Audiobus: Use your music apps together.
What is Audiobus? — Audiobus is an award-winning music app for iPhone and iPad which lets you use your other music apps together. Chain effects on your favourite synth, run the output of apps or Audio Units into an app like GarageBand or Loopy, or select a different audio interface output for each app. Route MIDI between apps — drive a synth from a MIDI sequencer, or add an arpeggiator to your MIDI keyboard — or sync with your external MIDI gear. And control your entire setup from a MIDI controller.
Download on the App StoreAudiobus is the app that makes the rest of your setup better.
OT: More Loudness Talk
Alright so I’ve been doing a lot of reading about loudness and LUFS and all that fun jazz. But I’m getting some pretty conflicting info.
A lot of what I’m reading says to master to -16 LUFS. This is what Apple Music streams at and you’ll have less distortion and clipping with streaming sites/apps increasing the volume than them compressing and limiting down.
I’m hearing on the other end that no modern EDM or Pop producer would master that low, that they would not at all be competitive.
Any advice?
Comments
Yes, if you want to target the ideal streaming levels for things like Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora, Youtube, etc, then you want to aim for -16LUFS and -1dBTP. That's the safest option, and is what most of the services will convert your music to anyway. There's some slight differences (some use -14LUFS), but in general if your final file has those settings then most of the streaming service will do very little to the sound of your music.
Here's more info from Spotify themselves, you can look up Apple's MFiT specs for how Apple recommends to do it:
https://artists.spotify.com/faq/mastering-and-loudness#what-is-loudness-normalization-and-why-is-it-used
The issue, is that compared to most music from the last 10-15 years, those recommendations for streaming will make your stuff sound a lot quieter in comparison to non-streaming outlets. CD, direct wav downloads, Soundcloud, etc all use current loudness trends for how they play the music. On average you're looking at closer to -6 to -9LUFS for most pop or electronic music.
So you have two options, produce a current loudness style master, which is more or less what we've been doing anyway til now, and do a second streaming only master. Hopefully you can find a distributer or aggregator that will let you submit different masters for certain outlets, but most won't do that. So despite knowing that the music might not sound as good, most peopel still go with just a normal master and submit that for streaming. Still sounds good if it sounds good elsewhere, just maybe a slight be less good that it would have with a dedicated master. Or not.
Personally, I say if you're not going to go with seperate masters, than just compromise and make a single master that still loud and punch, but aim for closer -9LUFS than -6LUFS. Most of my own music is -10 to -12 LUFS and seems to hold up well in comparison, so it's definitely possible to have a single master that works well anywhere too.
Here's more I've written on this subject in the past: https://www.warpacademy.com/current-trends-in-mastering/
As mentioned by @Tarekith you should target aprox -6 / -9 LUFS integrated it you want your song to be competitive with 98% of current Pop/EDM/Rock/Rap/etc.
The -16 LUFS normalization in Apple Music is applied only when you set the “Sound check” option in Settings, otherwise Apple Music will stream at the mastered level.
Same thing for Spotify, music will be compressed and limited to aprox -13/-14 LUFS only when Settings->Playback->Audio Normalization is active (and Volume Level is set to Normal), otherwise your song will be streamed at the mastered level.
If your song is mastered at -16 LUFS it will sound way lower than any other commercial song, even when normalization is applied.
My last album was mastered at about -11 LUFS average, and although I like the result in terms of quality, it sounds way lower than any other album of similar genre (Electro Rock) in all platforms.
The only exception to this situation is YouTube, as they strictly normalize everything to -14 LUFS, so it’s pointless to upload something louder.
Is there an app that does this automatically?
Like the AI in ToneBoosters EQ, but for the limiter input.
TB Barricade and Grand Finale both seem to do a decent job. Neither just automagically make it happen but you just have to manipulate one or two parameters to get it where you want it.
@Tarekith @Rodolfo Thank you both, I appreciate you confirming what I was suspecting was the answer. Sounds like I do need to sacrifice a bit of the dynamics to really be “competitive”.
@Max23 As always, thank you for your “contributions”.
I get what you're saying, trust me I appreciate a nice dynamic mix more than most people. But at the same time there's some pretty loud masters out that still sound amazing too. Like any medium, a select few really know how to eek out the most of it and push things without it being so apparent. A nice minimal well balanced mix can be pushed pretty darn hard before most people (including most audio engineers) would ever notice it straying into the "too much" category.
Certainly plenty of examples to the contrary too, but I tend to shy away from saying something recorded in the 90s inherently sounds better than all modern music too. Like anything there's a right way to do it and a wrong way, not everyone knows how to do that yet.
Not directed at you personally, just don't want to exclude so much modern music that sounds and feels more dynamic than maybe it really is.
The vast majority of people will listen with Soundcheck or Audio Normalisation on, so personally I think it makes sense to target something around -14LUFS, because that is where the world is heading and what a good thing it is too.
For me personally as a listener, the period from roughly 2000 to 2010 is just the pits when it comes to enjoying audio quality. Many really classic albums that I love musically just sound horrible if you listen to them with revealing headphones. It might not just be the mastering, it could also be early ITB mixing with plugins that don't oversample (honestly I don't know for sure, but it's probably the excessively loud master).
A perfect example is MGMT's Oracular Spectacular, probably the classic album of that period with some amazing songs on it, but if you listen relatively loud on good headphones it's just harsh and tiring.
If your master is uncompressed, and effectively normalized, will these services compress it when you upload?
I ask because I almost never use compression, especially not at the final mastering stage. In fact, usually I don’t even master. My mixes sound good on my monitors, and also on my kitchen speaker, and my iPhone earbuds.
What will be done to my mixes when uploaded?
@mistercharlie said:
Your mixes will be normalised to a set volume level on Spotify and Apple Music, there’s a website that tells you if the volume will be reduced:
https://www.loudnesspenalty.com/
An interesting comparison is listening to a track that is well mastered with streaming in mind, and comparing it to a poorly mastered victim of the loudness wars such as the MGMT track I posted above.
This from 2017, is so much clearer, punchier, and more dynamic than most masters from ten years ago:
The loudness war is terrible mostly. Even in a lot modern soundtracks, filmscores.
Not even want to talk about what unpleasing distortions i hear in my apple music collection.
Of course some are mixed/mastered better than others.
But the general louder is better thing i experienced too much in the last years is a terrible thing. All i care about are real dynamics within the song. I have a volume slider/button to make it louder
No joke, i wonder why sometimes songs are so "loud" that i even cannot hear with volume half on without piercing my ears.
@Clueless Good points!
In recent tracks, I hear distortion surprisingly often, along with a sonetimes fatiguing, over-compressed pumping sound (like @Max23 said) that reminds more of an effect demo than music.
We can do better
Exactly. But there are also a few examples where i find the mastering really good. Still very loud but without unpleasing distortions and a lot dynamic range.
I heard some songs where even the vocals where distorted at times. And it did not sound as intended.
But i guess it like with a lot default presets in synths which will clipping easy +6db with 3-4 note chords or even mono bass sounds to just impress the listener. Then you realize that in a mix with lots of tracks it is unusable until you put everything at least down by 12db or more.
The same translate for me to this overcompressed tracks. Yes, that pumping effect can be intended and nice for some EDM or other electronic stuff but i hear it even in orchestral works, doh´.
It would seem a good idea to master your music based upon how it will be distributed. The online streaming services will knock it down if it’s too loud so you should master it with dynamics that take this into account.
The one point that was brought up to me that does make sense is that, specifically for EDM, loudness matters more than dynamics nowadays, especially when wanting DJs to play your stuff at shows.
Yah I wish a lot of glitchhoppers and technoheads would release ‘headphone listening versions’ as I love a lot of the stuff I hear on the creative end but the mix/mastering just makes it needlessly painful for non club/rave/field/whatever listening.
Oh, definitely!
And then you still haven't taken care about how and where most folks listen to your tracks. At home, in the car, using headphones on the train?
With a lot of surrounding noise, highly compressed material can be a good thing.
Alright, newest thing I’m not quite understanding. I’m getting some conflicting info based on my reading today.
From my initial understanding, turning down the master fader to get headroom is a bad idea. I figured it would be better to manipulate individual tracks to preserve the dynamics. I would think turning the master down would flatten the mix.
But I’m also reading that this isn’t an issue with DAWs that use a floating point on the master. Which I don’t entirely understand.
This is referring to clipping. If a DAW is using 32 bit floating point, there”s virtually no point that clipping will be introduced by the daw itself (tough some plugins may do so).
However, a 32bit master that peaks over 0db will clip if converted to 16 bit. So, while it’s true you don’t need to worry about gain staging so much within a DAW, you do still pay attention to taming things overall for plenty of other good reasons, especially internally if you’re using plugins that don’t handle overloads well.
You shouldn't turn down the Master fader, but the signal coming into the Master channel. One easy way to do this would be to add a plugin with gain control on the Master Strip, such as an EQ, and then turn the gain down on that plugin before it hits the final limiter. You might want to watch this short video, done in Auria but it would apply to any DAW with a limiter that has decent metering, such as Pro-L2 or TB Barricade:
In use you won't hear much if any difference if you're just pulling the master down say 6 to 10dB. Maybe even a bit more than that, I don't have an exact number. It's only when you really start pulling things way down like 40dB or so that you might potentially lose resolution.
Master fader is there for a reason, don't be scared of it.
Thanks for the details here. Appreciate it.