Above is a screenshot of my SuperVision results after doing a full, in real-time run-through. To get Integrated and probably True Peak (TP), one has to go through the entire composition.
And that’s the problem for me:
By the time I’m in mastering mode, I’m kind of sick and tired of hearing the composition - and unless I mute my system’s global audio, I have to re-hear it over and over until my tweaking is done.
I do have Ozone 11 Standard and it may or may not have this kind of analyzer, and if it does, probably the same necessity: real time run-through only.
Is there some faster, speeded up way to get such info without having to play the composition in real time?
The above is an intermediate copy of my mix in my mastering project with limiter. Have not yet fine tuned it.
Now, as embarrassing as it may be, I’m pretty new to the whole LUFS thing - have so far made my music videos for YouTube using export from my full mix project. My NLE (Vegas Pro 22) export template is .mp4 with AAC audio.
They weren’t bad and I don’t do Spotify or get into the loudness wars, just want to improve.
As you can see, there are a couple of warnings about Integrated and TP. Probably very generic but what should I do - or, otherwise put, what would - not - generate this warnings?
So… these warnings are not relevant to the generally recommended YouTube’s -14 Integrated. Broadcast (be it EU or otherwise), a whole different animal. Yah?
If you are doing Audio for TV or Film broadcast then EBU R128 will be important.
But for streaming, LUFS and Loudness are quite deceptive, most big artists are not conforming to standards set by streaming services, there all over the place, Some have masters at -6 LUFS, some -10 LUFS.
If Spotify tells you that -16LUFS is its uniform standard, this just lets you know, they will turn everything down to -16 LUFS on there system.
Most people going past this don’t care, because they have a sound they like when they master to a hot level, so having it turned down they don’t really care about.
Be aware of 2 things:
Consumers of Spotify can opt out of Loudness levelling (rendering Normalisation useless across the platform)
Spotify will turn your audio down to conform to -16 LUFS, they wont turn it up !!!
Find a balance, that you like the sound of on your masters, -12 to -10 Integrated Loudness LUFS usually sounds right in my opinion.
Someone like Taylor Swift, her masters probably hit at -7LUFS, and they sound phenomenal.
So find your zone, your masters sound good in, and go with it.
Unfortunately, you can neither turn off the warning signals in Cubase’s statistics nor can you adjust them to your target level. The only thing you can do is to ignore them.
If your signal occasionally peaks slightly over 0dB TP - many mixing engineers don’t care. Just a FYI.
@7am3s_UK’s advice perfectly sums it up: do what you think sounds best!
Since YouTube is my only platform, this new bit of information from this video (he’s doing it his Premiere NLE but the overall principles are the same) - it’s called “Stats for nerds” that one can access by right-clicking on any video to see how much YouTube normalized and such.
The first option is Loop, this is the very last one on the drop-down.
Here is the one for my current upload of my tribute arrangement of an old Uriah Heep song. I’m still planning on improving the master, but overall, YouTube didn’t mess with it that much.
I don’t have any following - just a couple of friends, so no big deal. But I still want to get better at all of this.
@7am3s_UK’s advice perfectly sums it up: do what you think sounds best!
@Reco29 - As usual with anything new that I’m learning, I can get all caught up in obsessing over LUFS by data and forget to use my ears. The first is useful, but in the end it’s them thar eary thingies that matter…
Reset the CR Loudness Meter. Then do a non-realtime export. When it’s done, which will be done as fast as possible, the meter will show the values you’re looking for.
Oh, you are missing out on really helpful features if you don’t use the Control Room. It’s not complicated and a real bonus.
But you do you
Let me know in case you want to try - there are some good tutorials out there.
yep, the Control Room is one of the great features of Cubase and not only useful for traditional band recordings, also for complete in-the-box productions. I also ignored it for the first years of its existence, but there are so many useful features like
the ability to switch between different outputs (speakers, phones), maybe each with its own set of correctional plugins like Sonarworks or Realphones.
Switch from stereo to mono easily
The dim function
listen dim functionality
Plus you can have your favorite analyzer plugins (like Supervision, Span) always there on the main insert slots without ever having to load them again on your main bus
Unfortunately in cubase you need to export the audio and then check statistics. Something really helpful would be something like in Reaper the Dry Run function on the render options!
Good news. The loudness meter has nothing to do with CR. You can also use it.
It will always measure the output bus, that is defined as the “Main Mix” in the Audio Connections → Outputs tab. By default this is Stereo Out.
But @GlennO is correct. If you reset those meters and then perform an audio export Cubase will show the values once the export is finished.
