YouTube RMS Levels?

[TheElement]

Hi everyone, I've been noticing YouTube music vids all seem to be around the same volume. And lower in volume than some of the tracks on Soundcloud.

Does anyone know what RMS level youtube is normalizing to? Thanks!

[mojobone]

I think they're using an adaptive leveling algorithm, like Spotify and iTunes, so the key is probably to just make your tracks as loud as you want but try to maintain greater than 3dB of dynamic range. It's a kinda similar situation to the broadcast limiters of yore that were required by the FCC to prevent overmodulation. (actually, they still do) You could take it right up to the line, but go over, and your mix would be squashed like a bug. Only nobody but the station's engineers knew quite where the line was, and some stations er, maybe most stations fudged, a little bit.

[TheElement]

Thanks Mojo! Interesting info. Much appreciated.

[andygabrys]

Gav,

Ian Sheppherd posted on this a while back (actually several times but here is one post http://productionadvice.co.uk/spotify-loudness-war/ ) and there is this as well http://forums.taxi.com/topic129831.html

Basically all of these music sources are using something roughly equivalent to "sound check" in the iTunes software.

The apparent volume to the ear is measured and the resulting master is pulled down in volume until the apparent volume is similar to whatever has been chosen as a reference. In iTunes this means a playlist will all sound more or less equivalent in apparent volume (meaning yeah, basically the RMS).

As I mentioned in the thread above its easy to take a song that is relatively modern and mastered fairly hot like "The Pretender" by the Foo Fighters and compare the actual volume of the track bought from the iTunes store (turn sound check off here) vs. the volume when playing back from the iTunes library (with sound check enabled) and then the same song on the VEVO / YouTube channel for the Foo's and then on Spotify.

[TheElement]

Thanks Andy. Some good reading.

I like the fact these streaming sites have this sound check enabled. I think the volume war is played out. Bring back dynamics and quality. Now if soundcloud could do something like this.

[mojobone]

http://productionadvice.co.uk/youtube-loudness/

[TheElement]

http://productionadvice.co.uk/youtube-loudness/

Thanks Mojo. I'm liking the new volume control.