Thursday October 17th 2019, at the 147th AES Convention in New York, Eelco Grimm will present his AES paper 10268 “Analyzing Loudness Aspects of 4.2 million Music Albums in Search of an Optimal Loudness Target for Music Streaming”. The research for this paper was performed in 2017 for HKU University of the Arts Utrecht (where Eelco lectures), in cooperation with music streaming service Tidal. For the AES paper, Eelco extended the original report and added much more detail. A must read for anyone with interest in music loudness.
The abstract of the paper is: “In cooperation with music streaming service Tidal, 4.2 million albums were analyzed for loudness aspects such as loudest and softest track loudness. Evidence of development of the loudness war was found and a suggestion for music streaming services to use album normalization at -14 LUFS for mobile platforms and -18 LUFS or lower for stationary platforms was derived from the data set and a limited subject study. Tidal has implemented the recommendation and reports positive results.”
Researcher Josh Reiss has taken a look at the AES 147th papers and commented on a few that piqued his curiosity. Eelco’s paper was among them.
The paper can be bought in the e-Library of the AES.
