[MLA] More good news (Spotify)

[Grimm | Eelco]

Hi Thomas,

> Even if the user has selected Album Norm, the system should revert to Track Norm (and Track Target Level) for a case like you describe.

I would not call this track normalization however, to avoid confusion. It is just an album with one track. That's the beauty of album normalization on streaming services: if an artist does not like the concept and prefers track normalization, he just releases single tracks. In the opposite situation, in case track normalization were the standard, there was no such scenario to activate album normalization.

> That’s related to some production aspects I don’t like about potential Album Norm: The loop becomes less predictable.

I don't agree. If album normalization has its target on the loudest track, the vast majority of hit songs will have a predictable loudness, since they will most often be (one of) the loudest tracks on the albums. When an album is normalized to its average level (like currently in Apple and Replaygain), I agree: in that case the loop is much less predictable.

> Now, during mastering, you can compare several versions of a track loudness normalized, and decide which one is the best. With Album Norm, this gets blurred. It’s also unfortunate that the same track will get a different gain depending on whether it’s from an original album, a “best of”, or a compilation. More ambiguity.

If the compilations are mastered propery, I don't think this will be a problem. But it brings up an interesting idea: we could offer the _content provider_ (ie the mastering engineer, not the end user) the option to choose whether a track should be album normalized or track normalized. 

However.

Options like this may confuse the mastering engineers. And the alternative is very straightforward: if a mastering engineer likes an album to be track normalized, just make sure all tracks have equal loudness on the album. In other words: apply track normalizing during mastering by making all tracks of the album -14 LUFS. So in my opinion there are enough work-arounds for mastering engineers who rather have all tracks at equal level. Either release albums with just a single track or make all tracks equally loud.

All the best,
Eelco


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