Mastering for vinyl vs streaming, Part 4
There’s some important technical differences in audio mastering for digital vs. analog playback mediums. In Part 3 of this series, we compared high-frequency decisions in the digital vs. analog worlds of music production. Today, it’s all about how loudness works: one of the trickiest subjects when it comes to mastering music.
Defining loudness
Loudness describes how loud or soft a sound appears overall on average across an entire track. An easy way to think of loudness is where the volume knob is placed on your stereo or guitar amplifier: setting it to a 5 vs. a 10. Note: the position where your guitar amps volume knob is located does not change your ability to play at loud vs soft volumes musically, when performing on your instrument.
Musical dynamics describe the distance between the loudest and softest parts of a given performance. Musical dynamics in audio are the equivalent of contrast and saturation in photography.
Loudness and musical dynamics are not the same thing, but it’s easy to confuse the two. It takes a lot of practice to learn how to hear the differences between the overall loudness of a song, and a song’s musical dynamics, solely by ear.
The ideal when mastering music is to make the loudness of a song competitive for its style, but only to the point where the musical dynamics of the song aren’t being negatively affected by overcompression.
What you’ll find is that maximizing musical dynamic contrast during recording often has a greater impact on how loud a track appears to the listener, not simply maximizing the overall loudness of a track. But, it’s a balancing act that really depends upon musical style at hand, and doing what’s best for the individual song.
Keeping the human in the loop
Evaluating loudness requires human judgement, as every individual style of music treats loudness and dynamics a little bit differently. Go listen to a classical track vs. a Charli xcx song, and the classical track might sound a bit softer to you. That’s because the classical recording style often aims to preserve the most natural sounding dynamics, at the expense of overall loudness. Pop music often aims for the opposite, going for louder tracks but at the expense of natural dynamics (think louder, but also flatter sounding).
Loudness complications
Loudness is not linear: our human ears perceive different certain frequencies as being naturally softer or louder than others no matter the volume. A track with more low end will tend to sound louder than a track with less low end.
Complicating things further, every playback medium treats musical dynamics a little bit differently. Tape and vinyl mediums tend to naturally compress dynamics, while modern digital streaming has a very wide dynamic range.
Complicating things even further, every individual streaming platform normalizes music to a slightly different loudness specification.
This is why mastering engineers have jobs. Ensuring that your music sounds as consistent as possible across all desired playback mediums is our primary purpose, and it takes a lot of specialized training and gear to do this well. It isn't something most recording or mixing engineers can do as well as a specialist can.
Loudness and your music
When thinking about how loud or soft you’d like your own music, it’s important to consider musical style, but it’s just as important to consider audience perception. You know when those super loud YouTube ads come on, and they’re so obnoxiously loud that you skip right past them without even thinking about it? We don’t want that happening when your music comes across someone’s playlist.
Loudness and digital playback mediums
You may have heard of the term LUFS, or Loudness Units Full Scale. It’s a measurement we use in mastering music that attempts to show us a single number that’s closer to how humans actually perceive loudness in the real world. There’s actually not one right setting for LUFS, but here’s what I generally like to aim for during mastering:
-12 to -16 LUFS for rock music, depending on the track’s compression and the artist’s request.
-14 to -18 LUFS for acoustic or classical music, again depending on a track’s existing compression and artist request.
Loudness and the vinyl playback medium
When a vinyl record is cut, the louder the track the wider the groove becomes. That’s why a very loud record can’t fit as many minutes of music on each side.
It’s also why you should be careful placing your very loudest tracks at the end of a side, closest to the inner label of a disc. There’s less physical space in that area, because the diameter of the disc is smaller. A super loud track placed in the smallest physical area of the record means inner groove distortion: your tracks sound worse the closer they get to the center of the disc. That’s not what we want.
When it comes to loudness in a vinyl record, don’t worry as much about maximizing loudness during the vinyl pre-mastering process. Dedicated vinyl masters will often sound softer than their digital counterparts, and that’s OK. A high quality vinyl cutting engineer or processing plant will adjust the overall volume further upon receipt to ensure the best cut that is as loud as possible without negatively affecting quality, assuming they’ve been given masters that have been properly prepared for the vinyl manufacturing process.
I often recommend going with dedicated vinyl masters in addition to your digital masters in a modern production environment, but it does depend on the style of music and who’s done the recording and mixing. Ask your mastering engineer for their recommendations on your specific project.
I always prefer to submit vinyl-optimized masters as the digital submission, but it’s not always possible.
You can often use a vinyl master for the digital submission in:
Acoustic and classical styles of music.
Tracks that have been professionally recorded by a recording/mixing engineer with significant experience working across both analog and digital mediums.
For other styles (heavily compressed rock, rap, and DIY/home recorded work in particular), a vinyl-optimized master can sometimes sound a bit too soft or less impactful when submitted to a digital streamer, and in those cases I would recommend making dedicated masters for both vinyl and digital mediums.
