- The level you choose to master at influences every other aspect of the way your music sounds
- The final level of your master is virtually irrelevant, and music fans don’t care
These two facts are both true - even though they seem to flatly contradict each other !
I call this the ‘Loudness Paradox’, but what does it mean ? How can both of these statements be true, and what are we supposed to do with that information ?
The second idea is quicker and easier to explain, and I’ve talked about it many times. Whether your song hits -8 LUFS, -10 LUFS or only -14 LUFS has almost no impact on the way the majority of people hear it. More specifically:
- Online, over 80% of people will hear their music “normalised”, meaning that anything louder than -14 LUFS will be dropped down in level, so all three examples above will be heard at the same distribution loudness
- Even when normalisation is off, research shows it doesn’t actually affect people’s opinion of the way the music sounds - certainly not in the way we imagine. They genuinely don’t care (apart from being irritated by having to change the playback volume)
- On physical formats like CD and vinyl, people simply adjust the volume as soon as the music starts playing. They’re used to doing this, so the biggest impact of a louder (or more dynamic) master is just an initial “huh !” before setting the volume. After this, people don’t notice the level of the master
All that seems fairly comprehensive, so why did I say the level is 'virtually' irrelevant ? I’m just being accurate. There are still a few situations where the LUFS does have an impact:
- If your music is intended to sound loud and is mastered lower than -14 LUFS, several streaming platforms won't increase the level so it likely won’t sound as loud as the loudest material, even with online normalisation enabled.
(Music fans still probably don’t care, though !) - Many DJs prefer consistent loudness in the songs they play, to make mixing easier without losing energy and flow, and to keep levels high if they don’t have control of the PA volume.
(Even in this genre though, I see plenty of variety in loudness - lots of stuff is mastered up at as high as -6 LUFS or more, but there are also plenty of mainstream club releases at -8 and even down to -10 or lower. DJs seem to cope with these differences though, so I have to wonder if it’s really as big a problem as people say…?) - I’m told that record labels, A&R reps and PR people often assume that high LUFS are required, necessary and/or desirable – and will react dismissively to quieter masters. I have no idea how widespread this is, but it’s a common concern and understandable that people might want to avoid the possibility.
So OK, the final LUFS is often irrelevant, with those few specific exceptions that may or may not concern you.
But I also said that the level you master at influences everything else about the way the music sounds ! How can that be true, if the final level is irrelevant ?
The answer is that loudness is at the core of everything.
- When you write a song, you decide if you want it to be quite and gentle, or exciting and loud
- Probably the most fundamental performance decision you can make is how loud the music should be at each moment
- The most important mixing decision is how loud each part of the arrangement should be in comparison to the others
- Adjusting EQ is simply a process of choosing how loud each sound should be at a particular frequency
- Dynamics processing is all about managing loudness
So everything about your music and it’s emotional impact is affected by loudness !
And then you get to the mastering stage, where the overall loudness changes our perception of the music - louder audio sounds brighter and bassier, so the loudness you choose to master at determines what the best EQ balance will be, how much compression is needed, how clean or distorted it sounds… everything.
So what’s the answer to the paradox ?
Both the statements are true, but they apply to different stages of the music production process.
Loudness affects everything that happens in the music production process, up to the point of release.
But after release, the actual level stops mattering.
Does that mean that all the decisions, changes and judgements along the way stop mattering too, then ?
No.
Because they’re part of the audio, now, embedded in the sound. They're the things that made it sound the way it does.
If you decided to master loud, chances are it’ll have less dynamics, less low end and might be more saturated or distorted - which could be exciting or perhaps fatiguing. The same song mastered at a lower level might sound underwhelming if it were mastered too low and would have benefited from more density and intensity - or it might have more space, depth and variety that really brings out the very best in the material.
And that’s the real value of mastering - not just to make things loud, but to choose the perfect balance of dynamics and loudness, based on the level you’ve chosen to master at.
It’s not how loud you make it, it’s how you make it loud
