dreeks
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speaking for myself personally, my mixing and mastering has been all over the place this year. this is because i am incredibly busy working on a PhD and organising events for my uni, and i simply do not have the time to do things as i usually would, with time and patience and subtlety.

weeklybeats is a space where i've been able to let go of my perfectionism. do some of my tracks sound way too loud? absolutely. but i intend to fix that later down the line. the point for me is to just always submit something, even if it's underdeveloped and crunchy.

i am also a strong believer that some albums just simply sound great when pushed super loud. i can think of a few albums (flying lotus - cosmogramma, sophie - oil of every pearl's uninsides, perfume - triangle, literally any jane remover album) where the loudness adds to the experience. of course in most cases loudness can destroy a mix, but in these cases it was a stylistic choice and i cannot imagine those albums working with quieter mastering.

also, i 1000000% agree with bobbyd. if you enjoy a track but feel that it is way too loud, please show us how you would master that track. this community is a great place for sharing knowledge, and people are always down for constructive criticism as long as it is in GOOD FAITH.

Last edited by dreeks (February 24, 2026 10:32 am)

Groupscent
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Atlanta

For context, the OP produces jungle and appears to be using 90s-era tracks as their loudness reference…. which explains a lot about where this take is coming from.

The idea that older music was quieter out of "tasteful restraint" is a myth. Vinyl is a physical medium with a hard ceiling,  push the master too far and it causes something called “overmodulation”. It was a technical limitation, not an aesthetic philosophy. The same limitations don’t apply to digital audio. (Not to mention that limiter technology has improved drastically since then.)

And let's not pretend 90s junglists were delicate about levels. They were red-lining mixers and distorting breaks into sawdust. They would have absolutely used modern tools and smashed their masters to smithereens.

To the OP…If you're A/B-ing 90s vinyl rips against modern masters and finding everything "too loud," the issue is almost certainly GAIN MATCHING.  Pull your references down to the same perceived loudness before comparing. That's a fundamental mixing skill and it'll completely change how you evaluate other people's work.

Nobody here deserves to fail because of where they are in their learning. That's the opposite of what this community is for.

TLDR: OP needs to learn how to twist a knob.

Groupscent
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Atlanta

Also, to address the proper monitoring comment....The idea that a VU meter is 'proper monitoring' in 2026 is a total misunderstanding of the medium.

VU meters were designed in the 1930s to keep radio technicians from blowing vacuum tubes. They have a 300ms lag  by design. In a genre like Jungle, a snare transient or a sub-bass peak happens in a fraction of that time. By the time a VU needle even flinches, your digital signal has already peaked, clipped, and squared off.

Furthermore, 0 VU is usually calibrated to -18 dBFS. Modern production, and the 'weight' required for club systems, happens almost entirely in that top 18dB of headroom that a VU meter isn't even built to show you.

If you want to monitor perceived loudness today, you use LUFS. If you want to monitor peaks, you use True Peak meters. Using a VU meter as your primary reference for a digital master isn't 'proper'.

Last edited by Groupscent (February 25, 2026 12:40 pm)

Groupscent
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Atlanta

-Double Post-

Last edited by Groupscent (February 25, 2026 12:27 am)

twinningl00m
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Netherlands
dreeks wrote:

i am also a strong believer that some albums just simply sound great when pushed super loud. i can think of a few albums (flying lotus - cosmogramma, sophie - oil of every pearl's uninsides, perfume - triangle, literally any jane remover album) where the loudness adds to the experience. of course in most cases loudness can destroy a mix, but in these cases it was a stylistic choice and i cannot imagine those albums working with quieter mastering.

also, i 1000000% agree with bobbyd. if you enjoy a track but feel that it is way too loud, please show us how you would master that track. this community is a great place for sharing knowledge, and people are always down for constructive criticism as long as it is in GOOD FAITH.

this exactly, a lot of the most interesting music these days is using the mix as an additional instrument and this is very obvious in a lot of stuff that i feel confident in calling "sludge rap" as well as being in a lot of contemporary jungle, dnb, breakcore, something i did for more than a decade . mixing needs to adapt to the times and there's not even much of a reason to bother with dynamic range for songs that have little dynamics in the first place . even opposed to that, you're able to work with dynamics perfectly fine while also utilizing heavy compression and low LUFS nummers . i am an engineer by profession and nothing is stopping me from redlining tracks +12db and then declipping them in RX which sounds awesome btw . music has no rules and it is our job as human beings to manipulate physics to our will

twinningl00m
Offline
Netherlands
dreeks wrote:

i am also a strong believer that some albums just simply sound great when pushed super loud. i can think of a few albums (flying lotus - cosmogramma, sophie - oil of every pearl's uninsides, perfume - triangle, literally any jane remover album) where the loudness adds to the experience. of course in most cases loudness can destroy a mix, but in these cases it was a stylistic choice and i cannot imagine those albums working with quieter mastering.

also, i 1000000% agree with bobbyd. if you enjoy a track but feel that it is way too loud, please show us how you would master that track. this community is a great place for sharing knowledge, and people are always down for constructive criticism as long as it is in GOOD FAITH.

this exactly, a lot of the most interesting music these days is using the mix as an additional instrument and this is very obvious in a lot of stuff that i feel confident in calling "sludge rap" as well as being in a lot of contemporary jungle, dnb, breakcore, something i did for more than a decade . mixing needs to adapt to the times and there's not even much of a reason to bother with dynamic range for songs that have little dynamics in the first place . even opposed to that, you're able to work with dynamics perfectly fine while also utilizing heavy compression and low LUFS nummers . i am an engineer by profession and nothing is stopping me from redlining tracks +12db and then declipping them in RX which sounds awesome btw . music has no rules and it is our job as human beings to manipulate physics to our will

muzak_efron
Offline
ohio
Subtonic Jungle wrote:

You ppl deserve your channels not growing, you deserve being lost and unrecognized, you deserve being replaced by AI, you deserve being not paid by distributors.

lmao just turn the volume down on your computer

muzak_efron
Offline
ohio

but yeah agreed with what a number of people already said. this is a place to learn & experiment & have fun. digital audio is a canvas & id rather play around with it the way the music ive loved my entire life does, than listen to some random ass person who cant be bothered to touch a volume knob

ineff
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gah, tried using this as a bbcode preview and accidentally hit submit

Last edited by ineff (March 2, 2026 1:27 am)

ineff
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ooops

Last edited by ineff (March 2, 2026 1:26 am)

cistern stairs
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I nearly wept the first time I loaded a Skrillex track into FL studio with the limiter turned off and saw -6 and -4 lufs. And I thought mixing to -10 lufs was hard...
Anytime I've run a volume check on mainstream EDM tracks they generally land around -7 to -5 lufs, and are also peaking around +3db which made me realize I don't understand mastering the way I thought.
But yeah, the default volume on this site is unusually loud. I always turn to volume on my computer way down before I even try to listen to anything.

cistern stairs
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I nearly wept the first time I loaded a Skrillex track into FL studio with the limiter turned off and saw -6 and -4 lufs. And I thought mixing to -10 lufs was hard...
Anytime I've run a volume check on mainstream EDM tracks they generally land around -7 to -5 lufs, and are also peaking around +3db which made me realize I don't understand mastering the way I thought.
But yeah, the default volume on this site is unusually loud. I always turn to volume on my computer way down before I even try to listen to anything.