https://www.****************/2025/10/audio-engineers-ignore-streaming-specs-mastering-louder
Top Audio Engineers Admit Ignoring Hi-Res Streaming Specs and Mastering 2x Louder Than Recommended
Loudness normalization works in theory, but modern mastering has turned it into a loophole.
Loudness normalization works in theory, but modern mastering has turned it into a loophole.
Engineers found new ways to game streaming’s loudness rules, and the results are hard to unhear.
Streaming was supposed to end the loudness war. Instead, top engineers are still mastering far above platform targets.
An analysis of 45 major 2024 releases shows most fall between -9 and -7 LUFS, which is nearly twice as loud as the levels recommended by music streaming services.
The result is a normalization system that works on paper, but not in practice.
How Streaming Failed to End the Loudness War
For decades, the music industry waged what became known as the loudness war. Engineers pushed tracks louder through heavy compression and limiting. They sacrificed dynamic range (the contrast between the quietest and loudest parts of a recording) and audio quality for competitive advantage. The loudest track won attention, even if it sounded worse.
Streaming platforms emerged in the 2010s, promising to end this arms race. Their solution was automatic loudness normalization. The idea was simple: measure every track and adjust playback so everything plays at the same level.
To do this, platforms use a standardized loudness unit called LUFS (Loudness Units relative to Full Scale). It measures how loud something sounds to the human ear, rather than just electrical signal strength. The system was meant to make quiet and loud songs sit comfortably side by side.
But the promise failed. Over time, engineers discovered ways to exploit the measurement systems, and competitive pressures persisted despite normalization. To make matters worse, implementation remained inconsistent across platforms and devices, undermining the very goal of a level playing field.
Brian Lucey criticized the industry’s focus on LUFS measurements, saying that it distracts from what really matters in mastering.
The infrastructure exists to end the loudness war. But rather than follow the specifications, engineers learned to game them.
Why Engineers Universally Ignore the Specifications
One of the biggest issues is that each streaming platform sets different loudness targets:
An analysis from audio equipment manufacturer Elysia explains the dilemma.
Creating separate masters for each platform isn’t practical. The added costs, logistical headaches, and version control issues make it unworkable. That’s why engineers default to mastering hot so their work is only ever turned down, not algorithmically turned up and limited by a service.
An analysis of 45 songs from the 2024 Billboard Hot 100 and German charts, for instance, shows that most chart hits fall between -9 LUFS and -7 LUFS, with wide variance by genre and artist.
For example:
- Drake – “Family Matters”: -11.2 LUFS
- Knocked Loose – “Suffocate”: -4.6 LUFS
- Tom Odell – “Black Friday”: -10.7 LUFS
- Nemo – “The Code”: -6.0 LUFS
Even among commercially successful tracks, these values differ by nearly 5 dB, underscoring how little consensus exists on what “loud enough” means in today’s production landscape.
To put these numbers in historical context, in 1980, top singles averaged about -16 LUFS. By 2010, that number was closer to -8 LUFS. The late-analog and early-CD era typically ranged from -20 to -15 LUFS. Modern productions are roughly 6-12 dB louder than those of past generations.
The incentives also keep pushing the loudness
Within playlists, hotter masters feel fuller and more immediate, which nudges skip and repeat behavior even after normalization.
Studies show that tracks with higher “energy” or “loudness” metrics on Spotify tend to attract more streams overall. And though these figures don’t isolate the effect of mastering loudness from normalization adjustments.
Plus, even with normalization in place, other factors preserve the incentive to master hot.
Spotify’s loud mode, for one, creates a direct problem. The platform applies additional limiting at -11 LUFS regardless of a track’s original loudness.
This limiting is designed to prevent distortion and clipping in soft, dynamic tracks. So, many engineers would rather control by limiting themselves than leave it to playback algorithms.
Normalization can be disabled by users and isn’t consistently implemented across all devices, which preserves a volume advantage for aggressive masters whenever leveling isn’t applied.
Technical Workarounds Engineers Use
Beyond simply ignoring specifications, engineers actively exploit the LUFS measurement system to make tracks sound louder than their numbers suggest. They use three main techniques:
Gate manipulation
LUFS measurement uses a two-gate system: one at -70 dBFS to ignore silence, and another set 10 dB below the measured integrated LUFS value. Everything quieter than that second gate is excluded from the final reading.
Engineers exploit this by slightly raising quiet sections, like verses or intros, so they sit just above the gate threshold, making the meter include more of the track.
Here’s what it looks like based on HOFA College’s analysis:
By slightly raising the quietest sections (verses, intros, bridges) above the gate threshold, more of the track gets included in the measurement - From: HOFA College
- Before manipulation: 50% of a track measured -8.67 LUFS, reduced by 5.33 dB on platforms.
- After manipulation: 96% measured -11.28 LUFS, reduced by only 2.72 dB.
This means the platform turns the track down less, so the loud master keeps more punch and sounds bolder next to competitors in playlists.
Frequency weighting
Frequency weighting provides a second exploit. LUFS measurement includes K-weighting — a high-pass filter at 80 Hz and a 4 dB high shelf at 2 kHz . This mimics human hearing sensitivity but creates manipulation opportunities.
Engineers boost frequencies around 2 kHz and above to increase perceived loudness without proportionally increasing the measured LUFS value. Two tracks measuring identically can sound vastly different in volume based on frequency balance alone.
Crest factor manipulation
Crest factor represents the ratio between peak levels and average RMS levels. Aggressively limiting lowers this ratio, creating a denser, louder-sounding track even when integrated LUFS matches a more dynamic master.
What This Means for Listeners and Sound Quality
Normalization turns loud tracks down, but it can’t restore dynamics lost to heavy limiting. When an engineer pushes a track to -8 LUFS through aggressive compression, the platform reduces playback to -14 LUFS.
Because of this, the compressed character remains, which results in dynamics flattened, transients clipped, and any sense of breathing room being erased.
On revealing systems, especially, over-limited masters p ump audibly and collapse depth and space. Constant loudness contributes to listening fatigue. Bit-perfect streams can’t rescue a crushed master, and a heavily limited mix makes the format advantage meaningless.
Casual listeners, on the other hand, may not notice the compression artifacts. However, they still lose the contrast and movement that make music engaging.
That’s why mastering engineer Randy Merrill advocates restraint, which is still a minority stance.
Still, Gavin Lurssen, who has worked with Elton John and Miranda Lambert, claims a different reality entirely.
His assessment contradicts the reality on the ground.
For now, though, the question isn’t whether streaming can deliver better sound quality, as the infrastructure exists and works as designed. The question is whether anyone in the industry will choose to use it.
