How loud are the songs you're up against?
Before you decide how loud and how dense to make your master, it helps to know where the music you're competing with sits. Not the loudness of the whole charts, but the three or four songs your listeners will hear next to yours. You can measure them yourself in a few minutes, straight from Spotify or YouTube, and use the numbers as your target.
- Measure a few songs in your genre with MasterScope Meter (free) while they play, or load a file of a released track on MasterScope's Compare tab.
- Look at density (PLR), not just loudness. On Spotify everything plays at about −14 LUFS, so what you'll hear is how full and dense each song is at that level.
- Use the result as your target. Send it to MasterScope to compare with your mix, or aim Liminal's Learn at its loudness or density.
What to measure, and what each number tells you
- Integrated loudness (LUFS): the average loudness of the whole song. It tells you how hard the master was pushed, and how much Spotify, YouTube and the others turn it down.
- True peak (dBTP): the highest point of the waveform. Measured from a stream it's often a little above the master's own peak, because lossy encoding adds a small overshoot.
- PLR (peak to loudness ratio): true peak minus integrated loudness. The best single number for density: low PLR means dense and loud, high PLR means punchy and open. See Density and PLR.
- Loudest moment: the highest short-term (3 second) loudness, usually the biggest chorus or drop. It shows how hard the loudest part is pushed.
- Loudness range (LU): how much the loudness moves between quiet and loud sections. A small number means the song stays at one level; a bigger number means it builds and drops.
How to measure songs from Spotify or YouTube
- Turn off normalisation. In the Spotify app's settings, switch off Normalise volume, otherwise you measure Spotify's turn-down instead of the master. The Spotify web player never normalises, so it's ready as it is. Loud songs: if MasterScope says a measurement hit 0 dBFS, the player cut its peaks off at full volume. Measure the song a second time with normalisation on: Spotify turns it down, so the true peak and density (PLR) read correctly. Take the loudness from the first measurement.
- Set the player's own volume to 100% (the slider in Spotify, or the YouTube player). Your computer's main volume doesn't matter.
- Measure the app, not the speakers. Many laptops process their sound on the way to the speakers: Waves MaxxAudio, Dolby, DTS, Realtek speaker tuning or "loudness equalisation" can cut the bass, compress the music and change every reading. MasterScope Meter listens to Spotify (or any app you choose) directly, before that processing. In the browser, play the song in a tab and share that tab.
- Measure the whole song. In MasterScope Meter, press Measure at the start and Stop at the end. A single chorus reads louder than the song's integrated loudness.
Using the numbers
Compare like with like: measure three or four songs that sound the way you want yours to sound, and look at the range. If they sit between PLR 8 and 10, a master at PLR 9 will sit comfortably among them on Spotify, whatever their exact LUFS. If yours comes out much more dynamic (say PLR 14), it will sound smaller next to them at the same loudness; if it's much denser (PLR 6), it may sound flat and tiring.
For the full picture, press Analyse in MasterScope in the Meter (or Export, and drop the file on MasterScope): you get the song's own report, the same as for a file, then Compare my track with it sets its loudness, density, stereo width and tone against your mix, with its tonal curve on the Tone tab. (On the Compare tab, Load reference takes an export too.) For just the headline numbers, press Save, then Compare. In Liminal, Tools → Measure a song does the same inside your DAW, with a button to use the result as Learn's target.