How Loud Should We Master Hip Hop & Rap Music?
When mastering hip hop & rap music, the question always arises towards the end of the production process as to how loud we should master the song. In this blog post, we want to go into the possible aspects in order to make the decision “how loud to master hip hop” easier.
First, let's look at the Loudness values common hip hop & rap productions take a closer look at the Andreas Brede at the Triagon Academy as part of his thesis on the topic “Digitization in the music industry and the impact on mastering for streaming platforms” analyzed.
The original audio files became better known for loudness analysis Hip-hop and rap productions evaluated. The following graphic shows the average loudness measured.
Hip-hop and rap music is often very bass-heavy. The lower mids and highs are also often very pronounced in hip hop. The frequency response or the tonal balance often resembles a smiley face, some say a bathtub curve.
In order to maintain this balance, the dynamic factor plays a major role in mastering hip hop music. The more we reduce the dynamics and thus increase the volume, the worse the tonal balance is and the curve we are aiming for shifts from "smiley" to "flat". In subgenres such as drill or trap, this is sometimes desired. Here, additional stylistic devices such as harmonic distortion and clipping are used to increase the loudness of the Hip hop and rap mastering to increase.
You want the best possible, distortion-free playback of your hip-hop & rap song on all platforms?
At the end of the day, we shouldn't let the volume of other tracks sway us too much, but rather always underrate our decision on how loud to master a song considering the best possible sound experience meet. Thanks to the volume control of the streaming services, the output volume after the mastering plays a subordinate role. How exactly the streaming services deal with the finished hip hop mastering, we have in our Upload Streaming Services Article summarized for you.
If you have any further questions about hip hop & rap mastering, LUFS or audio editing for streaming services, please let us know! We are also there for you if you need professional help with your music project!
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Other useful information:
48 khz sample rate - why 44,1 khz will soon be out:
https://www.peak-studios.de/48-khz-der-neue-standard/
Intersample Peaks - Why 2dbTP headroom is better
https://www.peak-studios.de/intersample-peaks/
Streaming mastering from Peak-Studios:
