Reply To: Loudness target goal of streaming services

[Adam AyanParticipant]

Hi Mange,

Thank you for the question!

I have not seen or heard of any white paper from Spotify, re: target loudness.

I can say that there limiter can be turned off by the user, and the folks I have spoken to at Spotify have recommended doing so for best fidelity.

As I mentioned in my blog post - I am hesitant to set a target RMS value for anything, as I believe every recording/mix has a loudness potential, and I prefer not to push it one way or the other - I just want to do what feels right for each recording.

Last thing of note - I am finding that it may be worthwhile to lower the overall level of final masters when providing them for Spotify, much like what we do of Apple with Mastered for iTunes. My experience has been that full level Ogg Vorbis encoding, especially of "hot" pop masters can cause distortion. Lowering the level by some predetermined value when creating final production masters for Spotify can remedy the situation.

Thanks!

Best,
Adam