Adele recently shared an informal "laptop recording" of her song "To Be Loved" on her YouTube channel – and it's great. A raw, authentic "real life" recording with a beautiful performance.
Unfortunately, her voice was simply too powerful for the mic on her laptop and as a result the louder moments of the song are absolutely bathed in distortion, which I think is a real shame.
I shared this comment on Facebook, and despite many people agreeing with me, I also got several comments from people saying they didn't mind the distortion, they felt it was more real and authentic than a cleaned-up version.
I didn't coin this expression - I wish I had! I first heard it from veteran mastering engineer Bob Katz, and it's just as true today as it ever was.
There's far more to achieving a real perception of loudness than simply increasing the gain, and it can be easy to miss a trick if you do.
In this video I show you a great example of how these ideas work in practise, and why you might want to explore them yourself when mastering. Plus, how to use my Dynameter plugin to spot when you might be making this kind of mistake yourself.
If you find it interesting or useful, please share!
Adele's latest single "Easy On Me" doesn't use a click track or autotune, but it is still mastered pretty loud. At least on CD, that is.
On YouTube that doesn't seem to be the case, though - and the loudness is just the beginning of the story. This video shows several ways that the YouTube version sounds different to other streaming platforms, and suggests some reasons why that might be.
Does the long quiet introduction give this video a secret "loudness advantage" after normalization? Is the difference in sound just a trick of the ear, because of the sound effects? What about the numbers? Are the differences just caused by different codecs? And most importantly, how loud is it? Does the loudness suit the material, and is it necessary to convey the artistic intention?
Take a listen, and see what you think!
The Audio Engineering Society just released an updated set of guidelines for streaming loudness, code-named TD1008.
But they're not for you!
They're not for artists, or producers, or recording, mixing & mastering engineers. They're not even for music aggregators like CD Baby or Distrokid. They're exclusively for online radio stations and streaming services like YouTube, Spotify and TIDAL - the services that distribute the audio to our devices and computers.
So, why am I bothering to tell you about them ?!?
