is there a limiter or function in Cubase that lets me automatically drive a master output to a set LUFS (Short Term)?
ive been producing/mastering to -8 LUFS since forever now, it would be nice to just slam a limiter on the master that can detect the songs LUFS and apply the squashing for me automatically…
Say…a limiter that always pushes the mix to -8 LUFS (or whatever loudnes you want. If its too much it just ends up clipping, maybe is a cool way or whatever…)
right now i have to go through the whole song (kind off) to see if there is a part too loud or too soft, every time i change the master chain.
its for dance music, any genre
it would be awesome if there is a plugin that can do this
I’m not sure that’s technically possible since LUFS is an aggregate value. The audio needs to be analyzed for a certain amount of time before a value can be reached.
Traditionally, targeting a specific loudness is done when mastering and typically mastering is done on a stereo file if we’re talking about music. Once you have a stereo file, you can normalize the audio to a target loudness using Direct Offline Processing.
yes, you mean the sound would go up and down to much?
what about a plugin that just analized the whole song? or some kind of live view of the whole song?
right now im doing the same thing every production, 3-4 times per week:
-i finish a song
-put mastering chain (clipper, compressor, stereo spreader, multiband compressor, dynamic eq, static eq, another multiband compressor, limiter.
its litteraly the same every time…and all of it gets released and played world wide for years
i have a plugin called Reference 2 (from Mastering The Mix) in the end for citical ABing, so im sure with the end result EQ wise…
The only thing im doing is: I set the input with the clipper, and EQ a bit…then i always have to lower the output of my limiter to get -8 LUFS, because im WAY too loud due to club and DJ levels needed for WAV releases (around -5 LUFS).
So im always playing with the output of the limiter, just to see if it hits -8 every time through the song…even my “soft” parts hit -8LUFS, it almost never goes below that…its just a wall of sound, not too much dynamics lol
What I do sometimes: Bounce my master so it sounds good(at whatever level that is). Load it in Tc Electronics LC2n. Type in my target LUFS(eg -14) and TP value(-1). Hit process. Done. Mind you, this is average LUFS(for the whole file), not 3 sec LUFS or what have you.
I guess there are more tools like these, to prepare files for radio playback etc.
I don’t master music but I used to record, mix, and play it. Even if this is dance music I have hard time understanding how this would work aesthetically.
Short term is 3 seconds of loudness, so over what period would the actual processing attack/release take place? ‘Immediately’? And why would you want your music to be perfectly flat? Even if it’s dance music surely some dynamics are welcome, no? Or are dance tracks entirely flat?