Has the views on it from the reviewers perspective changed, or is it still mega-loud that is dominating?
I’m doing a indie-rock track with so much work on the mix that I can actually brickwall it down to 4DR (dynamic range) and -4.5 LUFS with a decent transparency.
I mean obviously to the regular listeners louder is still better quality, but if the reviewers are more quality-minded now I wouldn’t want to risk the track getting rejected.
What’s your experience nowadays, does your smashed tracks go through the reviewers?
(I wish that AJ would implement LU level matching in the streaming so this war would end, and so that we can just focus on making quality audio)
Interesting thread - I am still astonished when I listen to new tracks at the levels used. When you examine the waveforms they are just rectangles. From the perspective of a buyer I guess loudness wins since the impact required for audio on a video is necessary. When I listen to the resulting audio I can hear the digital distortion and over compressing being used but if the track sells then what is the problem here. I myself will push to -10 DB, probably too conservative but that’s the kind of guy I am.
It heavily depends on the genre. With indie rock I usually aim between -9 to -7.5 dBFS RMS for the whole track. I laugh in the face of loudness war, I prefer clarity and dynamics.
The commercial power of this attitude? I don’t know. Maybe I’ll try compressing the daylight out of a track and we’ll see if it sells better than the others.
Will heavy master compression bother the reviewers? I don’t think so, you can find many approved tracks here beating your ears 'till they bleed.
Given that there’s at least one track in the Popular Files (and it’s been there a long time) that has AN INSANE amount of distortion in the intro (how on earth did it even pass review???), I guess buyers don’t really care or know that much about how stuff sounds - whether it be over-compressed or under-compressed. I think they just think about the song and composition as such.
Level matching would be a great and in line on what happens on YouTube, which I guess is where a lot of AJ music ends up. For example, as I understand things a track with a loudness reading of -4.5 LUFS would have its level knocked down by around 7.5 LUFS by the YouTube loudness management algorithm, which doesn’t really seem to be in a client’s interests. I do suspect though it could be a quite major technical operation for AJ to embark on and possibly without much obvious immediate commercial return from their point of view.
Agreed, as the music goes to YouTube anyway the loudness doesn’t count for anything else than getting those extra sales here on AJ, as that explosive huge sound is so impressive to the regular ears.
Alright thanks guys, I’ll try to find a middle-point. Aiming for -10LUFS and 10DR seems to be the sweetspot to my ears. We’ll see, at least good to know that the reviewers are still working in that same way.
If I’m creating a track for AJ, typically what I’ll do is master so that the perceived loudness is on-par with the top sellers. I often see my RMS’s between -8 and -4. I pull back only when it is affecting the quality and intent of the song in a noticeable way.
Now ElevateAudio, a interesting observation I just had was that your absolute best sellers is actually not that loud - it’s rather quite dynamic and more of on the balanced side. A lot quieter than the loud best sellers. This is absolutely a great thing, gets my hopes up! =)
Yes, this was something I noticed and have thought about as well! I do think, at the end of the day, that the right composition and emotion always wins. (Provided it’s loud ENOUGH. )
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