So I have been studying about loudness and loudness meters, and LUFS and all that stuff and even have the meters (IK Mastering Console, ToneBoosters EU Levels Meters, etc.) But I am still confused.
They keep talking about -24 LUFS being "the norm" for broadcast and even have screen shots. (See below)
But when I run any modern song through one of these--Let's say Glen Campbell's latest--just to be on the "milder side", it is WAY out of that -24 range and totally in the red.
The only tune I could find in my library that shows up as -24 LUFS is an Audrey Hepburn tune Moon River from that old movie and that is just kind of a thin blue strip of a .wav, hardly what you see today. I.E. it is SOFT.
So, I guess my question is how are you you supposed to master at -24 LUFS and get anything anywhere near modern sounds if Audrey Hepburn is the reference?
Here are the charts from an acoustic song I am about to post that goes to -24 sometimes, but is mostly at -15. (LUFS). It has a nice, well balanced acoustic sound.
Is it necessary to force it to never go above -24 and if so under what circumstances??
Also, is that a tool you can use to "gate" it at that level and normalize to LUFS (the broadcasters must have one) and if so, what is that tool. I know how to limit or gate in dbs, but this seems to be talking about a completely different standard.
Thanks!!
(See attachment LUFS 1 as well).
David Snyder Songwriter/Renaissance Man Studio + Fingers
I KNEW you were going to say that Herb. I KNEW it.
Yes, my wife Gayle sings it in our repertoire and I have it for us to practice. Also, I happen like it myself. I also like Judy Garland singing Somewhere over the Rainbow if you don't mind.
Thanks for the feedback on the question.
Catch you later.
David Snyder Songwriter/Renaissance Man Studio + Fingers
Thank you for posting this. I have never stumbled across LUFS before and since your post, I've been doing a bit of homework. It's definitely something worth getting a handle on.
I found the below video by Ian Shepherd an excellent presentation on understanding how peak, RMS, integrated loudness and LUFS correlate. The video is 19 minutes long and it was time really well spent.
From the Youtube clip, it seems that many of today's songs will have a LUFS around -11. Since, according to the video, -23 integrated loudness is the required value for broadcasting, a piece of music that has an engineered value of -11 will be turned down by 12dB (the difference between -11 and -23) at the time of broadcasting.
As a comparison, the video clip also says that a piece of classical music that has an integrated loudness of less than -23 will be lifted up to -23 at broadcasting.
My overall, still-early-days-novice take on this is that the -24 LUFS that you mention is not necessarily an audio level that sound engineers strive to achieve when mixing and mastering, it's what they strive to achieve when adjusting audio for broadcasting as radio or TV.
What are you feeding into the meter? If you have movie sound tracks I'm thinking you are using digitized media of some type and there's no way to know how the audio is already compressed. Without a reference tone for each recording you feed the meter, there's simply no way to know the provenance of the audio.
Yes Noel there is quite a lot to learn. I will write more later, but your post is spot on--except I think they are taking more about the news standard of "loudness unit" gating and not db reduction, per se. But your numbers are accurate in the RMS realm, and I guess we leave it up to broadcasters to do their thing should we get so lucky.
There is SO much to learn. If you click on the attachment on the first post you will see a meter strip that is very helpful to me to improve dynamics, presence, and perceived loudness. I am learning from engineers that you have to set the vocals precisely first, then gradually add in other stuff, keeping an eye on ALL meters, to see which instrument suddenly flips the switch and throws the mix out of whack. It can be as simple as a bright acoustic pushed too high--or anything. One misstep and you lose control of the dynamics.
Quite fascinating actually.
David Snyder Songwriter/Renaissance Man Studio + Fingers
You are absolutely right. I was just talking about overall loudness, really, and how many different standards there are now for what is loud, and how many "numbers" are supposed to be the ruling number.
I think Noel's reply cut to the core--but I still have much more reading and experimenting to do.
Thanks for the reply.
David Snyder Songwriter/Renaissance Man Studio + Fingers
It's excellent and has both VU scales as well as graphs (which I like). It's completely free and comes bundled with a pot-potpourri of plugins that are a mixture of free and limited trial. When installing, it's not necessary to install all plugins. It's possible to simply choose those that are of interest. (I only selected the Loudness Analyzer.)
I can tell that this journey is going to be exciting! I look forward to where it takes me. If I come across anything really eye/ear-opening, I'll post it in this thread.
Just recently I found out a little more about LUFS...
According to sound enthusiasts and sound engineers on the 'net, these days it seems that Youtube, iTunes, Spotify are making use of LUFS when it comes to processing audio uploads. The values give are usually in the vicinity of
Youtube = -14 LUFS
Spotify = -12 LUFS
iTunes = -16 LUFS
While -23 LUFS is the level agreed on for radio broadcasting, for user audio preparation, the rule of thumb is that the value with the greatest negative magnitude will have most dynamics and the value with the lowest negative magnitude will have a more compressed/limited sound (i.e. -16 LUFS will offer more dynamics in the performance than -10 LUFS). This is additional to any compression or limiting that is present in the pre-LUFS-adjusted track.
The below article offers some insight into various settings.
The good news is that it's not necessary to understand how LUFS works to be able to use it. All that is required is to...
Determine what suitable LUFS value the audio should be adjusted to (e.g -14).
Adjust it to that value.
It is not necessary to adjust a track to the broadcast value of -23. Should a track be picked up for broadcasting, the studio will adjust the track's level accordingly.
When using Soundcloud (which doesn't seem to optimise uploaded audios), if all tracks are adjusted to near the same LUFS value, the tracks will sound relatively uniform. Thus, as a listener plays through the tracks, they will not need to adjust the volume control excessively.
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