Guitar Gear Forum

I've been noticing for years that mastered tracks keep getting louder and louder. I usually like to master my tracks at around -14dB average and peaks at around -10dB, but I've noticed some new albums with an -6dB average!!! what's the point in mastering so loud? People have volume controls in their stereos, they can turn it up to whatever loudness they want to...

I like loud but not crazy loud. It should sound better as you turn it up not worse.

Honestly I have no rhyme or reason as to how loud but what i can say, is currently people, and I mean the average listener think s louder is better. Like if they have to turn something up then it must suck.

I follow their commands at whatever volume they speak.

Usually, conversation volume.


BTW, My tracks are always quieter than everyone else's tracks on soundcloud.

I recently started messing around with a "Loudness Maximizer" type of plug in, that came with ProTools 10.
It's kind of like using a compressor/limiter to prevent clipping and, like a compressor/limiter, it has both positive and a negative affect.

I initially started the mix process by making it sound as uncompressed and as unmuddy as possible - I did not use the Loudness plugin.
I set the master volume with the meter peaking just below clipping and with the meter bouncing around a lot.
But, when I played it back on my car stereo, it lacked volume, even when I turned the stereo all the way up.

The Loudness Plugin gave the mix a visually tighter looking mix (on the meter) still bouncing around but, with much less meter range.
I must have added too much because, it created super ear fatigue, during playback on my car stereo.
My ear drums felt a continuous pressure that was really uncomfortable.
I haven't had a chance to re-mix yet... when I do, I want to remove the Loudness plugin and replace it with a regular compressor/limiter and an exciter.
I also need to read the Loudness plugin manual (RTFM) to see if there is a tweak to get less ear fatigue.

The Loudness plugin appears to be very useful but, not when it makes the mix painful to listen to.
I'm sure that I'm not using it correctly.

There's actually been an anti-volume war movement going on for years already. It's starting to get better by my experience.

Besides, anything that peaks louder than -0.5dB will distort cheap D/A converters. A lot of the stuff used to be mastered to -0.2dB.

nakedzen wrote:There's actually been an anti-volume war movement going on for years already. It's starting to get better by my experience.

Besides, anything that peaks louder than -0.5dB will distort cheap D/A converters. A lot of the stuff used to be mastered to -0.2dB.

Yes, I have been reading about the anti-volume complaints and I've noticed that some CDs and some songs on the radio produce ear fatigue.
When I used the Loudness plugin, I kept the meter peaking at 0dbB.
Without the plugin, I let it go higher (just below clipping) - this resulted in a better sound, no ear fatigue but, less volume on the car stereo.
I definitely need to read the plugin manual before I waste any more time on bad mixes.

nakedzen wrote:There's actually been an anti-volume war movement going on for years already. It's starting to get better by my experience.

Besides, anything that peaks louder than -0.5dB will distort cheap D/A converters. A lot of the stuff used to be mastered to -0.2dB.

When I mentioned -14 and -10 I was talking about overall volume of the track being in that range, but of course some frequencies will peak way past that. I do limit at -0.2dB. I can see me going down to -0.5dB, I think that would be fine, but honestly I haven't had an issue with 0.2dB.

I think the -10 or -14db average readings are called K- metering. As far as master bus reading. -0.2 or whatever is common. Altho besides clipping, it's rather useless info. Cause you can squeeze a mix to be -6 average and have it only hit -1.0 on the master bus.

Anyway, most of my masters will be around -10 to -12.

Even tho, I have good plugins for this job, I believe for my ancient system, this is the best performance I can coax out of it before I start noticing defects in the final master.

I'm happy with my mixes and master's for the most part. Most final mixes in similar bands are generally louder tho

GuitarBilly wrote:

nakedzen wrote:There's actually been an anti-volume war movement going on for years already. It's starting to get better by my experience.

Besides, anything that peaks louder than -0.5dB will distort cheap D/A converters. A lot of the stuff used to be mastered to -0.2dB.

When I mentioned -14 and -10 I was talking about overall volume of the track being in that range

I know. What I wrote about was to explain that one of the reasons loud masters sound bad is because some converters can't handle the peaks and the sound distorts. So sometimes it's not the master, it's the hardware.

The loudest bits of mine usually get to around -10dB rms. That includes 1dB headroom because converting to MP3 etc causes peaks to go up and clip.

iTunes, Spotify and YouTube etc normalise tracks using lufs average volume, so typically going louder than -11 lufs means your peaks just start going down so you'd have squashed them for nothing.

for rock, i've been pushing them louder for shipping around via mp3 than i ever did with tape. going to the mastering plant, i'll keep 'em with peaks at -12 so they can do what they need to with way nicer gear than i've got-- but if i'm mixing and 'mastering'.. which i seriously don't have the room or gear to do-- i'll push 'em up as loud as i can without it being apparent that they're getting smashed- at least for rock anyhow.

generally i won't seriously cream stuff with compression or 'louderizers' cause i hate destroying dynamic range- and MAYBE it'll get hit with 3-5 db of compression max just so it's in the relative range of other records i have lying around.