Originally Posted by TheMaartian
The 2 things that do matter:

The first thing that matters is finding a sweet spot between loudness and dynamics. Many Mastering Engineers will tell you they have commonly found this sweet spot at around -9 RMS (RMS is another loudness standard common in the industry). -9 RMS gives the music enough sonic energy to sound impactful but not squashed in terms of dynamics. These engineers aren’t worried about hitting an exact LUFS standard, they are simply looking at the relationship between loudness and dynamics.

These engineers also understand that at – 9 RMS, streaming services will be turning the final bounce down slightly. -9 RMS is equivalent to about -11 LUFS, so streaming services might turn it down to the Equivalent of 3-4 LUFS. And, the big secret is, it doesn’t matter. It’s not going to hurt your song to have them turn it down at this level. Many good Mastering Engineers even push their loudness levels way beyond -9 RMS and are ok that their music is turned down even more by the streaming services. Some people like a very compressed sound.

The second thing that matters is your true peak level. For many years mastering a song to an output ceiling of .01 DBFS was a fine standard. But as we have pushed the loudness levels higher in the digital age we have had to start worrying about what’s called, “Inter-sample Peaking”. These peaks are essentially rogue transients that break through the .0 DBFS ceiling and can cause problems with the algorithms used by streaming services. Best practice these days is to adjust the output ceiling on your limiter to -1.0 or even -2.0 DBFS. These ceiling thresholds will give any inter-sample peaks plenty of room to break through but not clip 0.0 DBFS.

This is the most thoughtful post so far, once again, it's a shame there is no PDF repository here to capture the best material in concise form. I know there is a Tips and Tricks forum but I don't have the time to wade thru a lot of unrelated stuff that is there.

I am aware of the engineering quantity RMS (Root Mean Square), have used it many times outside of audio and can see how that could be an important parameter in audio engineering.

And I should never had mentioned SoundCloud in passing, my curiosity doesn't involve streaming or broadcast services right now. Nobody has complained that my SoundCloud uploads were unacceptable. Rather, this thread is about track sharing with others.

So getting back on "track", I knew this would be an easy issue to solve. Upon a bit of system examination I found my interface setting was not at 50%. Making this change, the default "Streaming" setting now works fine and passes the "Windows Media Player Litmus Test".
Max Loudness: -14 LUFS +/- 0.0 dB
Max True Peak: -1 dB

An important variable that I don't believe has been mentioned thus far is the Main output level. This I'm leaning toward standardizing at 0 dB. In my previous workflow, this is what I would adjust to reach the goldilocks sweet spot for playback purposes. With Studio One's export loudness options I won't have to adjust this any more . . . or that's the hope.

One bottom line is that there are several loudness settings (software and hardware) and they all have an impact on monitor and headphone outputs.
Another bottom line, is kudos to Presonus they are always at least 2 steps ahead of me.

Edit: A 3rd bottom line is that software and hardware are continually evolving. If you want to be in the game, you better keep up with the changes smile A task that is not always easy.

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Last edited by Bass Thumper; 02/27/25 11:34 AM.
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