Cookie's Corner - #170 - Should we master differently for Hi Res and mainstream listening?
From Cookie Marenco - Founder and Producer Blue Coast Records and Music
What matters more to you… dynamics or a loud track? Should an audiophile label deliver both kinds of masters for distribution? Or is it too confusing?
Buy Two Get One Free is still available at the Blue Coast Music store.. your site for high resolution downloads!
What is mastering?
Making an album is a complicated process. Releasing it for various playback options is even more complicated.
First comes recording - usually to a multitrack system.
Second. we take those dozens to hundreds of tracks and mix them to two tracks. That means we decide on EQ for each recorded track, volume level, image and effects.
Third, we “master” the stereo results so that the volumes and sound are appropriate for each format we will be releasing on.
That’s a simplistic generalization of a process that combines satisfying the desires of the artist’s creativity and playability on vinyl, streaming, SACD, CDs, downloads, etc. Every format has different requirements and needs a different mastering to offer the best sound.
If you add immersive and spatial sound, all new criteria must be met. Each of these mastering formats requires time and money to produce and truthfully, it’s questionable whether the most people know the difference or care… audiophiles being more of the exception.
Dynamics vs Loudness - what does it really mean?
A dynamic record offers more high and low frequency response. It can offer more delicately soft moments and powerful loud sections. In those dynamics, passion is captured and spines tingle. So why wouldn’t any artist or producer strive for these things?
It’s the ‘shuffle’ between tracks dilemma. Mainstream listeners move between song tracks as in ‘playlists’. No one wants to use a volume knob between songs. That’s just too hard, I guess.
Few people are listening to albums in the mainstream. Louder has become ‘better’. You can even find examples of that in albums recorded 30 years ago that are now ‘remastered’ for streaming and downloads. Often you can find both versions streaming on the internet. Sure, maybe when you’re playing in your car a louder version can overcome the sound of the freeway noise.
Should a label adapt and offer both?
Most of my day is spent as an audio engineer… recording, mixing and mastering albums for other people. In fact, we’ve been really busy these days with a lot of projects. For my artists/clients, I’ve learned to adapted their mixing and mastering projects for mainstream listeners.
More often than not, for our clients, we produce several versions of their music for streaming and download release. We also provide a version for CD and vinyl release if that’s required. And for high resolution listeners, we offer the more ‘dynamic’ version for sale on Blue Coast Music.
But, for Blue Coast Records, we generally release the more dynamic versions to streaming services. Meaning our music will sound “softer” than a other non audiophile tracks. Sometimes, this can cause an issue if our music is in a playlist with a variety of other label releases. I’m beginning to think we should consider releasing a remastered for streaming version for mainstream listeners while continuing to release our dynamic versions on the Blue Coast Music Store and a few other services.
Let us know what you think!
Do you prefer dynamic tracks? Loud tracks? Let us know.
Thirty Degrees - CD, free with annual paid subscription!
The album is not available on any streaming services, but we plan on releasing a reissue in early 2024 and sooner at our Blue Coast Music Store. You can read about the restoration process from tape here….
If you’re eager to hear the album, view the 8 page booklet wth the list of credits, we’re going to offer all our annual paid subcribers a FREE copy of the CD, including shipping until the supply runs out. Don’t forget to send us your address!
The offer is only good for subscribers to Cookie’s Corner.
You can also subscribe (separately) to Blue Coast Records and receive a monthly unreleased track free to stream or download. Click below.
As always, thank you for supporting our music and craft!
Cookie Marenco
Producer and Founder
This post comes as is a bit of a surprise because it brings up a few non-existent issues. Indeed the addition of immersive and spatial sound, requires that new criteria be met, along with learning about object-based audio...or one could choose to refuse to mix for that end use and stick to two channels. However saying that it requires more time and money to do that in addition to stereo suggests a lack of understanding of the principles of object based audio. Mixing for object-based sound is generates a superset that is going to be perfectly valid for stereo because *that is how it works* and the renderer deals with the number of channels...not the producer. And it is NOT questionable whether most people can tell the difference when they have a setup that is capable of playing back Immersive Sound.
As for the loudness and dynamics bit...why are we talking about this as if this were a problem any more? There is no "shuffle between tracks dilemna" on streaming platforms or with server software on home streaming from local files these days, and it is no longer a problem. Tracks will be levelled by the streaming platforms and the server software (Roon, JRiver, Foobar, etc). This is a solved problem.
You ought to be aware that more and more streaming services are now normalizing tracks -- Apple Music at -16 LUFS, Tidal, Amazon, YouTube at -14 and the big daddy Spotify at -14 (or -23 or -11 user selectable) . The AES (which I am assuming you are a member of) recommends music at -16 LUFS with loudest album track at -14 LUFS. From this, it would seem that one can set things at -14 LUFS safely and it will track well on all (most) streaming services. If you mess about, anything hotter will be simply turned down a little,
As for dynamics...well, that is an artistic decision and affects the relationship of things within the music itself. Messing about with dynamics to "make it sound louder" could be considered a fool's errand especially if it sacrifices the emotion and intent of the music simply because you want it "loud" and one is better off using judicious compression to elevate the soft parts of the track as required to keep them above background noise. Mixing for people to specifically listen to things over earbuds on a noisy subway is weird...particularly when more and more playback software/hardware can compress the audio on the fly for those environments.
I'm at a bit of a loss as to why you appear to be making the above an issue? There are clear standards that one may adhere to and one is free to make artistic decisions within those constraints. IT would behoove one to make those artistic decisions wisely and keep in mind that while it is very easy to compress audio in a noisy environment on the fly when needed, but it is impossible to faithfully do the opposite if the audio is produced with a sub-optimal environment in mind.
Anything other than mastering for good audio in a good environment is merely a solution looking for a problem.
I remember the days when digital was sold as offering a huge increase in dynamic range. Which, it does pretty well. It's ironic that the trend has been to the reverse.
Part of the problem, I think, is that most people listen to music on pretty marginal speakers - phones, laptops, or cheap earbuds. Real audiophile systems in an ideal environment are more rare. And that means heavy compression and limiting is almost a requirement for music to cut through the limitations.
It does make sense to have have different masters for different platforms (and audiences).
For streaming platforms, I'm typically mastering to between -11 and -8 LUFS (integrated) for heavier rock or EDM style tracks, and between -14 and -11 for more ambient/acoustic tracks. Even that produces noticeable distortion. I personally find heavy compression painful to my ears so it's always a challenge to balance loudness with quality.