Track sounds good after mix and ( mastering) then youtube upload makes a fuzzy sound on the drums

[Che Whitey]

After I mixed down my latest track in osgb I noticed this and not the first time .track sounds normal everywhere car headphones monitors but on YouTube the treble sounds foggy and the snare sounds way to loud in the mix. Could be a side compression issue? Any thoughts would be appreciated. I know that you have to get away from a song after you work on it for 48 hrs or more or your brain will fill in the blanks and you can’t hear the song and all it’s parts anymore. 

 

[HoboSage]

Why is the snare panned hard to one side (left) and not panned center?

[Che Whitey]

The only thing that is center is the drums including the snare. The weird thing is it does not sound like that in garageband or just as a wav file. I think it’s the side compression or the low pass filter. I use rough rider 3 compression with side compression. 

[john]

It sounds like your audio is perhaps mastered to too high a level before submission.

 

Look for something around:

 

Youtube

-1.0 dBTP Peak

-13 to -15 LUFS Loudness

>9DR Dynamic  Range

 

If it's louder than -14 LUFS your music will get turned down. However, it will get turned up and could be limited (to make it louder without going above 0.0dB) if it's quieter than -14 LUFS. Overall, going for a more dynamic and punchy mix sounds much better than an over-compressed, distorted master.

 

Once upon a time, the loudness war was being won by heavily compressed audio with a high perceived loudness. When online services started delivering a lot of older tracks with lower perceived loudness they didn't want large jumps in perceived loudness between tracks. The result is that streaming and download platforms now favour lighter compressed masters, with larger dynamic ranges. They want them compressed enough to get -14dbtp (true peak), with a fairly tight band on the perceived loudness -13 to -15 LUFS and larger dynamic ranges, producing punchier tracks that sound better.

 

My point is, if you provide a heavily compressed track, that is normalised to too high a level, your upload then triggers the YouTube (Soundcloud/Spotify/Apple music etc) codec to compress the audio again resulting in a track with really poor dynamic range and distortion from over compression. Previously online service processing hard limited audio and normalised it to the desired level and converted the result to their desired output format (for example)

 

So, ease off on your final mix compression, try and preserve more dynamic range, and avoid hard limiting.

 

According to Spotify you should leave leaving at least -1dBTP headroom for music submissions, that way they are optimized for the lossy formats. Spotify also suggest that you leave -2dBTP of headroom for a loud track, because loud tracks are more likely to clip during transcoding. I am guessing this last guide you are breaking, and this is giving you the distortion.

 

If you submit to Amazon, be aware NOT to master too quiet as they do turn mixes down, but they do not turn them up!

 

More generally, -1dBTP works for all services... except for CD which is -0.1dBTP, and Amazon & Spotify Loud which work to a -2.0 dBTP.

 

Loudness has a bit more variance, going from -16 LUFS to -8 LUFS. I think -13 LUFS to -15 LUFS is pretty good.

 

A dynamic range of more than -9 is a good guide for all services.

 

I hope this helps.

 

Cheers

 

John

[Che Whitey]

How do you know what level you are at I use garageband on iOS and I usually have merged the vocals a few times when I get them sounding decent is normally like 4 versions panned left and right then merged  I never merge the instruments then I save the track put it back double it go left right take wider stereo and widen it then make a mp4 so where am I going wrong and where do I find that number and my main problem is the kick and snare getting drowned out or the snare is way to loud in the mix I always have to chop every snare beat separate and lower it.

[Glammerocity]

Further to John's post, you can see the levels various sites adjust to at loudnesspenalty.com.

 

With YouTube you can see what's being done to your volume if you right-click over a video and select Stats For Nerds. You'll see Volume/Normalised and a dB figure.

 

Volume is your volume slider setting. Normalised is how much playback has been turned down. (Normalisation is only applied on playback, not upload processing.) The last figure is the difference between YT's estimate of loudness and their reference playback level.

 

Confused? It still confuses me. I tried mixing to loudness settings but I gave up. And I'm not the only one - Ian Shepherd is a mastering engineer who runs productionadvice.co.uk and loudnesspenalty. He advises not bothering, not least because you can get caught up in it, which is not productive. That's what I found and I felt I wasn't mixing to my satisfaction, only to a number. You'll also be spending time on making adjustments which might be out of date soon, as YT introduces new changes. And as Ian also notes, listeners turn it up and down, too. (Further advice from Ian in the link below.)

 

When I started paying attention to loudness and YT stats, I  noticed top-of-the-biz music videos don't have a consistency. (Always check stats at 100% volume, because YT scales the figures.) Ed Sheeran's Bad Habits is 100%/52% 5.7dB; Taylor Swift's Anti-Hero is 100%/100% -1.2dB; Red Velvet's Birthday is 100%/39% 8.1dB. Red Velvet are one of the top kpop bands and as I do a lot of kpop mashups I checked more stats for kpop MVs to find they're consistently 40%-50% normalised. Interest in kpop is increasing globally, so loudness adjustments don't appear to be a drawback there.

 

I checked your video and it's 100%/100% -2.6dB. You're right alongside Taylor Swift! A negative figure means it's quieter than their standard and they don't turn up quieter videos. This would suggest it might be their processing on upload which is affecting your track. You might want to check YT's recommended settings for rendering and try to match them:

 

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1722171?hl=en-GB

 

My video editor doesn't have all the settings but I was able to adjust a number of them I'd never looked at before.

 

Further reading: https://productionadvice.co.uk/how-loud/