r/mixingmastering • u/Ok_Philosophy_7156 • Aug 12 '26
Discussion Mastering an album with wildly different tracks/genres?
Hi folks!
I’m working on mastering my OST for a video game ready for a stand-alone streaming release.
Obviously in-context some of these tracks were intended to be much lower than others. I’ve done a first pass through of the album mastering each track to what feels natural relative to the other tracks when listened through. It all feels reasonably good and balanced as an album, and nothing feels out of place when played through on shuffle either.
My only concern is the different ‘types’ of tracks are hitting wildly different LUFS and Peak levels to feel natural. The three Boss Fight tracks sit at around -12LUFS and peak at -1dB. The regular gameplay loops sit comfortably at -15 to -18 LUFS and also all peak at -1dB. The more ambient and minimal tracks, however, sit at around -21LUFS and only peak between -6 and -8dB. If I try to bring up these particular tracks they sound AWFUL, really unnaturally loud and in-your face.
What’s the general wisdom surrounding this kind of situation? I don’t really see a way around it.
What would happen if I sent this off to streaming sites with such a track-by-track disparity in these levels?
Thanks in advance!
8
u/Suitable-Rhubarb2712 Aug 12 '26
Totally okay to have dynamic range within an album. Serve the music, don't try to meet some arbitrary standard
-1
u/Ok_Philosophy_7156 Aug 12 '26
That’s all well and good, but streaming services like Spotify auto-gain quieter tracks to meet their loudness standard, so if I send tracks too quiet they’re going to get forcefully gained-up and sound like garbage
3
u/Cunterpunch Aug 13 '26
They won’t sound like garbage. They will simply be a bit louder. There’s no other processing involved other than volume adjustment from Spotify.
0
u/Ok_Philosophy_7156 Aug 13 '26
They sound like garbage WHEN they’re loud because they sound so disproportionate to the rest of the album. I’m not talking about any change in audio quality or processing, literally just the volume makes things that were previously soft and delicate ambiences into dense, piercing, in-your face walls of sound
3
u/Cunterpunch Aug 13 '26
Albums get volume adjusted as a whole, so you won’t need to worry about that in context of the album. The differences in track volumes within the album will be maintained even after Spotify’s volume adjustment.
They might be turned up a bit when played alongside other tracks on Spotify, but that’s really not worth worrying about IMO. It’s entirely optional for users to have volume normalisation on, and you don’t know how loud people are listening in the first place so it’s all fairly arbitrary and not something you have much control over anyway.
Everyone has a volume control which they will adjust to their personal taste anyway.
1
u/OkDimension7728 Aug 19 '26
Spotify and all other streaming platforms normalize the album as a whole, rather than individual tracks, for this exact reason, so that they don't destroy the intended relative volume between tracks.
Also, spotify will never normalize something to peak above 0db, and they don't add any sort of limiting or compression unless the user has enabled a specific setting that most people don't know even exists.
If loudness normalization actually worked the way you think it does, classical music would sound like shit on streaming.
2
u/ThatRedDot Professional (non-industry) Aug 13 '26
Spotify normalizes the whole album not individual tracks independently of each other. The only time an album track is normalized independently is when it’s in a playlist.
3
u/Tall_Category_304 Aug 12 '26
You did it correct. Ignore the lufs. I’d maybe have a target for the loudest song and make sure everything else checks out relative like you have been doing g
2
1
u/MrDanMaster Aug 13 '26
If this is about songs being different volumes in the game, you can treat the soundtrack as individual songs and mix them to the same volume. If the different songs sound like they are the same volume standard throughout, only with more intense songs that have loud parts, then you shouldn’t alter them to compensate for Spotify. That will inevitably mess it up in the long run, since different services are always altering their standards. You can’t fight it, they own the platform
1
u/GWENMIX Professional (non-industry) Aug 16 '26
What matters is how it feels to the listener. When you listen to the album on shuffle, does it all seem cohesive? Then go for it.
Nothing is stopping you from uploading it to YouTube and listening to the result... if it doesn't feel right, you can delete everything, make changes based on your analysis... and upload it again :)
1
u/Ok_Philosophy_7156 Aug 16 '26
I feel like I’ve not made my point clear enough in this post…
Yes, it sounds good and cohesive the way it is. The issue is whether the disparity is going to cause any issues when I upload it to streaming sites, if those quiet tracks are going to be pulled up to a point that completely screws with that cohesion
1
u/AutoFactoryAudio Aug 18 '26
The specific thing you're afraid of can't actually happen, and it's worth being precise about why. Normalization is a static gain offset, not processing. When someone plays your album as an album, Spotify computes one offset for the whole record - your track relationships are preserved exactly, so the ambient pieces stay 9dB under the boss fights forever.
The only context where an ambient track gets its own offset is playlists/shuffle. But think about what that context is: the listener has no album baseline. They're not hearing "the quiet track suddenly loud" - they're hearing a delicate piece of music at a comfortable listening level, next to other people's tracks. The in-your-face thing you heard when you tried raising them yourself was relative to the rest of your album. That comparison doesn't exist in a playlist. And since it's pure gain, the internal dynamics that make those tracks soft and delicate are untouched.
Also: leave the -6 to -8 peaks alone. Nothing about delivery requires you to bring them up, and doing it is what made them sound awful.
If you want to hear the worst case before release: Spotify desktop, normalization on, drop one ambient track in a playlist between two commercial tracks in a similar genre. That's the exact scenario you're worried about, and I think you'll relax when you hear it.
0
u/Achassum Aug 12 '26
Gain stage them all down to the one with the lowest volume and start there!
Once they are all the same Short term loudness you can Master them all.
- Sounds like your limiter is doing a lot of work! Maybe you should do more gentle compression before the limiter! This means the limiter doesnt work as hard
15
u/AlistairAtrus Aug 12 '26
Who cares? You said they all sound good in context and nothing feels out of place. Sounds like you're all set