+anothercrappypianist stupid, isn't it?

The Equal Loudness Contour. Also, we are hearing a larger dynamics range when the music is turned up on playback.

+JMK Instrumentals | Hit Instrumentals for Artists! Basically there is no compression at all with the other sounds if you mute the kick and bass, not even when compressing everything 2 DB in the master. Should I maybe cut off some bass? EDIT: I tried compressing it 2DBs and it did no difference to the sound.. some small compression to the peaks of the kicks, but other then that it sounds really good.. having most of the transient intact and try to compete with the sound songs have after "set the same volume for all tracks" should be the best way to compete today right? I mean you will have an as loud song, but with more transients and most probably more bass. Because these sound engines really don't react to the bass so much it seems to be more the highs in the songs it chooses the volume from.

When you say balanced EQ what do you mean by this, is it the same as an balanced mix? I mean some mixes, are bassy, some are not, which means the EQ balance would be different if I understand the word correct.

+Ian Shepherd Adding a highshelf EQ around 2-3khz with some dbs boost in the mastering, actually rises the percieved loudness alot without hurting the dynamics, but in my experience it can easily get too bright doing that. Do you have an example of a new song that has a really really good EQ balance? That I can use as a reference when mastering the track. My track was DR7 with DR Checker now. Actually the volume is loud enough to compete with everything on youtube with this, without changing the EQ balance or compressing/limit it further. But to compete in spotify I needed to limit it with 2db extra or changing the EQ balance. Soundwise I really already love how it sounds, but getting it louder on spotify etc. I feel the solution would still be better to go back in the mix and maybe turn down the bass with an eq a db or 2 or lowcut it a little and compress the song further in the master. It feels like if I turn up the highs in the master it gets too bright, the highs already feels perfect, especially when comparing to other similiar tracks in the same genre, the funny part is I have done about almost no EQ in the mix or master, guess choosing the right samples with the right levels was the case with this mix. DR7 or DR8 is something I wanna aim at here atleast and still be competive in terms of loudness with loudness normalisation on of course. This is a very bassy hip hop record I'm working on btw. That's why I want to preserve so much bass in the mix, it feels right basically.

+Ian Shepherd I tried uploading it on youtube, and recorded the audio with audacity to see how youtube changed the volume, it actually only cut 0.129 DB which is insanely awesome. Especially if you take into account how much bass is in the mix. It's like these loudness normalisation functions doesn't really react to the amount of the bass in the songs when it comes to the loudness, it seems it reacts more to the highs when choosing the right volume. Which is very good as many people doesn't have big woofer systems. I also tried uploading a version with highshelf EQ around 2khz with some db boost and it sounded a little louder with almost no change as it was before, but extremely loud compared to other songs at youtube, and lots lots of bass, which is amazing to be honest. But as I said before, the results would probably even sounded better and more natural if I turnt down the bass 1-2db and compressed/limited the whole track by 1-2 db (boosting the highs/changing the EQ balance sounded too bright in my opinion), this would mean just louder highs but still no hearable compression as everything is around -15rms which is pretty damn dynamic, I would say about all dynamics is intact doing this, as most instruments doesn't have this dynamic range. sure the snare would have been maybe topped off 1 db or 2. But it would be almost impossible to hear that little difference in sound. The song is also arranged so the kicks goes: 1BAR 8pattern Kick Kick x x x x x x That means most of the time the limiting is just only making eveything louder without actually affecting the dynamics. I just wanna say thank you Ian for introducing me to this dynamic science, my music sounds amazing in my opinion now, and even better against the competition out there (when the loudness normalisation is on of course) but holy fuck does it sounds better with dynamics..

+Ian Shepherd okay good to know. Cause yeah it's quite funny that the track is dr7 now due to the loud bass but almost no volume change in ytube. I hope it will stay like this because this will mean you can actually sound much much better than the competition on these sources.

In short using a mastering process as a concept of convolution reverb where you are just trying to capture an atmosphere

+Ian Shepherd thanks!

also iTunes got normalisation switched off by default

+Szymon Krasuski i actually also hardly notice that youtube is using the ebu r128 standard, audio levels are still all over the place

I wouldn't say there is a published 'correct' way, but I master to -1.0dBFS True Peak and -13 LUFS integrated. This gives you a peak to loudness ratio of 12 which is suitable for all streaming.

It will work but it won't happen the first time. Compression should do the trick but perhaps you need more practice. It takes time and it's always relative to the input. But before compression, it's usually better to dig into the audio itself and do it manually if you can.