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Loudness Penalty [A useful tool for measuring loudness adjustments on streaming services]

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Loudness Penalty [A useful tool for measuring loudness adjustments on streaming services]

Post by Ages »

Hey all.

Here's a new tool from Ian Shepherd and MeterPlugs.

You can use it to analyse your audio files and get a good idea of how much a streaming service will turn down your music (Assuming it's above their reference level. If it's on or below it, they won't adjust the playback level. Although, Spotify might increase the loudness with limiting because Spotify).

Previously, Ian suggested target levels in LUFS to work to if you're interested in not having your audio too loud/too quiet in regards to each service's loudness reference levels. However, these targets were a bit hit and miss as you would get inconsistent results. So, they've developed a tool that doesn't just do a straight up LUFS reading, but instead gives readings that're closer to what you can expect based on how each service interprets loudness. But these are not totally accurate as they don't know exactly how each service measures loudness. Still, it's a useful tool that will help give you an idea of what to expect. I suggest watching the video and doing your own experiments!

Video:


Link:
http://www.loudnesspenalty.com/


Guy Rowland
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Re: Loudness Penalty [A useful tool for measuring loudness adjustments on streaming services]

Post by Guy Rowland »

Ah, thanks Ages. I think I must be partly responsible for this - I engaged Ian's services a couple of years ago and together we tried to figure out what was going on with Spotify. The poor lad did keep saying "Dynameter wasn't really designed for this!", so I guess this is the result. Will give this a proper look in the next couple of days - cheers!

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Re: Loudness Penalty [A useful tool for measuring loudness adjustments on streaming services]

Post by Ages »

Guy Rowland wrote: May 22, 2018 4:44 pm Ah, thanks Ages. I think I must be partly responsible for this - I engaged Ian's services a couple of years ago and together we tried to figure out what was going on with Spotify. The poor lad did keep saying "Dynameter wasn't really designed for this!", so I guess this is the result. Will give this a proper look in the next couple of days - cheers!
Yes I remember that! That's what brought me to this forum actually. Ian linked your post from here on Twitter :)


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Re: Loudness Penalty [A useful tool for measuring loudness adjustments on streaming services]

Post by 1gc »

Is this a similar tool to "EXPOSE" from Mastering the Mix?
g.c.


Guy Rowland
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Re: Loudness Penalty [A useful tool for measuring loudness adjustments on streaming services]

Post by Guy Rowland »

I haven’t yet checked out this one, but Expose was a truly atrocious tool that had zero value in my book. In fact negative value as it was far worse then useless. It basically told you to turn everything down to simply absurd levels, the most inaccurate and bluntest of Instruments. I checked it with some solid commercial tracks that returned healthy levels on Spotify and sounded great, and all failed miserably. Probably the single worst plugin of any kind I’ve ever tried, actually.

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Re: Loudness Penalty [A useful tool for measuring loudness adjustments on streaming services]

Post by Ages »

I haven't used Expose before so I don't know. I have played with RMS readings, the TT DR meter and LUFS readings though. LUFS is my favourite method for measuring loudness and dynamics besides judging with my ears. It's the newest method of those lot too and measures things in a more intelligent way. Part of that is analysis of frequency balance rather than simply peak levels to interpret loudness (More useful because of human sensitivity to different frequencies). Ian also has his own plugin called Dynameter which in addition to what you find on most R128 LUFS meters, gives you another reading called PSR (Peak to short term loudness ratio) and guides for streaming service targets which helps get you a bit closer to what you might want. All R128 meters follow the same standard and so should give you the exact same readings in theory, so I just use a cheap one called EBU Loudness from ToneBoosters. I find it very useful :)

But the Loudness Penalty website in theory should be a little more accurate in regards to what these streaming services do, and I'm sure they'll update its readings as they figure out more about how these streaming services measure things. I'm going to start using it to suppliment my R128 LUFS readings. Then again, I never usually think too much into this stuff. I just get songs sounding how I want and don't worry too much about it unless they're more than a couple db below general reference levels of the streaming services.

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