This kick and bass in this is awesome - love how it grows and blows out and then returns to the tight sound. Almost hypnotic. Great sparse sound that I sort of sank into

Levels sounded good to me! Maybe even a little quiet, I turned up a bit compared to other tracks and be been listening to.

This kick and bass in this is awesome - love how it grows and blows out and then returns to the tight sound. Almost hypnotic. Great sparse sound that I sort of sank into :) Levels sounded good to me! Maybe even a little quiet, I turned up a bit compared to other tracks and be been listening to.

hi!

>1st off - hope you are feeling better soon.

>2nd off - i really dig this track! it is bouncy and menacing at the same time, a cool trick.

>3rd off - loudness... hoo, that is a big ol rabbit hole full of buckets of worms (we mixing).

short answer:
>>> no, i don't think your song felt too loud. it felt balanced and nothing felt too compressed or squashed, and i think you have plenty of wiggle room to even come up a bit. if it felt too loud to you, it might just be that some things in the mix are out of balance with each other for what you are wanting to hear. again, to me i thought everything was playing nicely with each other.

for "official" releases, especially if you are doing a physical release, it can be very helpful (and not too horribly expensive if you shop around) to save up and hire someone with experience to handle the mastering and just let them worry about the loudness. but for something like Weekly Beats or just throwing a song up on the internets to share:

(an experienced producer/ engineer taught this in a class i took last year)
a relatively simple thing you can do if you don't want to worry about LUFS and meters and all that...
add a limiter plugin as the last thing in your fx chain on your master bus/ 2mix.
play the loudest part of your song, and pull the threshold on the limiter down to where it is reducing the peaks by one to three DB. if everything still sounds ok to your ears, go with that!

*disclaimer: i've never used Audacity so i can't speak to that specifically, but most DAWs will even have a free limiter that will do the job just fine.

longer answer:
loudness is VERY subjective, and the internet is full of opinions (and assholes, naturally) about this.
i personally think a lot of modern music is mastered/ finalized too loudly at the expense of dynamics, which is one of my favorite things about music. you may have head people talk about The Loudness Wars. (i hate it)

so i try not to get too bogged down worrying about LUFS etc. BUT, it can be helpful to at least be a mindful of loudness standards and there are tools (free tools even) that can help you make sure you aren't totally off base. because it can be tough to have perspective when you are hyper-focusing on a song you're working on. and while referencing has it's place - it can also be confusing and discouraging.

if you're wanting to dig into it a bit, you may want to check out Loudness Penalty - it has some great info on all of this, and also has a free meter that shows you how much streaming services would adjust your track. i've found this helpful when trying to get into a reasonable ballpark.

you can also check out [url=https://youlean.co/youlean-loudness-meter/]Youlean Loudness Meter[url] which is a free plugin that can help you see where a song's loudness is landing. while all the numbers serve a purpose and can be helpful, what i am most paying attention to when i check my songs is the INTEGRATED LUFS. this tells you what the loudness level is for the length of the song that you play. it is best (IMO) to check this for the entire length of the song.

as long as my Integrated LUFS are registering louder than -13 LUFS and things don't sound too squished, i'm cool.
i typically aim for between -13 and -10 LUFS, depending on the song. my stuff is kind of all over the place, so i don't really need a chill acoustic song to feel as loud as something with noisy drums and distorted guitars... so i try to keep that in mind!

*for reference, when i checked your track with the Youlean meter it was showing that your integrated LUFS were sitting at -15.3. so i personally think you could have gone a bit louder.

ok, shutting up now!
sincerely,
Talky "Integrated LUFS" McTalkerson

hi! >1st off - hope you are feeling better soon. >2nd off - i really dig this track! it is bouncy and menacing at the same time, a cool trick. >3rd off - loudness... hoo, that is a big ol rabbit hole full of buckets of worms (we mixing). [b]short answer:[/b] >>> no, i don't think your song felt too loud. it felt balanced and nothing felt too compressed or squashed, and i think you have plenty of wiggle room to even come up a bit. if it felt too loud to you, it might just be that some things in the mix are out of balance with each other for what you are wanting to hear. again, to me i thought everything was playing nicely with each other. for "official" releases, especially if you are doing a physical release, it can be very helpful (and not too horribly expensive if you shop around) to save up and hire someone with experience to handle the mastering and just let them worry about the loudness. but for something like Weekly Beats or just throwing a song up on the internets to share: (an experienced producer/ engineer taught this in a class i took last year) a relatively simple thing you can do if you don't want to worry about LUFS and meters and all that... add a limiter plugin as the last thing in your fx chain on your master bus/ 2mix. play the loudest part of your song, and pull the threshold on the limiter down to where it is reducing the peaks by one to three DB. if everything still sounds ok to your ears, go with that! *disclaimer: i've never used Audacity so i can't speak to that specifically, but most DAWs will even have a free limiter that will do the job just fine. [b]longer answer:[/b] loudness is VERY subjective, and the internet is full of opinions (and assholes, naturally) about this. i personally think a lot of modern music is mastered/ finalized too loudly at the expense of [i]dynamics[/i], which is one of my favorite things about music. you may have head people talk about The Loudness Wars. (i hate it) so i try not to get too bogged down worrying about LUFS etc. BUT, it can be helpful to at least be a mindful of loudness standards and there are tools (free tools even) that can help you make sure you aren't totally off base. because it can be tough to have perspective when you are hyper-focusing on a song you're working on. and while referencing has it's place - it can also be confusing and discouraging. if you're wanting to dig into it a bit, you may want to check out [url=https://www.loudnesspenalty.com/]Loudness Penalty[/url] - it has some great info on all of this, and also has a free meter that shows you how much streaming services would adjust your track. i've found this helpful when trying to get into a reasonable ballpark. you can also check out [url=https://youlean.co/youlean-loudness-meter/]Youlean Loudness Meter[url] which is a free plugin that can help you see where a song's loudness is landing. while all the numbers serve a purpose and can be helpful, what i am most paying attention to when i check my songs is the INTEGRATED LUFS. this tells you what the loudness level is for the length of the song that you play. it is best (IMO) to check this for the entire length of the song. as long as my Integrated LUFS are registering louder than -13 LUFS and things don't sound too squished, i'm cool. i typically aim for between -13 and -10 LUFS, depending on the song. my stuff is kind of all over the place, so i don't really need a chill acoustic song to feel as loud as something with noisy drums and distorted guitars... so i try to keep that in mind! *for reference, when i checked your track with the Youlean meter it was showing that your integrated LUFS were sitting at -15.3. so i personally think you could have gone a bit louder. ok, shutting up now! sincerely, Talky "Integrated LUFS" McTalkerson

durp, i messed up that Youlean link. this should hopefully work:
Youlean Loudness Meter

durp, i messed up that Youlean link. this should hopefully work: [url=https://youlean.co/youlean-loudness-meter/]Youlean Loudness Meter[/url]