Here are some facts about LUFS and its application on Spotify: This is done on Spotify, similar to all other streaming services, to keep the listener’s experience comfortable. Spotify uses the measurement of integrated LUFS to normalize all the tracks to the same loudness for user playback. Mastering for Spotify needs to de done according to the platform’s specifics. What could be the reason? How to master a song or an album for Spotify LUFS in such a way that it would sound perfect on the platform? Or the master suddenly sounds not as great as it did before. It might seem quiet compared to other tracks on the platform, however, it matches the required by Spotify LUFS. Sometimes it happens that an artist uploads a song to the platform, with mastering for Spotify, only to find out later that the song isn’t as perfect as planned. In other words, you need a professionally-created master record. It includes having great dynamic range but staying loud at the same time, compressing your track well but avoiding distortion, and many more high-quality features. But to stand out on Spotify doesn’t just mean following Spotify LUFS requirements. I also experimented quite a bit with the glue compressor and fabfilters multiband compressor but it was hard to find settings that works well enough for different tracks.Mastering for Spotify, an audio engineer takes into account Spotify’s standard of -14dB integrated LUFS of perceived loudness. I’m by no means an expert but this gives great results on my speakers. Limiter with 2db boost and -1db as ceiling.

Saturator in analog clip mode and soft clip on.

True Iron: Not sure what it does exactly but it glues the mix together.

Compressor to catch the peaks and boost the sound.

EQ eight to boost the lows and highs a little (around 55hz and 11Khz).

I would love to use soothe2 as well but with 42ms it is adding too much latency.

Gullfoss live: The low latency version with mild settings (20% for recover and tame).

FX Rack with some macros to create tension and drops (with fx like highpass filter, echom hybrid reverb, etc).

The first 2 devices are obviously only used during the mix-down. I calibrate it at -12 and make sure that the average loudness sits around 0 for every track.

VU Meter to make sure all of my tracks have approx the same loudness.

Voxengo Span to make sure that my tracks have a balanced mix.

Currently I use the following master track chain in Ableton: This is a really interesting topic and something I’d love to get better at.

Master my track