Mastering For Vinyl Lufs

Music pros music lovers and audiophiles hope that since music streaming has become a the major method of music distribution in the future mixing mastering engineers will use the new lufs true peak meters to shoot for a target average loudness level of around 14 to 16 or less allowing for better sounding less compromised mixes masters.

Mastering for vinyl lufs.

Mastering for vinyl is the process of creating a separate master that can be cut into a vinyl record without added unwanted distortion. All jokes aside mastering audio these days needs to touch the loudness standards. This is called loudness normalisation and. A little compression would make it easier for the vinyl cutter to optimize the levels for vinyl and besides being a little hotter than the typical streaming target of 14 lufs was fine.

The lufs scale sometimes called lkfs though they re exactly the same thing was introduced primarily to outline broadcast standards to keep the perceived volume of the different shows and adverts the same. Lufs is a measurement of loudness units designed in line with itu r bs 1770 recommendation about the loudness and true peak level of audio. It consists of a mono stereo image up to 150hz a tamed high end and if needed a track listing that is consistent with the frequency limitations of record cutting. And most commercial television broadcasts drop them down all the way to a whopping 23 or 24 lufs depending upon the country.

The numbers change very fast during playback. An integrated lufs of 9 isn t. Organize and setup your mastering chain for your techno house downtempo or hip hop productions. The best audio mastering chain plugins for your daw.

The concept of a loudness unit is identical to a decibel. This can be confusing since requirements differ from service to service so i wanted to create a simple table containing all presets that are included in the youlean loudness meter so you can easily find out what you need to do. Mastering to one of these target levels is up to you and arguably not necessary but bear in mind that the music you re working with will be adjusted to one of these levels or others at some point after you. Short term lufs measures the average loudness but only looks at a 3 second window so it will more closely follow the dynamics of a mix as it plays.

However the loudness units measurement system is weighted to the real perception of audio rather than just the electrical signal. Learn more about music mastering and the best mastering effect vst plugins. All presets are actually based on the itu r bs 1770 algorithm some with a slight. For the last stage of dynamics control i used ik multimedia s stealth limiter which is designed for mastering in the project page s post slot.

How to master a song track in logic ableton fl studio or reaper. Back before lufs commercials were heavily compressed so they d be a lot louder than the tv program even though the actual meter levels were the same. Momentary lufs is a very fast measurement that is somewhat explanatory in name in that it displays the loudness in real time as the song or material plays.