I master my songs through my air fryer these days.

i was dying at that A/B hahaha

I run my song through an old leather shoe to get that oaky timbre

The master starts with the mix, the mix starts with the arrangement

“Stop asking a clown why he keeps acting like a clown, ask yourself why you keep going to the circus.”😔😔😔🥀🥀🥀

"....as you can hear, it's perfection."  LOL!

History of the loudness wars (plural):
1) 1st loudness war: 50s-early 60s: Main form of consumption of popular music is through Jukeboxes, people want to dance and being able to hear the music helps with that so singles that are cut hotter get more plays on the Jukebox and companies stocking the Boxes advertise hot cut singles to owners of Jukeboxes. Result: Some singles are cut close to the limitations of vinyl, technology isn't at a point where you could stop the disk from skipping if the grooves are cut too deep.
2) Inter war period - Early 60s to early 70s: LPs become more prevalent, people own big stereo systems in their living rooms and these come with level controls. Loudness doesn't matter.
3) 2nd loudness war - Mid 70s to early 80s: Teenagers get their own cheapo vinyl players. The amps aren't that powerful, so if you want to rock out to the Sweet the vinyl needs to be louder. Result: Music that is aimed at you audiences does get a decent dose of compression, but since skipping on those plastic Turntables from Woolworth is particularly pronounced for high low frequency content and the inbuild speakers suck for bass anyway EQs get used to cut a lot bass and add a lof of high mids, "And a girl in the corner, let no one ignore her
'Cause she thinks she's the passionate one" is the main contribution of Steve Priest...
4) Inter war period -Late 70s to late 80s: Disco is primarily consumed in Discos, where the systems can handle bass. They can also produce levels that can take your pants off. Punk takes notes from Reggae and bass players find that if the guitar is dead simple it leaves plenty of room for the bass to go wild, post-punk genres of all stripes end up pretty bass centric. Hip Hop starts with sound systems. MCs become a medium of choice for kids - Boom Boxes and Walkmen gain traction - and they don't send the stylus flying if there's too much bass. The CD is introduced and people follow the Red Book slavishly, -3dB peaks. Who knows if those hifi companies built players that can handle intersample peaks over 0dB.
5) 3rd loudness war - Late 80s to 2010s: Oh, those CD players can handle these peaks? Let's normalize to -0dB then. And since we can't get further with levels, brickwall limiters gain heavy use. File-sharing hits the music industry, leaving ringtones as a major source of income and you don't want dyniamics in a ringtone. Result: Death magnetic.
6) Inter war period - 2010s until recently: Streaming services beome important and start limiting the newly introduced LUFS as a measure of subjective loudness.
7) 4th loudness war - No system is 100% accurate at capturing subjective loudness, at least not one that can be run on silicon. And since the standards are public, we can maybe push things a bit further, by pushing beyond stated LUFS for a different window size of the FFT, while maintaining something that won't get turned down by spotify. Result: Unknown, but AI will eat us all before it's over anyway.

I'm just imagining Alain going to a random store and walking by the discount bin, staring at this playdough toy priced at 2 euro's and getting a revelation for this video.

Very informative. Also, I like the subtle humour. Your song almost matched the original 😂

Phil Spector understood the importance of presence in audio; his "wall of sound" was optimized to sound loud on AM radio, which emphasized mid frequencies.

I need that mastering machine, from the beginning of the video. Knew that I needed more gear! 😂

Most importantly the ME brings a fresh pair of ears to a project that is likely hanging out of everyone's arses at that stage.

For some reason your glockenspiel “itsy bitsy spider” example cracked me up

There was an A/B switching? I didn't hear anything. Perfection, indeed! 👍

I'm stupid!

Great talk! The thumbnail made me want to hear what could be the scope this time. Then I realized I've paid for mastering some tracks because the tiny label required to have consistent quality on their compilations. And that mastering guy knows it all!

He gave feedback from my piano timing on to how to change the level of the 909 style kick or snare to help reaching the label goals. He indirectly pointed out I don't have a professional studio for mixing my stuff, by saying like "to avoid mixing the high end off, adjust your speakers high end..." I have good but passive hifi speakers, there's no adjustment! I learned small things, and this video made me think of that great experience of being in the loop, receiving feedback.

sooooooo glad the loudness wars are over!! been mixing and mastering for the past 15 years and i can now mix for dynamics and feel instead of SLAMMED!

My mastering is litreally just sticking a compressor / limiter on my mix and going from I don't know - wherever the mix - let's say -16db to about -9.6 db and that's it. I never do anything else. If I want to change anything I change the mix.

Mastering at the prosumer level in the 2020’s is really about having an expert set of eyes and ears on your product as a final audio QC. In a world where you can upload an MP3 or an HD wave file without much pushback, it has been relegated to the job of a consultant.

"Mastering: how the Song Sausage is stuffed"...🤣