Is the loudness war over? Do I need a loud or not so loud master? The answer is:

You need BOTH! And that´s the reason why you will receive two different masters.

Audio professionals like you and me know that the “Louder is better” myth is a trick on the brain. It’s not better it´s only louder and often sounds over-compressed like white noise. It overwhelms our ears. But a loud track can get a lot of attention and for some situations still to this day - that´s exactly what we need. Therefore the first master you will receive is called "Mastered for Loudness" (MfL) and it delivers that attention getting loudness, competing with the loudest commercial releases. It´s LOUD but it’s like a billion pixel photo, with every single little detail still crisp, full, rich and warm. "Mastered for Loudness" masters are intended for CD production, Soundcloud, DJ playlists and label shopping.

On the other hand you have streaming services, television and radio stations using their own loudness normalization. So there is just no need to over-compress in mastering to squeeze out the last db of loudness. Their normalization will just turn down tracks which are too loud to make all tracks play at the same volume. You will be happy to have a second master called "Mastered for Fidelity" (MfF) which is mastered at lower integrated loudness, is more dynamic and fully complies to the "Mastered for iTunes" (MfiT) standard. This mastering is intended for streaming services, television and airplay, High Res Download and Vinyl release.

As a free service we also create DDEX RIN files for your release (new industry standard for music credits) and publish them through our sound credit publisher license.