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Don't worry, the loudness war is basically over. itunes and youtube normalize everything to -15dbRMS and -13dbRMS respectively. Spotify uses the ReplayGain algo

Don't worry, the loudness war is basically over. itunes and youtube normalize everything to -15dbRMS and -13dbRMS respectively. Spotify uses the ReplayGain algorithm. Broadcasters worldwide now use the EBU R128 standard, which is a more effective form of loudness normalization, hopefully to be adopted by online services too at some point. All that's required is for personal media players to widely implement loudness normalization (by default) for preexisting records in peoples collections. http://productionadvice.co.uk/lufs-dbfs-rms/ http://productionadvice.co.uk/lufs-dbfs-rms/

muraiki 11y ago
Yeah, I should have read the wikipedia article in full before commenting. I'm glad the war is over!
hammock 11y ago
The normalization is song-by-song to my knowledge. It doesn't normalize the audio within the song itself. (Over)compression is a key part of the aesthetic of a lot of pop hits today, and while in the face of normalization you won't be able to make your song overall louder than the next, it won't necessarily stop you from creating a "wall of sound" waveform if that's the sound you're looking for.
- lmm 11y ago
  Absolutely, and nor should it. But what it should mean is that if you make your song mostly quiet, your peaks will be louder than a wall of sound.
baddox 11y ago
> itunes and youtube normalize everything to -15dbRMS and -13dbRMS respectively. Are you using "normalize" in the audio production sense, as in adding or subtracting a constant gain to an entire track? I'm pretty sure that iTunes doesn't do this, at least not by default.
Radle 11y ago
Wait, what does that mean for somehow who records music as a hobby? If my recording is all the time at around -10dbRMS, it will sound as loud to the listener as if it was on -15dbRMS(itunes)? Also, how exactly does it sound when most of my recording is at -10dbRMS and a couple peaks are at -5dbRMS?

muraiki 11y ago

Yeah, I should have read the wikipedia article in full before commenting. I'm glad the war is over!

hammock 11y ago

The normalization is song-by-song to my knowledge. It doesn't normalize the audio within the song itself. (Over)compression is a key part of the aesthetic of a lot of pop hits today, and while in the face of normalization you won't be able to make your song overall louder than the next, it won't necessarily stop you from creating a "wall of sound" waveform if that's the sound you're looking for.

lmm 11y ago
Absolutely, and nor should it. But what it should mean is that if you make your song mostly quiet, your peaks will be louder than a wall of sound.

baddox 11y ago

> itunes and youtube normalize everything to -15dbRMS and -13dbRMS respectively. Are you using "normalize" in the audio production sense, as in adding or subtracting a constant gain to an entire track? I'm pretty sure that iTunes doesn't do this, at least not by default.

Radle 11y ago

Wait, what does that mean for somehow who records music as a hobby? If my recording is all the time at around -10dbRMS, it will sound as loud to the listener as if it was on -15dbRMS(itunes)? Also, how exactly does it sound when most of my recording is at -10dbRMS and a couple peaks are at -5dbRMS?