[24-96 Mastering]

Originally Posted by Retinal

And for the headache, people stay in front of the p.a. all the time, they blow away their ears with car stereo, top of the volume, all the time.. My audience doesn't listen jazz or opera, and they are not exactly "educated" listeners.

This is not about level. It's about distortion / compression.

I master quite a bit of metal, be it thrash, death, industrial, viking, black, heroic, progressive, etc. I know where you're coming from.


But neither style, nor listening volume has anything to do with it. Quite the opposite. It's only about distortion / hypercompression.

That's why I suggested to do that experiment, because I think that most musicians listen to their own music very differently than they do when they are in the role of the consumer. As a consumer, I personally like to listen to music pretty loud. But I can't with overly loud masters, because it hurts (in the short term, when the distorted high mids make you clinch and in the long term, when you get a headache) long before it gets to a sound level where I can feel the bass or the transients - i.e. the joys of loud listening.

I want to encourage you to stop comparing and start just listening - like your audience does.

Please don't understand this to be holier-than-thou. I understand that you are not arguing against what I'm proposing. It's just that I really think that, when people detach themselves from the process of producing the music and just listen to it, there is something interesting to be found.

But is not like that, people (lets say the vast majority) go "meh, they suck compared to [ insert name of the band louder than you ]", average listener do that..

I'm not at all sure about that. From my own observations, people just use the volume knob on their playback device. I know that it's commonly assumed that consumers are more likely to skip quiet songs, and there may be some truth to that, but I've seen the same to be true for loud songs. As far as I can see, consumers care about 1. good sound and 2. standardization with regards to level. And at 6dB crest factor, it's just not possible to cater for both of those wishes.

You may feel that you need to do a 6dB crest master to be within the standard. But I am pretty sure that you yourself know (or can suspect) that with this thinking, you're cheating yourself to some extent. I believe there is a fair bit of insecurity in this, tempting you to go towards, or even exceed, the upper end of the spectre, to "beat" your competitor. (Please don't take insult from this assumption. I believe everyone is susceptible to this phenomenon, myself not excluded) If your concern is to be only within the standard range, why not go for the medium or the lower end of the scale?

I have mastered metal albums hitting a maximum of -10 dBfs RMS (which you consider to be the low end of the spectrum for this genre) and they have been received well wth their audience as well as with critics. Noone ever commented on "low" level, only on good music and good sound.