Mastering, LUFS/True Peak

Hi, I unfortunately cannot afford an engineer to mix and master my EP and thus have had to figure out the basics myself. One thing I am particularly struggling with is mastering the track to an acceptable loudness while also making sure my true peaks remain less than -1dBTP. My tracks are consistently around -14 LUFS but my true peaks are higher than that goal threshold. I have read that this means they are too dynamic, but I just can't seem to figure out how to fix this problem. I have tried reducing the volume of the vocals and certain instruments, but then the master is too quiet and it becomes an endless cycle. My mixes are not near 0dbs.

 

Again, I am a novice at this, so I was wondering if this could be an obvious problem with my mixing? I do mostly bedroom pop style stuff and my equipment isn't great, but since this is a consistent issue I figured there must be something I am missing in the mixing process. Also, would it be unwise to use the Adaptive Limiter at -1dBTP to push those peaks down? Is that risky in terms of streaming normalization?

 

Thanks in advance, and sorry if this is a really obvious answer or too vague to be answered!

Have you done any compression at all? You don't mention using any…

I have, on the vocals and tried using a small amount on the final master as well. Do you think I should apply more to the master?

 

I should note that most of the songs aren't peaking so much its unbearable, but there are peaks that the limiter is squashing. I just am not sure if this is advisable since Spotify and other services could potentially adjust the loudness, so I'm looking to make the tracks a little louder without causing more peaks.

I would put the Adaptive Limiter Output at -0.3 to avoid intersample peaks going thru.

Gain the AL a little more to have your LUFS between -13 and -12. You should be fine.

I do this all the time with my clients and they like it.

Adaptive Limiter is semi-reliable for ISPs.

There's nothing in logic that's reliable for ISPs to be honest.

I use Voxengo Elephant of FabFilter Pro-L2 at the end to catch them. (no gain, just ISP net)

 

iZotope is also good for that purpose.

 

As far as mastering itself goes, you might get better results just using LANDR, and try to get mix as close as you can.

Okay great, I just downloaded the free FabFilter Pro L-2 trial and it looks to be largely working for me after making some other minor adjustments to the dynamic parts of the mix. Thanks everyone!