Many articles about the loudness of popular and electronic music tend to be focus on extremes: they are often concerned with the loudest tracks and with an idealised standard which few, if any songs adhere to (such as -12 LUFS, -16 LUFS, or -23 LUFS). The reality is that, in the present, music of most genres continues to be mastered well above any of these ‘ideal’ figures.
I thought it would be useful to record some figures for Flume’s electronic album Skin. It was my favourite album of 2016, but it also earned Flume a Grammy and several ARIA awards, and represents an important snapshot of contemporary mastering standards for loudness.
The table of results may be found here: http://imgur.com/a/bLf4j
The figures were measured using the integrated loudness metre in Cubase 8, and rounded to one decimal place.
In summary, the average integrated loudness was about -7.9 LUFS, with the loudest/drop sections of the songs tending to be in the area of -6 to -7 LUFS. Dynamic range varies considerably, though in arguably the most “radio-friendly” songs, ‘Never Be Like You’ and ‘Say It’, it is very similar at 6.3 LU and 6.2 LU, respectively. There is also little adherence to the true peak upper limit of 0 dB, with an average of +1.2 dB.
Submitted February 25, 2017 at 02:36PM by bretoc https://www.reddit.com/r/edmproduction/comments/5w57af/loudness_analysis_of_skin_by_flume/?utm_source=ifttt
Javier Rodriguez
Saturday, February 25, 2017