A common question when you start making music is funnily enough “How do you make something sound loud!?”
This is a bit paradoxical because you’d think you can just turn up the volume. But the problem is, it doesn’t work like that. Two songs uploaded on spotify for example can have the same volume setting on ur phone or speaker system and sound completely different volume wise. This is due to something called “LUFS” which stands for “Loudness Units Full Scale”.
Theres more factors to it but LUFS is the main one. When you record a song with different instruments, dont use any hard compression or limiting on the tracks, the song will usually land around – 16-18 LUFS. Spotify wants you to upload a file which is 14 LUFS -1 dBtp (Decibel True Peak)
Then theres the factor of Frequency information. Lets say you have two songs both at 14 LUFS. You’d think they’d sound the same volume wise, but in fact one sounds louder than the other. That’s due to the Frequency information being different. So if you use an EQ and put a High Shelf on some instruments and turn it up from 4000 Hz – 20 000 Hz four decibels, that one will sound louder than one who didnt do that.
So what is our Mastering Philosophy?
I do all of the sound editing and making the mix sound exactly as I want in the mixing process. Meaning, there has to be no Sound difference when the mix goes through the mastering process. The mastering process essentially is to put a Dither on when bouncing down to 16 bytes Wav File, just to avoid Quantization distortion. And use a limiter/Compressor to move up the last 2 or 3 dB to get the mix to 14 LUFS ready for release.
Ridley Music Production 