Mastering for MP3: Why You Need 1.5dB of Headroom

Loopmasters sample packs I made:

Multiplier on the web:

And his label, Relentik Records:

Multiplier's old podcast BLOUNCE:

[davelordy]

I like to leave at least 24dB of headroom when mastering to MP3, this allows me to insert another song over the top of the previous one if it turns out the be crap.

[ProdJPGotzBeatz]

Soundcloud needs to improve its upload quality 128 kbps bitrate mp3 is terrible. They need to make it at least 320 kbps mp3 come on Soundcloud!!

Great Video Bro Very Helpful Thanks

[FlotownMastering]

I've been harping on about this for ages, thanks for bringing it to your audience. Worth noting that by not driving the codec as hard you generally need less headroom, however lower bitrates generally need a little more headroom; it's all a balancing act. I typically master for streaming/lossless media with my ceiling set to -1 dBFS (which is also the Apple Mastered for iTunes recommendation), and that's plenty in most cases, however I'm rarely pushing hotter than -11 LUFS (short term).

[perrypelican]

The first videos I saw of yours were the ones where you just fool around. They give a bad impression on their own. Now watching this one I see that you know what you are talking about. Your sense of humour is the kind that really makes me laugh. Great video. Thanks.

[FaumauNZ]

*goes back and re-exports all unreleased tracks*

[ShonnMorris]

Love this video for the simple fact that you just got right into it rather than plugging your songs and talking forever before showing us what we came to see. Good job.

[raybeeger]

Hey man you save my live! My upload to YT sounded horrible and you gave me the answer why!!! I've tested the situation and the result is perfect the same. With a limiter ceiling of -1 you get -0.6 dB on mp3 before upload - WTF! Nobody tells you that! You are my hero!

[connorbuckinghamstudios]

as someone who mainly does metal music, etc. I found that this actually really works for what I do!

[sadmemeboi]

5:14 if you want to keep your dynamic range the same, wouldnt you pull down the master? pulling down the limiter ceiling would do a better job keeping roughly the same volume as the original track but it will decrease the dynamic range.

[techreviewz]

True Peak vs Normal Peaks mastering :) Enable TP on your limiter - the little thingy on the bottom of your Ozone meter :)

[odinnshred]

Seriously good video, explained the stuff I couldn't. Productions will be better in the future many thanks dude

Try True Peak Limiting button, you'll have a lower headroom need

[bradlycarpenter]

I normally use FL Studio as a converter, I make the tracks in Ableton and then put em in FL Studio and then export them as 320kpbs mp3 with no headroom. After watching this video I decided to drag my exported mp3s back to Ableton and they did not peak above 0.00 dB. So I think the real lesson here is convert you files yourself and don't use bad converters!

[JASEmsc]

I've just tested this with Ozone too and found my track was clipping up to 1.2db at 320kpbs MP3, but then I thought, surely it should be mastered to 128kbps MP3, because thats the rates of Soundcloud and Youtube. So I tried that and it went up to 3.2db of clipping, which significantly reduces the loudness of the track. The "solo codec artifacts" allows you to hear the audio distortion which is being added to your track from clipping, and it sounds quite horrid. I then compared one with a ceiling of -0.1 master and one at -3.2db master when uploaded to Soundcloud and found I could hear a difference in quality especially on the high frequencies on the one which was -0.1db headroom, reducing headroom to compensate for clipping seems to be essential to maintain high quality at lower bit rates. But it's a question of, do you want your mix to sound louder, despite the clipping, or do you want a significantly quieter and cleaner mix?

[Zickcermacity]

5:18 - instead of a final limiter pre-mp3, I just reduce the gain of the file, like you said, by 1 to 1.5dB.
No clipping when converting, and no audible damage from wholesale peak/ brickwall limiting

[gwasaze]

my mind was blown, I would have never thought that much headroom was needed

[MinusMedley]

Appreciate the confirmation, just getting into mastering specifics and couldn't understand why there were still sounds bleeding past my limiter ceiling.

If you really want to understand why WAV is so unique, look into the 32bit Floating-Point. A format not supported by MP3.

[mikewraps]

This all makes sense and I tried it on my mix but soundcloud still butchered the quality. sick.

[Reticuli]

You need more like 3dB of headroom prior to a DAC and any encoding to or from a lossy codec to prevent essentially all accidental intersample clipping. While it's possible to get intersample clipping even with more than 3dB of headroom from the full scale brick wall, you usually have to use intentional, contrived test files and techniques to cause it. And this is just mastering. If you're doing aggressive pitch or speed changes or using a key change algorithm on top of going to or from a lossy codec, you need even more headroom. As a general rule of thumb for post work, the easiest thing to do is simply work within a higher bit depth processing domain than the original file and apply a non-destructive, mathematically-perfect sample-halving -6dB attenuation across the board prior to any additional post-processing of commercially-mastered music.

[trevorjones]

I usually leave .3 dbFS of headroom and convert to .wav then use audacity and the LAME codec to convert to 320kbps .mp3 Analyzing the file for digital overs, I never find any. A CD printing will allow 3 samples over. True Peak Limiting can help you avoid ISP inter sample peak overs. This was a pretty extreme example with an extreme RMS level. Mastering for most streaming is -16 to -14 LUFS, or - 9 LUFS for CD. Just my experience.