The new loudness standard for streaming

Streaming services automatically turn down tracks which have been mastered to be loud.  The result is that a loud track may actually sound quieter on streaming services than tracks which have not been mastered to be loud.  Even if it doesn’t get turned down enough to sound quieter, it certainly wont sound louder. However it will have less dynamic range and will probably sound more squashed, distorted and dull next to other tracks which were not mastered to be so loud. Below is a diagram to explain why this is the case.

Why is this?

There is only one way to make a master louder and that is to compress the dynamic range.  The dynamic range is the difference between the loudest sounds and the quietest sounds in a piece of music.  The louder you make the master, the more you need to compress (reduce) the dynamic range of the music.   A very loud maser will have a very small dynamic range.  

What you need to know

This processing basically shaves off all the loud peaks in the music.  It’s a very destructive process and can audibly degrade the sound, especially for jazz recordings.  The new standards mean this kind of destructive squashing will no longer result in your music sounding any louder on streaming services.

The choice is yours

You can have your music mastered to sound really loud on CD if you don’t mind the way it affects the dynamic range.  We are happy to give you two versions, a reduced dynamic range master for CD and a fuller dynamic range version for streaming and vinyl.

As standard we can provide your masters in the following formats as part of our standard fee.

Hi Res Wav files
FLAC files
Mastered for iTunes Wav files
Mastered for CD 16 bit Wav files

DDP files can be provided at a modest additional charge.

Keep your mix at the same sample rate it was recorded at

Whatever resolution you record at be it at 24 bit, 44.1 kHz, 24 bit 88.2 kHz or 24 bit 96 kHz, you should keep it at this same resolution all the way through to mastering.  Don’t downsample or upsample your mixes, if anything like that needs to be done, let us do it here with our specialist tools.

Use modern high quality plugins in your mix
The sound quality of plugins varies enormously and huge advances in the quality of plugins have been made in the past few years.  Avoid old or cheap plugins and avoid 32 bit plugins, you should be working with 64 bit plugins only.  Splashing out on high quality plugins is worth the investment.  Your music will be around for a long time, our advice is not to cut corners now by using cheap or old plugins.  If you have recorded at lower sampling rates like 44.1 or 48 kHz, make sure all the compressor, saturation and character EQ plugins used employ oversampling.  If they don’t, you risk introducing aliasing distortion into your mix (at type of undesirable digital distortion).  Recording at 88.2 or 96 kHz avoids this problem, so if you have not yet recorded, we recommend using these higher sampling rates.

Do not use compression or limiting on the master bus
You are better off leaving that up to the mastering engineer, that’s what they specialise in.  We have a range of world class bus compressors and limiters and vast experience.  If you have already compressed and limited your master bus, it will severely limit what we can do to help your mix.  If you really like the sound of your bus compression then send us two mixes, one with and one without the compression.  Don’t use a bus limiter at all, you’ll simply be tying our hands if you do.  Same with bus EQ or multi band compression, leave that up to us.

Leave some headroom
With 24 bit files there is no need to keep the levels near 0 db on your mix bus.  It’s better to give us a few db headroom so we can bring the level up during mastering using our specialist tools to make it sound great.

Dither your bounce
You should bounce to a 24 bit wav file and stay at the same sample rate that your session was recorded in.  Turn on dither in your DAW when bouncing or use a high quality dither plugin (Like PSP or Ozone dither) as the last plugin in your master bus chain.  Why do I need to dither if it’s a 24 bit file?  Modern DAWs work at internal rates higher than 24 bits, so truncation will occur when bouncing to 24 bits (even if the original audio is 24 bits).  This truncation is minor and it’s no big deal if you don’t dither to 24 bits, but it will improve the quality further down the line if you do dither.

Zip your files
If you are sending us your mixes via the internet alway zip them first.  If there is some file corruption during transfer the zip file will not open at our end and we can ask you to send it again.  If it’s not zipped and there is transfer corruption, it may still play back at our end but there may be degradation.

Send us concise notes
In order for us to work with your mixes we need a text document which includes a list of the file names of all the audio files you’ve sent us.  Next to each file name we need the actual name of the song exactly as it will appear on the final album.  We also need the IRSC code (unless this is provided by the pressing plant) for each track.

CD pressing
We either can create a DDP file or provide you with separate 16 bit files for CD depending on which the pressing plant you use requires.  If we are creating a DDP file we will need all the track names and the ISRC code for each track.  If your pressing plant wants separate 16 bit files, then you will either give them the ISRC codes or they will provide them for you.