Ableton Forum

I mixed and mastered a track for a friend of mine and we were both happy with the result. However the end of the song gets pretty loud and I should have done more research beforehand and when the track went up on spotify I found that it was approx 4 db lower than the original wav file.

I have a two part question: 1- I listen to tons of songs on Spotify that are around -14 LUFS and sound great. But it seems like the songs I master end up being quieter than those songs even if the master is actually louder than -14. This seems like a bass frequency issue, is that correct? and how do I combat that?

2- I thought Spotify's loudness algorithm is supposed to automate the volume over the course of the track, but my track was turned down from the very first second, even though the beginning section is pretty quiet (way below -14 lufs). Why are they just turning the whole track down?

Extra question: Can anyone recommend ways to increase "perceived loudness"? I hear all this music on spotify that sounds way louder than -14 to me but that's what it turns out to be. Thanks in advance.

I’m no spotify expert, but:

Using muliband compression to compress some frequencies while leaving others alone can increase apparent loudness without affecting the overall average/peak ratio too much.

Making sure the audio is within the frequency range of the playback device helps - speakers that have a steep roll-off below e.g. 100Hz aren’t going to sound as loud for a bass heavy track as a well calibrated 2.1 system or many headphones.

Making sure instruments in overlapping frequency bands aren’t cancelling each other by phasing effects or transient smearing or simply turning everything into mud might help.

I believe spotify average out the volume across an entire track before playback starts, rather than adjusting it “on the fly” during playback. All that would require is scanning the audio file once and storing the resulting amount of compression to apply in a database. On the fly adjustments would play havoc with the overall mix and dynamics of any kind of music and would be very obtrusive and obvious.

Here's exactly what Spotify does to your music in terms of loudness:

https://artists.spotify.com/faq/masteri ... is-it-used

Remember that the -14LUFS setting is only going to make all tracks sound the same volume if you have that option turned on in your Spotify preferences. And yes, usually having excessive sub bass is one of the reason why your track might measure louder than it sounds, which means it plays back quietly in comparison to other songs. Spotify does not "ride the gain" as your track plays though, it's a one time volume change and that's it.

There's no real tricks to it, a good balanced mixdown and master should sound similar in volume to other songs in the same genre. Having a song that's not too dense or busy seems to help as well.

this might help you:

https://productionadvice.co.uk/how-loud/