Think about the best hamburger you ever had. Think about how good it was. If you’re a vegetarian, I’m sorry this analogy doesn’t work for you. For everyone else, the thought of that juicy hamburger has the possibility to make your mouth water right now. Mine is.
Obviously when you thought of the best hamburger you ever ate, you thought about McDonalds, right? No?
If you’re like most, you wouldn’t rank McDonalds burgers anywhere near the best. They’re fairly dry, they’re very small (unless you get the quarter pounder,) and you might like them (I do) but calling them the best is laughable. Guess what hamburg is the most popular in the country? McDonalds.
Do I have a point? Of course. Popularity does not equal quality. McDonalds burgers are number one because they’re cheap and fast and easy to find.
As someone who releases his own albums, I am very into learning everything I can about mixing and mastering. I’ve been a hobbyist home recorder for over 30 years. Don’t misunderstand me – I’m not a pro audio engineer. I’m a guy with a lot of interest in audio engineering, but it’s not my day job or even my number one hobby.
But if I had a dollar for every pro audio engineer talking about how you need to slam your mix to make it competitive, I’d be rich. And they’re right. That’s the sad part. Three semi-recent albums I like are the latest albums from Kings of Leon, Foo Fighters, and Steven Wilson. Steven Wilson’s album (The Future Bites) sounds fantastic. The other two albums sound terrible.
Let me rephrase that. They sound fine at below conversation or conversation volume levels. Crank them up, and they sound good…. for a short while. Then the ear fatigue sets in. There’s almost no dynamic range. Everything is loud, almost all the time. And this has become the new norm. But it’s not new – it’s been the case since the early 2000’s.
Why are so many pro engineers OK with this? I think an entire generation of engineers has grown up listening to over-compressed music. I did a video about how Spotify changes every song’s volume level to -14 LUFS. You can master louder, but they’ll simply turn your music down. Apple and YouTube do something similar. It was supposed to end the Loudness War. But it didn’t. Why not?
It’s because LUFS is an imperfect system, like all of the other systems I’m aware of. And people figured out how to game it.
I know how this sounds. Old man yelling “Get off my lawn.” But you can decide for yourself. Grab an old Steely Dan track and crank it, and listen to a few songs. Then do the same with some songs from the latest Kings of Leon or Foo Fighters album. You’ll be surprised at how unmusical they sound in comparison.
So an entire generation of YouTubers are telling people to master at -8 LUFS so their music is competitive. They’re right. But do you want your music to be competitive, or to sound good?
Steven Wilson did both. Check out his album.
What did I do? I mastered at -14 LUFS. To my ears, that’s already too loud, but anything softer and it’ll be a problem if I ever want to license any of the songs. Everyone has to compromise. It’s up to you how much.
