The Grammy-winning mastering strategy you haven't tried yet
Check below for David Harper's interesting comment on this track.
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Thursday April 20, 2023
David Mellor
David Mellor is CEO and Course Director of Audio Masterclass. David has designed courses in audio education and training since 1986 and is the publisher and principal writer of Adventures In Audio.
@AudioMasterclass replies to @DWHarper62: Good point. Thank you for your input. DM
@DolphinWave replies to @DWHarper62: Volume down normalization does not squash the dynamics - it just brings the volume down, by 5bB in this case. So, both the LUFS and the True Peak are down by the same amount. But the dynamics are the same as they were prior to the volume down normalization.
If you were to buy the "high quality", you still would be listening to the same squashed dynamics, just 5dB louder (-9 LUFS instead of -14, and 0 TP instead of -5). But for that I can use my volume knob, too.
The point is that instead of squashed dynamics at -9 LUFS that were turned down by Spotify to -14, they could have mastered it to -14, to begin with, and got the same loudness but with 5dB more of dynamics.
And if you wanted to listen to it louder, at -9 LUFS, you simply could have turned your volume up by 5dB, and you would have got those -9, but still with *more dynamics*.
@ralphmckenzie8802: They sound like an indie/punk band from the 1970's. Garbage in garbage out no matter how good the mastering. Definitely not grammy winning in my humble opinion.
@AudioMasterclass replies to @ralphmckenzie8802: There are 91 Grammy categories. Surely they can win something. DM
@emiel333: What I think? Well, I like and enjoy your videos. Outstanding.
@cougar1861: Any guess as to the dynamic range of the live performance in the studio during recording?
@walthaus: I don't know whether the TP level and "wasted" dynamic range was a result of intentional aesthetic mixing and mastering decisions or not, I think it's worth mentioning that the original master could have had a different TP level since the recommended headroom for true peaks is intended to accommodate changes in inter-sample peaks ( True Peaks) that result from utilizing audio codecs. I'm not sure that Codecs always raise the inter-sample peak-level, maybe in this case they lowered it. Maybe a Nugen plug-in was employed that gives the mastering engineer emulations of all the Codecs used on various streaming platforms and some resulted in true peaks higher than the Spotify codec of choice. Just my 2 cents.
@calleenmusicchannel: Overdubbing the voiceover? My face on every thumbnail? Yes. Fame awaits.
@adammachin: I think, in this comment is, that you have a great sense of humour.
@KingMrColin: Do you think this could be less to do with the mastering engineer and more a case of the mix engineer pushing the tracks hard(ish) into analog gear to get a sound that they like without too much care for what their meters say? I listened to an interviews with Andrew Scheps where he describes working like this and he would get some push back from mastering engineers who considered his premasters to lack dynamic range, but he thought they sounded great. My opinion is that aiming for a certain dynamic range is like the tail wagging the dog: getting the music sounding good has to be the priority.
@AudioMasterclass replies to @KingMrColin: Call me old-fashioned but my view is that the original producer should make a multitrack that hardly needs any mixing other than faders and pans. Then whatever the mix engineer does should be so perfect it doesn't need mastering other than setting the preferred LUFS. Oh yes, and the musicians should sound so great at source that the engineer just has to capture their sound as it is. But then the track would sound old-fashioned and no-one would listen. DM
@DWHarper62 replies to @KingMrColin: @@AudioMasterclass I'm trying to do that now with my projects... But I'm sure that if the recordings get "picked up" by some label, the mastering engineer will still crush it...
@TheMicrophoneChannel replies to @KingMrColin: There's a good number of well known mixing engineers that essentially send their mixes to mastering at an already mastered level. They will use a mastering limiter in (most likely) Pro Tools on their master fader. Mastering engineers, most of the time, will take it and make it louder. Mixers will sometimes send the mastering engineer mix-passes with and without the limiter and some mastering engineers actually prefer to use the already limited mix to work off of (within reason), as they understand that the loud version is what was approved, and the limiting used has now become part of the approved sound.
@SocialGore: People still want Grammys? lol
@EgoShredder replies to @SocialGore: Where there are musical whores the doors of opportunity will open wide.
@sacriste replies to @SocialGore: just Beyonce
@johnhawkinshawkins1284: I still don't get it.....
@vdochev replies to @johnhawkinshawkins1284: I think the point is that the song would have had better mastering with more dynamic range, but they compressed it to compete in "the loudness war". It is not incredibly loud, but it's still compressed.
@fabrizio2738: thanks