Saintpid Mastering

Saintpid is in full swing after a well-deserved vacation!

Recently I’ve discussed True Peak limiting in some different contexts, with an interested client, a friend and an upset discussion on Facebook with mastering people who defend their right to have +3dBTP peaks on material “because it sounds better “… Well … I’ll let them continue to commit misconduct, just leave me out of it so that I can do my job.
As more and more streaming services shift to measuring with True Peak, it will become obvious why handling ISP is important. Today, for example, if Spotify gets a file at say -10LUFS, limited to 0dBFS (dB Full Scale) but with +2.5dBTP (dB True Peak), they’ll reduce the gain about -3 to -4dB (with the loudness setting set at normal). When Spotify eventually switches to True Peak, the same master suddenly will drop -5 to -6dB, so instead of being as loud (or louder) than the average track, it will be quieter. Guess whos phone will start to ring when artists and record companies realize that this is the case.

Back in the days, you created a master for a final media, it could be cassette, CD or vinyl. After a CD was pressed, the mastering engineers responsibility pretty much ended. That’s no longer the case, nowadays you have to make sure it’s up for all kind of post mastering processing. A good master should hold up for both fixed media such as CD or vinyl, but also distribution over the internet, where the audio will both go through loudness normalization and conversion to a new format as well as traditional broadcast. Your master ain’t sacred no more and staying under the True Peak zero is one of many things required by a good master today. When I choose myself, I deliver my masters with -1dBTP. It happens quite often that my clients want a louder master, then they get more compression as well as a file with -0.3dBTP. No matter what they prefer, they will sound just as loud online but the -1dBTP file may sound a bit better. However, the -0dBFS master with True Peaks at +2dB, no matter if it sounds good or not, will be quieter and you don’t want that, do you?!

Hello lovely customers,

Since you’re so kind to trust me with mastering all this music I actually earned enough to take some time off this summer. Saintpid will be closed between the July 7 – August 8th. If you want to book a mastering session in August or later in the fall you can do so by sending me an email at info@saintpid.se or use the contact form here on the site!

See you in August!

dav

Have you looked at Spotify’s settings recently? Volume Normalization (Set the same level for all track) has moved from “Advanced Settings” to the first settings page, and you can choose Loud, Normal, or Quiet. With Loud, they restore their previous settings and land at about -11LUFS, with normal -14LUFS and Quiet runs as low as -22LUFS! If you let me decide, put it on quiet and adjust your playback gain with your amplifier to a level you’re comfortable with, this way all music from Metallica to Mozart will work together without any problems with limited peaks or volume.

My colleague Sigurdor Gudmundsson’s have more details in this blog post: http://siggidori.wixsite.com/skonrokk-studios/single-post/2018/06/04/Spotify-is-now-more-dynamic-than-ever

During Dynamic Range Day 2018, Ian Kerr from Meter Plugs and mastering engineer Ian Shepherd released the Loudness Penalty tool, where you get to know how the various music platforms will turn your music up or down (mostly down). For example, if you get -6dB as a result with Spotify, it means that you could maintain 6dB of dynamics by relieving compression and limitation and still have the same sound but with more pressure and a sense of more air in the mix. Material turned down by -2, -3 maybe -4dB on Spotify can be considered normal but when these numbers start to be -8, -10 or maybe -12dB, you’re doing something wrong and your material will probably be perceived as quieter and far less punchy than tracks well mixed and mastered.

http://www.loudnesspenalty.com/

cof

Today is D day, today is Dynamic Range Day!

My mastering colleague and mentor Ian Shepherd set up Dynamic Range Day 2010 in an attempt to get the right side to win the loudness war, that’s us who prefer not to squash audio into horrific turds. The situation was pretty bad back in 2010, it has gotten way better as most popular streaming platforms normalize the perceived loudness of all music so it playback at about the same volume no matter how squshed or dynamic it is, there’s no longer any point in squashing audio to win a few decibels since it will just be turned back down again. The world slowly starts to wake but the fight is not over, Ian continues with Dynamic Range Day until the war is won!

Visit the page, listen to the live webcast and join the Facebook page!

Dynamic Range Day 2018 is on April 27th

https://www.facebook.com/DynamicRangeDay/

Saintpid had the honor of mastering Cajsa Zerhouni’s debut album “My Billie”. Listen to it on Spotify or your preferred online streaming service!

The magic behind mastering isn’t really magic, it is knowledge and experience (and a great sounding room and, most of the times, seriously expensive gear and speakers ). This video from Sonic Scoop with mastering engineer Joe Lambert (http://joelambertmastering.com) show you how small changes add up to something that sounds so much more than some EQ and a couple dB of gain. This is what we do, it’s both easy and the hardest thing in audio you can do at the same time.

Spotify uses Replay Gain which is one of the earlier (if not the first) technique to even out the volume between both individual tracks and whole albums so that the listener perceives every track equally loud no matter how hot the original master is.
After some user complaints about their playback level, Spotify added a 3dB boost to the Replay Gain specification and it’s those 3dB’s that’s now been removed!

So what’s the big deal?
Here’s the thing with Replay Gain, for most popular music it’s great… Even with a 3dB boost. In 99% of the top 50 hits, the only thing that will happen is that Spotify will turn down the volume with anything between 1-3dB. It won’t change the audio other than turn it down, pretty much as if you lower the volume yourself. But if you play a really dynamic and mostly quiet piece of say classical music or jazz, Replay Gain will add loads of gain to accomplish the same perceived loudness as in the top 50 tracks. By doing so, the very dynamic and mostly quiet recording will clip at it’s loudest section, sometimes by several dB’s and thereby cause distortion.
Spotify has dealt with that problem by adding a limiter post Replay Gain, however, it doesn’t sound that good and would need to be more transparent to be considered a good solution. all that said; With the 3dB boost removed that scenario are less likely to happen and the Spotify listening experience will be much more enjoyable. So, overall, well done Spotify!

What’s next!
Here’s my wish-list to Spotify:

• Improve your Limiter and make it ISP Aware or…
• [better] – Scan every file for their highest peaks and only increase the playback level if the peaks remain below 0dB or…
• [best] – Skip Replay Gain and implement the AES recommendations for streaming music (-16LUFS, -1dBTP… Quiet masters are only pushed up to -1dBTP).
• Add uncompressed playback if the client’s internet speed allows it (I know they’re experimenting with switching codecs to increase quality at low speeds, this would be the next step)
• Spotify actively tries to trash the EU volume regulation of PMP’s which is just stupid and played a big part in the initial 3dB gain to the Replay Gain standard (I don’t know the status of the issue, a quick google says it’s a status quo).

– You can read more about Replay Gain here: http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=ReplayGain