Music & Audio Advice Mixing and Mastering Principles 3

Question 1

What does LUFS measure in mastering?

Accepted Answer

Perceived integrated loudness

Answer

LUFS quantifies perceived loudness over time, the standard for streaming loudness normalization.

Question 2

A streaming platform normalizes to around -14 LUFS. What happens to a master delivered much louder than that?

Accepted Answer

It gets turned down, often losing dynamics for no loudness gain

Answer

Over-loud masters are turned down to match the target, so excessive limiting just sacrifices dynamics.

Question 3

What is the purpose of a brickwall limiter on the master bus?

Accepted Answer

Prevent the signal from exceeding a set ceiling to avoid clipping

Answer

A brickwall limiter caps peaks at a ceiling (e.g., -1 dBTP) so the output never clips.

Question 4

Why set the limiter ceiling to about -1 dBTP instead of 0 dBFS?

Accepted Answer

To leave headroom for inter-sample peaks and lossy codec conversion

Answer

True-peak headroom prevents distortion from inter-sample peaks introduced by MP3/AAC encoding.

Question 5

What does a reference track help you achieve during mastering?

Accepted Answer

A target for tonal balance and loudness to compare your master against

Answer

Comparing to a professionally finished track keeps your tonal balance and loudness in a competitive range.

Music & Audio Advice Practice Test