What is the Right Loudness for a Master?

The most frequent questions regarding masters seem to revolve around loudness. “How loud should my master be?” and “Is my master loud enough?” Unfortunately, many artists mistakenly turn to streaming platforms for guidance. This approach is flawed for many reasons, and it’s most important to understand why we aim for a specific loudness level for a particular song, album, podcast, or audiobook.

Let’s go ahead and give away the rules right at the top of this article, and hopefully, you’ll continue reading to discover how to produce great-sounding masters at optimal loudness levels. SPOILER ALERT! Everything we need to understand can be boiled down to two principles: First, craft a master—preceded by a production and mix— that resonates with the appropriate intensity and power for your song. Second, limit the peak loudness of your master to 1 full dB below clipping (-1.0 dBFS). That’s all there is to it.

But hold on, please keep reading to delve into the methods and reasoning behind the mastering techniques for creating outstanding masters.Meet the CompetitionYou likely have another artist in mind whom your audience would also enjoy hearing in a playlist alongside your music, and that music should be used as your reference. Your music possess a similar sense of presence, power, and energy (or perhaps as relaxed and open a vibe) as another song in the same genre played at the same volume level on your monitor system.

The goal of mastering is to fine-tune the energy within a mix so that it presents to the audience similarly to a good reference master. We also want to ensure tthat an album of songs flows seamlessly from one track to the next. That is, a gentle ballad should feel less intense when compared to a dense club banger or full-band party song.  Consider how your song fits within its broader musical context of an album or the rest of the musical world.

Loudness Defined

Loudness describes the energy, intensity, and power conveyed by a song. Traditionally, analog VU meters were utilized on consoles to gauge volume, but these meters were optimized to measure speech. We have come to understand that full music mixes are better assessed using newer type of meter— the LUFS meter. LUFS meters “listen” to music similarly to how our brain senses music, so the loudness displayed better represents how intense a song feels.

LUFS meters operate on a digital scale, where LUFS stand for Loudness Units below Full Scale or dB below digital clipping. The LUFS number indicated by streaming services represents the average loudness across the entire duration of a song. Many songs have a quiet intro that builds through the verse into a loud chorus and so on, so it’s useful to know the average of an entire song. It turns out that most pop songs don’t vary too much in loudness from section to section, maybe only a few dB, while classical music may vary by as much as 20 dB from section to section.

When comparing your master to a reference song, it’s useful to compare the loudness of smaller sections of a song, particularly the loudest section, like one of the last choruses. Ginger Audio’s GroundControl Room and Sphere monitor controllers provide a built-in LUFS meter (see Fig. 1), so you can compare the loudness of different sources. It’s important to acquaint yourself with three key measurements it provides: the integrated loudness level, the short-term loudness level, and the true peak level.

The integrated average (displayed in yellow numbers) reflects the loudness of a piece of music while it plays, encompassing the entire duration from start to finish. The short term reading indicates the loudness measured over the preceding three seconds, while the true peak measurement signifies the maximum level the signal will reach outside of a DAW, where any level exceeding 0 dB will result in clipping. True peak meters differ from meters that only display the sample peak. Always be sure to use true peak meters for mastering.

Ginger Audio GroundControl Room’s built-in LUFS meter

What Will Streaming Platforms Do to My Music?

Streaming platforms, unlike FM radio stations, do not compress, limit, EQ, or otherwise process your audio file. Streaming services normalize, or adjust the playback volumeof all songs on their platform to conform to a specific loudness level, typically around -14 LUFS. This consistent playback level helps eliminate the need for listeners to adjust their volume controls between songs. However, it’s important to note that this normalization target of -14 LUFS doesn’t imply that songs should be mastered to that exact level.

This does mean that a song mastered to an integrated level of -12 LUFS will be turned down by 2 dB during playback. All songs are treated the same way on a given platform, so if your master feels as loud as another song at -12 LUFS or -10 LUFS, the two songs will sound equally loud on any streaming platform. So, you’ll notice that even though there is a “penalty” for music mastered louder than -14 LUFS, the upside is that nearly every top 40 song has been mastered louder than -14 LUFS, so every song on the platform can simply be lowered in volume to play at a matching level.

You might wonder why most songs are mastered louder than -14 LUFS. The answer lies in modern music production techniques, which relies on a bit of compression and limiting to glue a mix together and ensure that all the elements in a mix can be heard and felt, even at a low volume level. This compression and limiting all but ensures that modern masters will measure louder than -14 LUFS.

Genres like jazz and classical, and even some dynamic pop music, may exhibit greater dynamic range than Top 40 songs, but they will be on playlists with similar genres. Very few listeners will include an EDM song and a violin sonata on the same playlist. Stick around to the end of this article to see the LUFS readings of some popular songs.

So What Loudness Should I Target?

Keep in mind that LUFS meters were not created to dictate the loudness at which you should master songs. They were designed as tools to measure the loudness of songs. We don’t mix or master to meter readings; we mix and master with our ears and only then use meters to verify what we think we are hearing. Loudness is not a number—it’s a feeling! The loudness of your song is the amount of energy or intensity that you feel.

Proper loudness comes from a combination of well-produced song that is refined with a good mix and effectiv mastering. Loudness develops while creating the musical feeling your song requires. Ignore LUFS numbers while producing and mixing and instead, focus on creating a song that sounds and feels like the ones you aspire to compete with.

Ensure You Mix the Right Intensity

A song, mix, or master that sounds competitive with another song in the same genre on your monitors will maintain that competitive edge on any streaming or distribution platform, no matter regardless of their playback levels. Different platforms may apply different loudness standards, but your song will still compete with others. Create one “best” version of a for global distribution. We have no control over what happens to the song after that! During the mixing and mastering process, you should be using level-matched references for comparing your production to a commercial master.

For mastering, a reference song should be a lossless file, if possible. You can download lossless masters from sites like Qobuz, ProStudioMasters, and HDTracks, or you can stream lossless files from many platforms with their higher membership tier. Avoid using references with unknown or lossy audio quality because there you can’t trust its quality loudness level.

If you have downloaded a high quality reference, you can import it into your DAW. If you would like to use a streaming service as a source for a reference, simply route the DAW and refernce source into your Room or Sphere monitor controller and use its built-in LUFS meter. Remember that you might need disable the loudness normalization or Sound Check preference in your music player app to allow each song to play at its original loudness.  My general rule during a mix session is to lower the volume of a reference song by 8 or 9 dB and use that as a mix reference, so that an un-mastered mix is fairly compared to a mastered reference.

Then, during mastering, I ensure that the reference song is restored to its original volume to make a fair comparison with my master. Numerous commercial plugins, such as Metric AB (ADPTR Audio/Plugin Alliance), REFERENCE (Mastering the Mix), ListenHub (Sonnox), or MCompare (MeldaProduction), are available to assist in comparing your mix or master to other masters.

ADPTR MetricAB (Plugin-Alliance) simplifies comparing your current mix or master to reference songs.

The Best-Sounding Streaming Master

The final print or bounce of a master should be a 24-bit or even a 32-bit float .wav file at the sample rate of your choice. I recommend sticking to one sample rate throughout the entire process to avoid any artifacts resulting from sample rate conversion. Upload the 24- or 32-bit HD file to your preferred online distributor. Whenever possible, do not upload a .mp3 file, as that file might be further degraded by future conversions. The distributor will send out the highest quality file to all the streaming platforms, which will then generate various versions of your song to suit their listeners’ streaming systems, connections, and account tiers.

The other consideration, as mentioned earlier in this article, is the True Peak level of your master. Leaving a bit of headroom in your master can help minimize distortion when your HD master is encoded into a lossy file format (.mp3 or .AAC). Apple recommends maintaining 1 dB of true peak headroom on all masters destined for streaming services.

Don’t worry, your listeners will never notice this 1 dB of headroom, but they will appreciate a higher-quality  streaming version of the master! If you master for clients who object to this practice, you are allowed to push the peak level as loud as you like, but be warned that it may result in a more distorted-sounding streaming file.

The simplest way to ensure 1dB of peak headroom s by utilizing a maximizer or mastering limiter in which you can adjust your output ceiling to -1dB. While CD masters and .wav files intended for DJ use can have their true peak level pushed all the way up to digital 0, there’s still a risk of unnecessary distortion in certain playback systems.. Check out your favorite mastering limiter or maximizer to see if it has an option to turn on true peak limiting and set the ceiling to -1.0 dB.

Logic Pro’s Adaptive Limiter show with True Peak Detection turned on and the ceiling set to -1.0 dB

The appropriate loudness for any given production varies. Pushing the loudness of master is somewhat like seasoning food with salt—too much can be overwhelming, but the right amount enhances the flavors. Find the loudness level that allows a mix to shine. Keep in mind also that streaming services will preserve the level differences in songs when listening to an album, maintaining the artistic integrity of the album’s dynamics. And remember to leave 1 dB of headroom on your 24-bit master to improve the quality of the inevitable lossy versions of your master.

Here are the LUFS measurements of the masters of some well-known songs. These measurements were taken from www.prostudiomasters.com, one of only a few sites where you can buy and download high-resolution music.

Artist Song Integrated LUFS

• Dua Lipa - Future Nostalgia (-8.0)
• Billie Eilish -What Was I Made For (-14.3)
• Green Day - American Idiot (-10.1)
• Migos - Avalanche (-11.4)
• Justin Bieber - Sorry (-7.1)
• Post Malone - Motley Crue (-7.5)
• Imagine Dragons - Eyes Closed (-9.1)
• Charlie XCX - Good Ones (-7.1)
• Frank Sinatra - Young At Heart (-14.3)
• Sting - Be Still My Beating Heart (-13.7)
• David Guetta - I Don’t Wanna Wait (-6.9)
• The Black Keys - This Is Nowhere (-5.4)
• Ed Sheeran - Bad Habits (-6.8)
• Steely Dan - Aja (-19.4)