Sound Check is a very convenient feature in iTunes that normalizes the playback volume across all songs, so you will not have a song that was brickwall mastered blasting out 5 times louder than a song that was mastered with more dynamics intact. This is extremely useful if you have created playlists that include songs from different eras and genres that have widely varying volumes, or if you are just playing your library in shuffle mode.
Until now, a problem with Sound Check occurred if you were listening to a complete album in album mode. Artists/producers often purposely mix some songs on an album at lower volumes to create an emotional effect through dynamics, or volume differences (that's why dynamics are referred to as "expression" in music, the dynamics express emotion). And if the album includes both electric and acoustic songs, the acoustic songs should be perceptually lower in volume or they will diminish the electric tracks. But with Sound Check turned on, it adjusted the level of the all the songs to a common volume, destroying the effect the artist/producer intended.
The good news is in an iTunes update sometime around the end of July, Apple made an unannounced change to Sound Check. Now, if you are playing iTunes in album mode with Sound Check, the original volume differences between tracks on the album will remain intact, with the overall volume of the album being brought down so the loudest song is at the AES recommended volume for streaming.
It's not perfect yet; it doesn't seem to read the volume of the loudest song properly, so if you switch from song or playlist mode - where Sound Check is adjusting the volume of each song - to album mode, the album mode is louder than song/playlist mode. Not up to full volume as without Sound Check, but just enough to be a little annoying and require a volume adjustment. But that's a very minor detail that should be ironed out soon, the point is the dynamic flow of the album is preserved without having to go into preferences and turning Sound Check off.
If you're not familiar with Sound Check, open iTunes, go to the top left "iTunes" pulldown menu and select "Preferences". At the top of the preferences window select the "Playback" tab. You'll see a checkbox to turn Sound Check on. Also, be sure "Sound Enhancer" is turned off. And, if you want to hear the album exactly as intended, turn "Crossfade Songs" off as well.
Tuesday, August 29, 2017
Thursday, May 25, 2017
SPOTIFY FINALLY LOWERS ITS VOLUME! THE LOUDNESS WARS ARE PRACTICALLY FINISHED!
Sometime around May 20th, Spotify finally lowered its volume normalization to approximately -14LUfs, -3dB lower than their previous level and generally matching the levels of TIDAL and YouTube. This is big news. Spotify was the last holdout, extending the loudness wars by being 3dB louder than other streaming services, pressuring musicians, labels and mastering engineers to make needlessly hot masters to compete loudness-wise, even if it didn't suit the style of music. With this move Spotify, TIDAL and YouTube now use playback reference levels within a dB of each other, with Pandora, ReplayGain and Apple Sound Check being -2dB lower at -16LUfs, exactly conforming to the recommendations of the Audio Engineering Society for streaming loudness.
This means there is no longer any pressure to make hotter masters to compete volume-wise on Spotify, or any other streaming service; you can now have your mastering engineer create masters at an average integrated loudness of -14LUfs and it will work perfectly across all streaming services. (YouTube is actually +1dB hotter at -13LUfs, so if max loudness on YouTube is important to you, you might push everything to -13LUfs, knowing that Spotify, Tidal and others will turn it down a dB. But if your music is fairly dynamic that extra dB really won't make a difference, and 1dB less limiting will certainly make a difference!)
Even though the -14LUfs level is still 2dB hotter than the AES recommendation, this is a HUGE step forward, allowing an extra 3dB of peak-to-average headroom compared to Spotify's previous level, and a whopping 6dB improvement over the most ridiculously loud CD's.
The Good News and the Bad News
The good news is that with the death of CD and now with the willingness of streaming services and media players to comply, at least within a couple dB, with the loudness guidelines set by the AES, there is now no need to push volumes on your production in order to be competitive with other music. The result will be much more open, punchy, expressive music, and music more pleasant to listen to without all of the distortion and artifacts caused by hyper-limiting. These new levels are essentially the same as when music was mastered for vinyl, and that's one of the reasons people love the sound of vinyl from the 50's through the early 90's. It's partly the analog sound of the record and the cartridge, but a huge part of it is that the clarity, emotion and punch of the music was not destroyed by being over mastered.
The bad news is, all of the music that has been ruined since the first stupid-loud CD came out in 1995, and everyone else jumped off the cliff right behind it to be competitive in the loudness wars, will still sound just as awful compared to newer, more dynamic productions. All that will happen to it is it will be turned down to the normalized loudness of the steaming service or media player, so it will no longer be louder than other songs, but all the damage done to that music to make it loud will still be there.
For over 22 years, the answer to "Why does that music pop when it comes up on the CD changer?" has been "Because it's louder than the others". Now the answer to the new question of "Why does that music pop on Spotify/TIDAL/iTunes?" is "Because it's more dynamic than the others". This is a great day!
There is one group that will be big losers in this, and that is the plethora of people claiming to be "mastering engineers", along with mix engineers who tell you they can also master, but who know nothing of mastering other than to make it loud. The art of mastering, the actual sweetening process, will once again be what mastering is all about. Does the person mastering your music even know what Integrated, Max Momentary and Max Short Term loudness is? Does he have the meters to measure this? Does he understand the important interaction of those? Does he know what True Peak means, and does he even have a True Peak limiter? Does he know how to master at proper True Peak levels so data-compressed formats don't distort? Does he understand crest factors so that your music does not needlessly get turned down on streaming services even though your integrated loudness is correct? At DES Mastering we have been on top of this since around 2011 when the new loudness measuring methods were being developed, and attended the original AES seminars and workshops that helped established the new standards for broadcast and streaming loudness. And we have the tools and the knowledge to create masters for you that will take full advantage of this breakthrough in sound quality!
This means there is no longer any pressure to make hotter masters to compete volume-wise on Spotify, or any other streaming service; you can now have your mastering engineer create masters at an average integrated loudness of -14LUfs and it will work perfectly across all streaming services. (YouTube is actually +1dB hotter at -13LUfs, so if max loudness on YouTube is important to you, you might push everything to -13LUfs, knowing that Spotify, Tidal and others will turn it down a dB. But if your music is fairly dynamic that extra dB really won't make a difference, and 1dB less limiting will certainly make a difference!)
Even though the -14LUfs level is still 2dB hotter than the AES recommendation, this is a HUGE step forward, allowing an extra 3dB of peak-to-average headroom compared to Spotify's previous level, and a whopping 6dB improvement over the most ridiculously loud CD's.
The Good News and the Bad News
The good news is that with the death of CD and now with the willingness of streaming services and media players to comply, at least within a couple dB, with the loudness guidelines set by the AES, there is now no need to push volumes on your production in order to be competitive with other music. The result will be much more open, punchy, expressive music, and music more pleasant to listen to without all of the distortion and artifacts caused by hyper-limiting. These new levels are essentially the same as when music was mastered for vinyl, and that's one of the reasons people love the sound of vinyl from the 50's through the early 90's. It's partly the analog sound of the record and the cartridge, but a huge part of it is that the clarity, emotion and punch of the music was not destroyed by being over mastered.
The bad news is, all of the music that has been ruined since the first stupid-loud CD came out in 1995, and everyone else jumped off the cliff right behind it to be competitive in the loudness wars, will still sound just as awful compared to newer, more dynamic productions. All that will happen to it is it will be turned down to the normalized loudness of the steaming service or media player, so it will no longer be louder than other songs, but all the damage done to that music to make it loud will still be there.
For over 22 years, the answer to "Why does that music pop when it comes up on the CD changer?" has been "Because it's louder than the others". Now the answer to the new question of "Why does that music pop on Spotify/TIDAL/iTunes?" is "Because it's more dynamic than the others". This is a great day!
There is one group that will be big losers in this, and that is the plethora of people claiming to be "mastering engineers", along with mix engineers who tell you they can also master, but who know nothing of mastering other than to make it loud. The art of mastering, the actual sweetening process, will once again be what mastering is all about. Does the person mastering your music even know what Integrated, Max Momentary and Max Short Term loudness is? Does he have the meters to measure this? Does he understand the important interaction of those? Does he know what True Peak means, and does he even have a True Peak limiter? Does he know how to master at proper True Peak levels so data-compressed formats don't distort? Does he understand crest factors so that your music does not needlessly get turned down on streaming services even though your integrated loudness is correct? At DES Mastering we have been on top of this since around 2011 when the new loudness measuring methods were being developed, and attended the original AES seminars and workshops that helped established the new standards for broadcast and streaming loudness. And we have the tools and the knowledge to create masters for you that will take full advantage of this breakthrough in sound quality!
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