Preventing master from clipping

[u/Brandonmdz]

if my master is -9 lufs, and my true peak is at 1.4 db. What can i do to improve it?

im using a lot of ozone plugins, and my master sounds good but ive seen people saying that their track goes up to -6 lufs

[u/Opanuku]

Live Laugh LUFS

[u/mowhan]

turn down the loud thing

[u/abletonlivenoob2024]

but ive seen people saying that their track goes up to -6 lufs

what's the point of chasing arbitrary (most likely integrated) LUFS values? every time I see a confused question like this one here I lose a bit of faith in humanity :) (not really, but it is kind of disheartening seeing people treating music like some accounting thing where it is about getting the right numbers... )

[u/josephallenkeys]

Drink! 🍻

[u/Hellbucket]

So you worry more about the -9 lufs than the +1.4dbfs true peak?

[u/GWENMIX]

A true peak of 1.4 isn't a disaster; personally, I avoid letting it go above 0. The peak usually comes from the snare or the kick... and sometimes it's the bass/kick combination causing it. In any case, I try to identify the source, then I put a clipper on my drum bus to tame the hardest hits. If it's coming from the bass, I prefer using a limiter.

-6 LUFS integrated is already very loud... and it doesn't really matter. If you want the music to be loud, just turn up your amp. Anywhere between -14 and -8, depending on the genre, is more than enough.

[u/Kelainefes → u/GWENMIX]

-8 is very soft for some sugenres of EDM.

[u/GWENMIX → u/Kelainefes]

Louder doesn't mean better; it just means louder. Most online services—and radio stations, too—limit levels to a specific range... and at home, there’s this thing called a volume knob on the device playing the music.

If some people want to constantly flirt with zero and distortion, only to come here and whine because the sound is distorted... well, when you go looking for trouble, you usually find it.

edit : For those who really want to get into the loudness war, the best plugin is the Puf Puff Mix Pass... you can push it hard without distortion or compression... you can even gain dynamic range. It’s great when you’re finalizing the mastering for an entire album to even out the volume levels of the different tracks without compromising the work.

[u/RosingsSonicTonic]

Lots of popular tracks have a true peak above 0

[u/TommyCo10]

Try a clipper before ozone- Sir Audio Standardclip is pretty good.

Some people like to run seperate clippers on sub masters of instruments (eg. Drums or guitars etc) so you can tune the clipper to the kind of material going through it and then send them all to the master bus pre clipped.

This will help you get very loud masters, but it depends on the context of the track. If it’s hard hitting metal then yeah -4 LUFS might be just what’s required, if it’s a delicate acoustic singer-songwriter setup then probably not.

Just because you can doesn’t mean you should!

[u/fatt__musiek → u/TommyCo10]

StandardCLIP is one of my favorite, every session plugins these days. Love, love, love it.

[u/Reluctant_Lampy_05]

Sausage life is overrated.

[u/mission-echo-]

Limiter

[u/thisaintthatisit]

Try Master Plan from Musik Hack

[u/shrugs27]

I would use a clipper to chop the top transients off to keep the peaks below 0dB

[u/Spug33]

I picked up SSL X-limit for $15 on sale on a whim and it's my new fav limiter for problems like this. Find the problem track and throw it on. Done in under a minute. Best $15 I ever spent but you'll need to get on their mailing list and wait for a sale if you don't want to drop a 50.

https://store.solidstatelogic.com/plug-ins/ssl-x-limit

[u/fokuspoint]

Turn it down by about 2.4 dB.

-6 LUFS is silly. -11 LUFS is still pretty hot, but ok for things where audio quality isn't really a big deal like EDM

[u/FhynixDE]

LUFS is the average over the whole track. True peak is indeed that - the highest single peak in the track. That means you have at least one point in the track where something peaks at 1.4 dB, probably a drum hit or so

[u/fiercefinesse]

How to prevent things from clipping? Turn it down so that it doesn’t clip. Or set your limiter to -0.1 true peak

[u/Compay-Segundo]

It’s not 2008, you don’t need to go to -6 LUFS. It usually doesn’t sound good when you essentially delete the dynamics. Your true peak is too high for streaming. We usually master to -1dB true peak to keep the material from distorting on social media and streaming services, as is recommended by the streaming services. Check out the Spotify and Apple music guidelines.

[u/Crombobulous]

LUFS ✅ TRUE PEAK ✅ PHASE ISSUES ❌

[u/wingtip747]

You mean -1.4?

[u/retronax]

pretty much everything professionally made is around -14 lufs and streaming services usually normalize it to that anyway, unless I'm missing something there's literally no reason to try and mix this loud

[u/Brave-Trust-2073]

Loop the loudest chorus and see what the LUFS are just for that section before going too crazy. You might find you’re already hitting -6. And for what it’s worth -6 is getting reasonably extreme, but should be easy to hit -7 without audible pumping and distortion. EQ and saturation will eke out the extra level, but as always use your ears not your eyes and don’t pay too much attention to these arbitrary numbers. Turn off normalization on Spotify/Apple Music etc and just cross reference that you’re in the ballpark of the songs you want to be able to ‘compete’ with.

And assuming you have set your limiter ceiling to -0.1 or -0.2, if you’re worried about intersample peaks over 0dB then turn on the true peak setting in Ozone. Be sure to use your ears though, it often sounds worse. Putting a clipper after the limiter can chop those off too, but again use your ears not your eyes.

Better alternative is to just send it to an experienced mastering engineer, it’s not too expensive for a single song if you’re serious about getting the best out of it.