I heard from mixing and mastering engineer Luca Pretolesi that the rms level is normally around -5 in edm music. -3 is very loud, but also okay. My RMS level is at -3 and my LUFS is showing -5, which is the same as the reference tracks I use. But all my tracks are significantly quieter than commercial songs. I would believe that I know a thing or two about mixing and mastering, but maybe not. I have tried to push my limiter as far as it goes without distorting the sound, and also tried not to squeeze the track too much. I use sidechaining, make sure that frequncies don't clash, removing rumble and unnecessary frequncies, and so on. Commercial tracks with a lower rms level and LUFS do also sound louder than mine. There's probably not a single answer to this, but maybe someone could point me towards a direction?
Submitted October 01, 2017 at 09:04AM by TheGreatCouch https://www.reddit.com/r/edmproduction/comments/73l9fq/rms_is_3_and_lufs_is_5_but_my_tracks_are/?utm_source=ifttt