How loud should my master be in 2021? (Understanding loudness in pro mastering)
In this day and age it can be hard to put a finger on exactly how loud your final master should be. Many apps and sites are implementing normalization for a better listening experience for their customer and simply chopping off the master volume they deem too much.
For example lets look at ACDC “Back In Black”
(brought to my attention through mastering the mix blog)
So keeping this in mind where do we aim for loudness to stay competitive and have a great final sounding master tack ?
I think the answer is actually easier than you might think. Instead of aiming all your final tracks to a certain LUFS point I think it's time to take a more musical approach instead of engineering approach. It is important to be mindful of the dynamic interpretation of the artist’s vision. You dont want to flat line the dynamic range of your master, but also do want to force a listener to turn the volume up and down on their device causing them to blow their ears out.
Start by pulling in your reference track and examining a couple of different things.
First let's take a look at the LUFS range for the entire track.
Second critically listen to what is the idea and feeling that the artist is trying to convey through the song? Of course you are going to bring quiet parts up and limit louder sections but not at the risk of failing that artistic vision.
Once you have these two pieces of information you can make better choices as to where to end on the final loudness of your track. These will be the similar songs in the artists genre and therefore the best place to get an idea on how to make it competitive in their market.
Some tracks that you master will have a reference of -9 LUFS, -14 LUFS, -22 LUFS, but be more focused on making it fit sonically in the genre and market of the artist using great reference tracks and studying them. You will always end up with happy clients and great sounding masters at the end of the day.
I guess to sum up my thoughts on the topic I would say never go into a mastering session thinking you are going to do the exact same thing you did to 3 songs before and end up with a loud competitive track. Mastering is a vast and evolving landscape of different elements to complete a song. Each song will have its own problems and solutions and the job of the mastering engineer is to know when and where to apply changes. Use your ears and a great reference track and start tweaking around, you’ll find that you dont always have to hit the same LUFS everytime.