And by the way it's only streaming, but selling goes around -8 (+/-3 depending on genre) and that is the standard, not streaming. And guess what, there are about 50 DSPs around the world, one prefers -14, the other -15, another one -23…. The whole misconception comes from my previous point and from not understanding the difference between mastering loudness and operating loudness (playback loudness). The internet is full with this nonsense but there is no such thing as "mastering for streaming", and this -14 LUFS fixation is simply wrong. This is literally the biggest confusion and it baffles me that not just producers but many “mastering engineers” get it wrong (at least here on Reddit). And it’s the same principle with every platform, including streaming platforms. (Exaggerated example: you don't cut your subs and tops just because your cheap boombox cuts it.) So we don't do this, a good master is good on every system. Why make it good for one device if it can be good for all devices? A good master means that it sounds good on both shitty speakers and on a club's massive top end sound system. The problem with this is that it's unnecessary specialized. There is no such thing as mastering to earbuds, headphones or boomboxes, this is some very bad idea that comes from the beginning of the streaming era where labels and producers were experimenting with mastering to make it more suitable for the average user's very poor devices like cheap earbuds or speakers. Okay so let's clear this up for once and for all. It's a common misconception and the problem with it is that people tend to forget that stores are just as important as streaming and depending on the music genre it can be way more important than streaming. First we have to clarify that DSP stands for "digital service provider", not for "digital streaming provider". These are the two major branches of DSPs. If you always struggle with this or just interested, let’s dive in: Just to clarify, it’s not about how to master a song but about how to set up master loudness, so it’s related but still two different topics.
It’s a longer read but it’s all essential to understand how it works. First start with understanding what are the different platforms and how they work, and going on with what is LUFS, how and where we use it, how different genres work, the reality of loudness, dynamics and dynamic range, and how to make it if you want to be realistic. So this post is here for educational purposes and it hopefully helps for many of you. I decided to write a tutorial about setting up master loudness level because I see a massive confusion around this, also about LUFS levels and how to set it up.
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