opposite and now my loudness levels are going to be higher uh reaching -1 l ufs and so on if i reach 10 000 hertz and reset my values now i'm at plus 2.4 l ufs so this is why l ufs is useful to measure out the perceived loudness okay now let's look at all of those parameters that we have on a lufs meter now if you don't have a cubase pro that means you don't have the control room so you don't have the lufs metering system in cubase you can actually use a free plug-in called ulean loudness meter 2 which is a free plug-in that will give you access to a l-u-f-s metering system and it actually looks very good it's going to do the same thing as i have in cubase pro i'm so just i'm going to leave the link down below if you want to go and download this free plugin very useful if you're not using cubase pro or you're working with a different daw but for now i'm going to use the lufs meter in cubase it's going to be the same parameters found on other plugins so let's first look at the parameters that we have on a lufs meter we have the momentary max which is the loudness level at this moment then we have the short term and i'm going to show you how i use the short term value now the short term is the loudness level for a short period of time now in cubase it is based on a time window of 3 seconds i'm not sure if that's the same value used on other plugins but in cubase it has a it's gonna measure the loudness over a window of three seconds now for integrated l ufs this is the loudness level from start to stop okay so the minute you start to play your song it's gonna start measuring the integrated lufs until you stop the song so to get an accurate measurement of a full song you need to start playing from a to z okay from the top of the song to the end of the song so you can get a precise lufs integrated value and this value the integrated lufs value is what you need to know if your song is loud enough for streaming services then if we go down we have the range which is the the difference between the quietest part of the signal and the loudest part of the signal and the measurement is lu which stands for loudness unit now as far as l ufs goes this stands for loudness units full scale not important to remember but this is what it stands for then we have a true peak which is our true peak level in db and then we have time which is the time taking to measure the integrated value the integrated l ufs value so this is essentially what you need to know as far as lufs parameters go now let's talk about streaming services and what they suggest you and what is the limit as far as what to reach for when it comes to lufs now for most streaming services out there like spotify apple music youtube music and so on they are going to suggest a level of minus 14 l ufs if you send something louder than -14 lufs they will bring it down so all productions will have the same loudness perceived loudness level so this way you're not going to end up going from one song to another and having to turn down the volume of the next song that is louder you know all the loudness of all the songs are going to be very very close to each other and that is the goal of using a loudness measurement like l ufs so this is what we need to keep in mind we need to reach the level of -14 l ufs now it doesn't matter if you you upload a song that is a bit louder than that limit it doesn't matter at all at some point it's a personal choice now if we talk true peak for streaming services this is also very important you know when we reach zero dbfs we are starting to peak so in digital recording the goal is always to stay below the zero dbfs point so what is the perfect level to set up your limiter at the output level of your limiter or basically the ceiling point which is the maximum level where the signal is going to hit before it's going to get compressed or limited so most streaming services will suggest a ceiling point of minus 2 db to minus 1 db now you probably heard before that a ceiling point can be as high as minus a 0.1 or minus 0.3 db and that was the case for years when the uh the cd format was the main music format so when you master the song uh to be printed on a cd format minus 0.1 or minus point 3 db was the the the kind of a sweet spot a ceiling level but for streaming services they will suggest -1 to even down to minus 2 db and that is because when you upload your wav file to streaming services most of them are gonna convert that wav file into other audio formats to fit their platforms so by having a ceiling point that is too high you're gonna risk adding some unwanted distortion or artifacts to your signal so that's why they suggest a maximum peak level or ceiling level at -2 to -1 db so let's go back into our mastering session and look on how that looks like so i have my uh my mix right here and i have also a limiter um this one is the fabfilter pro l this is the one that i usually use it's a very precise limiter you can also use the one out of your daw like the limiter version in cubase now i have to say that this limiter uh plugin in cubase is a bit less precise than what i get with the fabfilter pro l so i'm going to use this one for this video so now the first thing that i'm going to do is to set up the output to minus 1. so this is going to be my ceiling level so this one is set up to -1 and i'm going to activate my limiter but my gain is going to stay at 0 for now now i'm going to listen to my song but i'm going to focus on the the the loudest part of the mix which is the end part right here you can visually see it very easily where i have like quieter parts and louder parts so i'm going to focus on the loudest part of the song for now okay now the master is too quiet my true peak level if we look here on the right is at minus 3.1 so the first thing i'm going to do here is to boost the gain of my limiter okay to around 3.5 and let's listen again okay cool so um now this is the trick that i want to share with you um now that i have my true peak level at -1 my signal is going to start to compress because it's going to reach the ceiling of -1 and then whatever is going to exceed that ceiling point is going to be compressed it's not going to go past the ceiling point um so what i'm going to do here is i'm going to focus on the short term right now the integrated is at minus 13.1 for the nine second time frame but i'm not going to look at the integrated value yet i'm gonna only focus on the short term for now [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] okay now my short term value for this section is at around minus 14 l ufs so my loudest part is at the right level for streaming services but the problem is that this song is very dynamic i have like quieter parts now that can be very good a very good way to uh to get close to your lufs level if you're uh you're mastering a i don't know edm song which has like the same the same level and dynamics all the way through but in this case now i'm dealing with some quieter parts uh blended with some louder parts in the on this mix so making my final decision only on the loudest part is not gonna it's not gonna work because my my general lufs level is gonna be lower than minus 14 l ufs so what i'm going to do is i'm going to try to compensate for that so i'm going to aim at the loudest part of my song i'm i'm going to aim for a level of minus 10 l ufs at the highest minus 9. and this is a tip that i got from my good friend ian shepard which is a mastering engineer down in the uk he's like he's uh he's one of the best mastering engineer out there you can actually check the video that i did with ian uh maybe a couple months ago talking about loudness i'm gonna leave the link on top uh so the goal is to aim for a level of minus 10 you know between minus 10 and minus 9 l ufs at the max and this is by looking at the short term value only and then that will compensate for the quieter parts of the song and this only applies if you have like a dynamic song like the one that i have right now so let's try this out [Music] [Applause] [Music] you know i went at around minus 10 to minus 10.5 l ufs short term for the loudest part of the song now what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna listen to the full song from a to z and then come back with the integrated lufs level now after playing the entire song i have an integrated lufs level at -14.3 which is perfect this is the sweet spot for spotify and most streaming services now this doesn't mean that you can't master louder than that you know you could this is a personal choice at some point but something we need to understand is to get a louder level i'm going to have to increase the input gain of my limiter and of course i am going to end up with a louder result but i'm going to have to compromise on the dynamic range of my master so by increasing the level of your limiter you're gonna get way more gain reduction which will reduce the dynamic range of your signal and this is something that we need to realize there's nothing necessarily wrong with that you know to a certain point so there's always a compromise somewhere and at the end spotify and all those streaming services will bring down your master to an average of -14 l ufs anyways so like as far as i'm concerned i'm gonna try to reach to be close to minus 14 minus 2 minus 12 l ufs and i'm going to be good with that but again that can depend on the type of production you're you work on you know so if you're you're producing edm music maybe that will is going to be different maybe a louder master is going to be a bit more suitable so at this point it's a personal choice but those are my starting point guidelines so what i'm going to do now is i'm going to bounce my master and i'm going to upload it on a very cool website that is going to tell me if i'm going to get penalized by streaming services meaning that i'm going to know if the streaming services are going to bring down the level of my master so let's check this out this site is called the loudness penalty analyzer and i talked about that before on other videos actually ian shepard i was telling you about earlier is behind this very cool website and there's also a plug-in version um that is very cool to use very cheap to purchase if you want to i'm going to leave again the link down below but this one is free the website is free of you so you select your file so let's go and select this one and i'm going to upload it and this is going to tell me what's going to happen once i upload my master to streaming services so this is the result that i get so according to this loudness penalty analyzer uh youtube music is going to bring it down by 0.7 db spotify down by 2.3 db and so on now with these results i know that my master is loud enough for streaming services so there you go my friends this is my mastering tip for you if you have any questions or comments leave everything down below and don't forget to share to like it to subscribe to this channel if you are new here until next time take care and see you

Channel: Chris Selim - Mixdown Online

Views: 21,460

Keywords: MASTERING your MUSIC for Streaming, how loud should you master your music, mastering, loudness, loudness war, how to use a limiter, true peak, what is true peak loudness, how to master your music, youlean loudness meter, how to master, what loudness is best, lufs, limiter ceiling, limiter threshold, best, loudness penalty, music production, mastering tutorial, in the mix, mastering loudness, LUFS vs True Peak, Cubase, Chris Selim, Mixdown Online

Id: Buno4AGy3ts

Length: 19min 13sec (1153 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 23 2020