-
Hey, @nategomoon! Thanks man – holidays have been good; hope yours have been too!
The only reason for -2db or -1db true peak is to protect the sound quality once your master is transcoded to one of the shitty– err, I mean “lossy”– compression formats we all listen to most of the time. This is especially noticeable when listening on the free or ad-supported tiers of various DSPs, as well as all social media feeds.
Lemme explain… That super loud -0.01 dBTP master will sound awesome when played back in a lossless format like Wav or FLAC, and it’ll probably also sound pretty damn good as a high quality mp3 or Ogg Vorbis on the paid versions of Spotify and Youtube. But if you’re listening on a free tier (or on any social media platform) you ain’t gettin top shelf audio! They serve freeloaders the “well” spirits … a weak 2.5kbps shot of rum mixed with flat lukewarm Diet-Codec served in a Variable Bit Rate Dixie Cup… with no ice!
Suffice it to say, super loud mixes mastered to the the bleeding edge of -0.01dBTP often sound distorted once transcoded to lossy formats with lots of data compression.
One indispensable tool in my plug-in arsenal that helps me get ahead of this guessing game is ADPTR Streamliner. (And, wow– it’s on sale right now for $39! That’s a steal.) It’s a really cool plugin that let’s you hear in real-time what your song will sound like on ANY tier of ANY platform — it’s like hearing into the future!
It really is eye-opening (ear-opening?) to poke around, auditioning all the different codecs. And you can even click the “Artifacts” button to hear ONLY the residual artifacts. If you’re a fan of submerging your head underwater while crinkling aluminum foil as close to your eardrums as possible you are going to LOVE the Artifacts button! 🔊🥴
plugin-alliance.com
NEW VERSION 1.1 - Codec auditioning, automatic level matching, and state-of-the-art loudness and dynamics metering to get the perfect master for all major streaming services.