a great article on modern mastering targets

https://ask.audio/article...nds-in-music-mastering

dmbaer
This is probably the best explanation of this subject I've read to date - explaining, for instance, how -20 LUFS was preferable to a higher number that might make better sense for music in order to accommodate soundtrack events like explosions.
 
Thanks much for the heads-up.

your welcome.
 
this should be a sticky.
 
it should be mandatory study for everyone that visits this forum! 

Thanks batsbrew for posting this, I have a general question out of curiosity regarding LUFs at -14 and YouTube.
 
I am posting a music video for fun on YouTube. The audio is processed entirely in TRacks5. I really enjoy doing this as a way to learn all the software I recently acquired.
 
Now I have the meter set to "other than iTunes" which means YouTube among others and it sets a target for me of -14LUFs on the meter.
 
Now after shooting for that target, I played back the song and it starts out on the digital readout at -16 or so but by the end reads exactly -14.0. However, as I watched the LUFs meter, it occasionally swung over the -14 target, maybe up to -8 for a brief  second. Is that bad, is YouTube gonna crush my song with compression?
 
If I lower the Gain on the Stealth Limiter at the end of the chain so that none of these brief transients get thru, my LUFs is going to be very low and people will certainly have to turn the volume up.
 
Of course, I can go back and try to better catch and lower those occasional transients but my dynamic range is about 9-12 which is what I shoot for.
 
My main question, is how anal to I have to be about this -14 target. Nothing overshooting at all? If so will that trigger their sensor to blitz the audio with compression?
 
Just as a comparison, I did a number of videos exactly like this last year, except I shot for -1.5 on the Limiter and, as above, a dynamic range of about 9-12. On the current song, doing that gave me a LUFs of ~ -12, so I lowered it. The songs are one guitar, one vocal. The songs I did last year sound fine and not at all like YouTube zapped them in any way, but if I listen to some golden oldies as I occasionally do, they are louder than my songs, quite noticeably, I think. So I don't think I'm really blasting anything.
 
Anyhow, just curious and thanks.

OK so after researching and talking about this at Sweetwater, gear schluz (?) and elsewhere, I gather the LUFs is the final recorded measurement in TRacks not the momentary display. So when I come in at -14.0 on the digital display at the end of the song, I guess I'm there. Evidently, YouTube has some kind of method to overcome or ignore long soft passages that would "weight" the averaging. So my question about worrying over the peaks or transients is not a worry, it is indeed the overall measured LUFs at the end of the song. Well cool! That's a lot of headroom!
 
Also, as recently as a month ago, I've seen posts from people who have intentionally uploaded hot songs and then downloaded at a later date and they are still just as hot which may indicate YouTube is not really being aggressive about this just yet?