Loudness Penalty: Find out if audio will be turned down by streaming services
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Re: Loudness Penalty: Find out if audio will be turned down by streaming services
#2I'm confused about why this website is using the word "penalty" to describe the process of normalizing songs to have the same loudness.
Re: Loudness Penalty: Find out if audio will be turned down by streaming services
#3I'm confused about why this website is using the word "penalty" to describe the process of normalizing songs to have the same loudness.
I get a sense that this site is targeting the kinds of people who take part in the "loudness war." Producers and engineers I suppose? Whoever decides that their song needs to be louder so that it yields more attention.
Re: Loudness Penalty: Find out if audio will be turned down by streaming services
#4I'm confused about why this website is using the word "penalty" to describe the process of normalizing songs to have the same loudness.
From the email they sent when I put in a sample song and asked for the more detailed analysis:
"Since streaming services are going to turn loud music down anyway, more and more people are deciding they would prefer to take control of this process themselves, and optimize their music for the best possible results."
and
"We recommend avoiding very large negative LP values, especially on YouTube because songs like this often sound “smaller” than those with LP scores closer to zero.
Hear it for yourself For example, compare the loud sections of these two Metallica songs on YouTube - The Day That Never Comes (LP -5.8)[1] and Hardwired (LP -2.4)[2]. Which has more impact?
Loudness normalization means you have the opportunity to make your music sound better, too. In our experience, LP between 0 and -2 on YouTube will work well for even the loudest genres. For example, Drake’s recent hit God’s Plan has a score of LP -0.8 on YouTube, and it sounds huge."
[1]: https://youtu.be/dkNfNR1WYMY [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhBHL3v4d3I&feature=youtu.be [3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpVfcZ0ZcFM&feature=youtu.be
Re: Loudness Penalty: Find out if audio will be turned down by streaming services
#5I'm confused about why this website is using the word "penalty" to describe the process of normalizing songs to have the same loudness.
At one time, television used to allow advertisers to up the volume for their commercials. I don't recall if that was broadcast or cable. I thought a regulation was put into place for that, requiring a constant set volume, but like many things, it's either ignored or gone away.
Re: Loudness Penalty: Find out if audio will be turned down by streaming services
#6I'm confused about why this website is using the word "penalty" to describe the process of normalizing songs to have the same loudness.
From the email they sent when I put in a sample song and asked for the more detailed analysis: "Since streaming services are going to turn loud music down anyway, more and more people are deciding they would prefer to take control of this process themselves, and optimize their music for the best possible results." and "We recommend avoiding very large negative LP values, especially on YouTube because songs like this…
Ironically, after a brief sampling, the first Metallica song seems to have more "impact" to me, and the second seems to be smaller. Admittedly, I didn't listen to the whole of either one. But I found it odd enough to mention.
Re: Loudness Penalty: Find out if audio will be turned down by streaming services
#7I'm confused about why this website is using the word "penalty" to describe the process of normalizing songs to have the same loudness.
From the email they sent when I put in a sample song and asked for the more detailed analysis: "Since streaming services are going to turn loud music down anyway, more and more people are deciding they would prefer to take control of this process themselves, and optimize their music for the best possible results." and "We recommend avoiding very large negative LP values, especially on YouTube because songs like this…
Ironic you pick on Metallica as example as they basically "won" the loudness wars[0] with the release of Death Magnetic. So ridiculously overblown and compressed that it was clipping constantly and heavily featured in mainstream media. Even one of the album's mastering engineers complained.
Lars thought it was great.
[0] http://recordinghacks.com/2008/12/20/metallica-wins-the-loud...
Re: Loudness Penalty: Find out if audio will be turned down by streaming services
#8I'm confused about why this website is using the word "penalty" to describe the process of normalizing songs to have the same loudness.
I have an album from a few years ago on streaming services that was mastered to about -9 on the LUFS scale. It sounds nice and loud on SoundCloud, which doesn’t do any normalization, but on Spotify, the normalization algorithm turns it down enough that it sounds noticeably softer than music by other electronic artists (although some of that probably comes down to my mixing skills versus those of experienced recording engineers).
Spotify used to normalize to -11 LUFS, but more recently has migrated to -14, which other streaming services already use and seems to be becoming the standard. For my new album that was just released, I mastered to about -11 to -13 LUFS, which tends to be loud enough to still stand out un-normalized, but is close enough to target that it doesn’t take a noticeable hit on normalization.
Re: Loudness Penalty: Find out if audio will be turned down by streaming services
#9I'm confused about why this website is using the word "penalty" to describe the process of normalizing songs to have the same loudness.
I believe they are concerned about the Loudness War, where songs released over the past 10+ years have been mastered to be as close to 0db as possible.
This was done for decades by radio stations applying strong compression, because they knew that someone going from frequency to frequency was more likely to stop on a station that sounded loud, implying that they were getting a stronger signal and could listen to it longer before they drove out of range. The longer the listener stayed on their station, the more ad impressions. But then the record labels started doing it and so even buying a CD meant you were getting a lower-quality album.
A few years ago Apple mandated the use of their Sound Check tool that penalizes iTunes Radio songs that are all-loud, all-the-time. And it sounds (no pun intended) that Spotify and other services followed their lead.
Google cache of article because the site is unresponsive:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:P4y5VeS...
Re: Loudness Penalty: Find out if audio will be turned down by streaming services
#10I'm confused about why this website is using the word "penalty" to describe the process of normalizing songs to have the same loudness.
If you can find it, listen to the original version of the Dire Straits album "Dire Straits" -- Then listen to it with volume normalization.
Dynamic range is good...