People are talking about minus 14 LUFS loudness more and more these days, but why ? What does this number mean, where does it come from, and why should you care ?
In this episode we answer all these questions and more, including:
- Which streaming services are using -14 LUFS
- Why Spotify aren’t using -14 LUFS, and why it matters
- Why you shouldn’t use minus 14 LUFS as a target (or any number) but
- Why it’s still important and useful to know about anyway
- Will mastering to -14 LUFS make your music sound bad ?!?
- How (and why) Ian’s beliefs about loudness are bring challenged
Links
TMS #52 - DON’T aim for LUFS targets online
Episode 60 - The loudness technique you need to start using TODAY
How loud ? The simple solution to optimizing playback volume online – and everywhere else
TMS 41 - The problem with loudness normalization – and TIDAL’s solution (Plus a brief history of LUFS)
Measuring ReplayGain in Audacity
Loudness normalization in Reaper
r128x-GUI - Free loudness measurement app for OS-X
Actually the average "real" song (discarding ambient in between tracks) on the new Tool album averages around -11LUFS...
And imo it sounds not that good, just not "dense" enough, somewhat thin and the drums seem to lack overall compression, therefor some hits seem to like totally disappear in the mix and others stick out like a sore thumb. But that could all be caused by just the mix of course.
In general I'm a huge advocate of dynamics !