It used to be about sorting out problem frequencies, cleaning stuff up and adding those sweet finishing touches whilst preparing for vinyl production. But with the advent of digital, things have changed…

Music, for a long time, has been getting louder due to the notorious ‘Loudness wars’.

Sure we wanted that extra glitter and polish but let’s be honest, most people wanted their tracks to be super loud and punchy. People don’t like to admit it, many mastering engineers pretend they only do it to placate those pesky clients. But it was mastering engineers who started the loudness wars in the first place. So lets call a spade a spade and be honest about it, people wanted it loud.  So why not just turn it up?

Because those trixy little transients (those are the peeks in a waveform) can’t poke their little heads above zero DB or you get digital clipping and it’s ugly!

So we slammed on a brick wall limiter (disallowing peeks to exceed zero DB) and pushed up the general energy making the track seem louder. Doesn’t that make the track less dynamic and punchy? I hear you cry.

Absolutely, but if you’re willing to give up half your life to sitting in a darkened studio toiling selflessly for the noble cause of keeping it punchy and oh so loud you can finally learn the secrets.

Now with the advent of streaming services things have changed again, and it’s a good thing. Services like ‘Youtube’ and ‘Spotify’ etc have made it clear that they prefer masters at around 14 LUFS as apposed to the 7 or 8 LUFS that we used to aim for. So our masters can be more dynamic with less distortion.

There is more to it than this, follow the link below for insight.

What is LUFS? Check this out… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rKCmXIoygg

Ktown Productions is located in Kwinana near Perth WA.