★ LUFS Normalization for All Audiojungle Tracks a.k.a. How To Stop Destroying Your Music?

Envato Authors AudioJungle
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I agree with everything… Thanks @AudioTrend for breathing life into this old but still highly important topic. I´m not totally aware of how this volume normalizers work, if you take 3 current tracks from AJ with different styles and limiter use will they really sound equally loud in perceived loudness when you run them through this system?

I have some tracks in another library that have just implemented loudness integration, the problem there is that my tracks are suddenly lowered in volume after a quite intro for example. So the intro is in normal track volume but when the track kicks in its lowered in volume, not very smooth in other words.

A question is if this would help if all preview files are lowered but not zip files with the non watermarked files? I guess it would at least help customer experience and customer loudness bias in the selection process itself, the only downside I can see is that when buyers get their zip file with LOUD tracks, they would be annoyed because they might already have been mixing the tracks with a more lower volume preview track.

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It may still start with a text table like I suggested above?

Another great advantage for the author, from the function " normalization":
The reviewer also does not need to rotate the volume knob.

Imagine that a reviewer can make a wrong decision if he listens to a loud, bright track, and then comes across a quiet, background. Everyone knows how it works after a loud track, a quiet quiet track seems " defective. it seems that the track is poorly mixed. You need to be quiet so that the hearing is restored and began to perceive “correctly”.

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@SergaVision
Thank you for joining mate!
Agree, in heavy genres of rock, this is less of a problem!
However, the most popular AJ music genres sound worse being overcompressed/clipped.
Certainly agree with your last sentence! :blush:

@blackcoffe
Thank you for being here!
You are right! And if you don’t destroy it, your track is perceived as a weaker one, even if it’s actually much better than louder ones.

@SergeBales Glad to see you here!
Sure! However, some issues may happen if we allow authors to normalize their tracks. Soft-rejects is what I mean. Wouldn’t it be better if normalization applied automatically right after a track is uploaded?

@PalAudioLoop
Thank you for joining the thread!
Glad you understand what it means and see the importance of such normalization :blush:

@MojoSoundtrackMusic
Glad you responded mate!
Probably their implementation is not correct.

You are saying that the intro sounds at a normal level but the next part sounds quieter than it was originally. It sounds to me like a compression. Which is definitely not a LUFS normalization. LUFS normalization process would measure the perceived loudness and simply turn down a level of the whole track. It should not approach different parts of the track individually.

“A question is if this would help if all preview files are lowered but not zip files with the non watermarked files?”
"when buyers get their zip file with LOUD tracks, they would be annoyed "

I totally understand what you are saying. It’s a great point.
And I believe that we need everything to be normalized. Either automatically, or by reviewers.
Wavs, mp3s, and previews. This way buyers will get exactly what they heard on Audiojungle :blush:

@EvgenM
Also a great point!

“Imagine that a reviewer can make a wrong decision if he listens to a loud, bright track, and then comes across a quiet, background.”

This definitely may happen! Although reviewers are less likely to be confused by loudness differences (due to their extended knowledge), this still can be a factor. So yeah, this is another great reason why LUFS normalization is an awesome thing! :sunny:

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But then older tracks in AJ would stay the same right? There would be quite be some differences between tracks already in library and new ones?

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When Youtube introduced normalization a couple of years ago, they began to implement it gradually on their back catalogue as well. You can right click on any video, go to stats for nerds, and see how much normalization is applied, if any.

If and when Envato implements normalization, they would have to do this on their back catalogue as well. There was concern in a previous thread about whether this can be done if the files are contained within a zip. I’m not a programmer but it does not seem that much of a big deal.

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Nice, thanks for your insights. I think that if a programmer could be involved to show practically how it can be done and it is presented in a clear and professional way and delivered to Envato the odds for them to follow up is bigger. Since this is done by youtube it must surely be doable for videohive items as well (using AJ tracks)

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There is a big difference between ‘normalising’ the tracks in the zip file (which I suspect would be impracticable and probably undesirable) and applying loudness normalisation to the preview files when they are played on AJ.

Although introducing loudness management to the AJ player would not immediately address the issue of ‘overcooked’ tracks, it would remove the incentive for authors to do this and over time behaviours would change.

This is pretty much what is happening as the result of the YouTube/Spotify loudness management systems - artists/producers/record companies are realising that they are not getting any advantage through making tracks louder (indeed often the opposite) and attitudes are changing.

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I agree 100% , this would at least gradually remove the need for many authors to actually destroy their tracks. There is a balance to everything, and I´m sure a lot of tracks are losing sales simply because they went to far.

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That’s clear. But when you download the client will still get the tracks with different volume. And if there was one standard. For example -10 lufs…

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I don’t think it would be realistic to ask for tracks all to be at a specific LUFS.

The optimum level can vary by genre and it would clog up the works if every other track was getting a soft reject for being at the wrong LUFS

From the customers’ point of view this is not the biggest issue ever. They will level match the track with whatever other audio elements they are using and if the project is posted on YouTube (or wherever) the overall loudness will end up the same as everything else after normalisation.

The advantage of loudness normalisation on AJ would the sound quality of the tracks will improve over time as authors would focus on good dynamics rather than just loudness.

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Hey, Paul! Thank you for joining!
What you are saying is definitely reasonable and I’m totally agree with you! :blush:

We will get amazing results by applying the normalization to watermarked mp3s only!
That would be a much easier thing for Envato to implement.

When all previews are normalized, Envato would need to make an article with mastering recommendations available from the upload page (it’s better to make it as visible as possible). So a person who read this article would clearly understand: boosting loudness to more than -13 - -14 LUFS will only make things worse without any benefits. Authors would realize this anyway but such article would make it happen sooner.

“The advantage of loudness normalisation on AJ would the sound quality of the tracks will improve over time as authors would focus on good dynamics rather than just loudness.”

The golden words :blush:

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@SergeBales
Thank you for joining the thread, mate!

Got what you mean.
But I think that Paul was made some good points on this :blush:

@FullScaleAudio
“Stats for nerds” is a cool feature, didn’t know about that earlier! Thanks for sharing!

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Question to everybody

  1. Youtube is normalizing the volume when it is too high. But it won’t turn the volume of a quiet track up.

  2. Some streaming services (as far as I know) will turn the volume up to match -13 or -14 LUFS.

Which option do you think we should stick with on Audiojungle?

I’m more into the option #2 :blush: But should we clip some peaks or just turn the volume up without exceeding 0db?

Or maybe we simply wouldn’t have the “too quiet tracks” problem?

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You can create a Normalizer program. after the final mastering - do normalization on your computer. AJ, defines: if the track is normalized. If Yes, the track is in the queue, if the normalization is not done, then a message is displayed where it is written that you need to do it and there is a link to download this program.

I suggest this option in case Envato doesn’t want to use The system on its hardware.

Or Vst which can be put on the master bus.

We will hear the result of the normalized track not on the store page, but on our computer and will be able to correct the moments that we do not like.

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You mean a limiter? We all do this already. Yes it would be great if everyone aimed for the same values but as long as someone thinks that they will gain an advantage by going louder, someone will, and the whole process will keep going.

It needs to be on envatos end (same as YouTube, Spotify, iTunes etc… Etc…) To have any meaningful long term effect in overall behavior.

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I really don’t think we would have the too quiet tracks problem here lol.

But either way I’d be more inclined to #1 I think.

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The limiter has parameters. I suggest Vst which will not have any parameters, it will make the necessary compression.

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This is an interesting idea!
The only thing that is not ideal here is that Envato will need to measure LUFS to define the volume. Which is a processing on their side. If they can do that, it worth nothing to simply turn down the level according to the measurements.

So we could modify your idea just a little bit to completely exclude the processing by Envato.

This minimalistic “AJ LUFS Normalizer” app may have a simple built-in FTP feature to it. So you open the app, login into your account, add your preview track, the app measures and normalizes it, then click “Upload”. And this is the only way to upload a preview mp3. Then you should go to the “Upload” page on Audiojungle and do the rest as usual.

This way you can’t skip the normalization process, or do it wrong.

The only issue is that some masters could modify the code of this app to change the target LUFS and be able to upload a louder mp3. Which would be a strange idea but still :smile:
I am not an expert in code so we need one to figure out how to make it impossible (or hard) to modify the app.
Maybe it would be better to make it web-based.

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I totally agree with you that it would be more reliable if normalization is done by Envato.

Although, it’s useful to discuss some alternative ideas :blush:

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As an option. you can do normalization online, but by means of the computer of the author.
Thus, interference in the program code is excluded…

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