---
title: 'Why It Feels Almost Impossible To Make Loud AND Clean Music'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=UXOMLu3Xz6I'
video_id: 'UXOMLu3Xz6I'
date: 2026-07-28
duration_sec: 1020
---

# Why It Feels Almost Impossible To Make Loud AND Clean Music

> Source: [Why It Feels Almost Impossible To Make Loud AND Clean Music](https://youtube.com/watch?v=UXOMLu3Xz6I)

## Summary

The video addresses the common struggle of making music sound both loud and clean, distinguishing between volume (scientific measurement) and loudness (subjective perception). It explains that even at the same peak level, songs can sound different due to mix balance, and that streaming services like Spotify normalize to -14 LUFS but mix balance still affects perceived loudness. The presenter then outlines key techniques in sound selection, mix balance, and dynamic processing (compressors, clippers, limiters) to achieve competitive loudness.

### Key Points

- **Loudness vs. Volume** [00:33] — Loudness is subjective perception; volume is a scientific measurement. Two songs peaking at 0 dB can sound different in loudness due to frequency balance.
- **Streaming Normalization and Mix Balance** [02:05] — Spotify normalizes all songs to -14 LUFS, but mix balance (lows, mids, highs) still affects perceived loudness. A balanced mix sounds louder than one with only bass.
- **Reference Tracks for Genre Loudness** [05:11] — Use reference tracks to learn typical LUFS range for your genre (e.g., -2 to -3 for bass music, -6 to -8 for melodic techno).
- **Sound Selection for Clarity** [05:42] — Select sounds with different timbres, spread across octaves and stereo field (mono, left, right, front, back) to avoid frequency masking.
- **Match EQ for Mix Balance** [07:11] — Use Match EQ to capture frequency balance of reference and your mix, then manually adjust elements instead of applying the EQ.
- **Dynamic Tools Overview** [09:22] — Compressors balance dynamics, clippers remove stray peaks (best on drums), limiters control peaks cleanly (best on musical instruments).
- **Inaudible Peaks and Clipping** [12:29] — Stray peaks are often inaudible but prevent pushing overall loudness. Use an oscilloscope to visualize them and a clipper to remove them.
- **Master Bus Limiter/Clipper** [15:27] — On the master bus, a limiter or clipper acts as a safety net, allowing a few dB of gain past 0 dB without distortion.

## Transcript

Do you find it almost impossible
to get your own music loud and clean?
You might try and push your mixing master
to sound like the pro's,
but it just gets distorted.
Or on the flip side,
you try and play your own original song
in a DJ set
and it's way quieter than the other songs.
it's not easy to achieve loud and clean.
But it is possible.
everything you're going to need to know
to do this the right way.
whether we like it or not.
Many modern electronic music
genres have put an emphasis on loudness.
what do we actually mean by Loudness
is often confused with volume,
and in reality
there are two entirely different concepts.
Volume is a scientific measurement
of the quantity or power of a sound
where loudness is a bit harder to quantify
because it's subjective
and based entirely
on your personal perception of sound.
an awesome example
that will make sense of this.
These two songs are technically
the same volume
as they're both peaking at zero decibels.
do they sound equally as loud?
When I flip back and forth,
Your ears perceive the second song
to sound louder,
even though they are both hitting
the same peak level.
is the challenge
we face when we compare our song
to other professional mixing masters.
Every genre has its typical
or expected loudness levels,
your song is not close to that level,
it's just going to sound quieter.
When played back at an equal volume.
This becomes a huge problem
when you try and play your own song
in the middle of a DJ set.
okay.
Well, I don't care about DJing,
so what about streaming?
is a big one.
You've probably heard this.
Loudness doesn't matter on Spotify
because they match the perceived volume
of every song. Great.
So we don't have to worry
about a thing right? more
about it.
Hate to break it to you.
Every little thing is not going to be
all right.
me explain. lOAfS or loudness units.
Full scale is the measurement we use
for comparing perceive loudness in songs.
You'll usually see it in a form
of a number like this.
Spotify does take every song
and bring it to one uniform laughs level.
This is just an attempt to create a better
and more consistent listening experience
because every song should technically
be the same perceived loudness.
You're not going to jump from one
really loud song to one really quiet song.
Let's test that theory.
Both of these songs are -14 laughs,
so they are the same perceived loudness
level, correct?
listen and be the judge.
for crying.
I love that
guy. I
Wait a second.
I thought if I just make my song
-14 laughs, it will be equally
as loud as every other song on Spotify.
Unfortunately, loudness can't
be quantified as some arbitrary number.
There's more that goes into this
and mix balance
is one of those very important factors.
Song One is a much more balanced mix.
It provides
ample volume in the lows, mids and highs,
where Song two is not a balanced mix
because it's concentrating
most of its volume to the low end
and it doesn't have as much in the mids
and highs, which is very important
for perceived loudness.
although they're both -14 loves
the mix balance
in Song
two is why this still sounds quieter.
In addition,
there are also so many other important
contributing factors to perceive loudness
like sound selection and placement
using dynamic tools like compressors,
limiters, clippers.
so much shit that goes into this, and
that is exactly what I want to talk about.
The nitty gritty what you can actually be
doing in the production
mix and master to achieve
that competitive loudness and clarity.
In the end. here's my disclaimer.
I have to say this everything
I'm about to show you can 100% work.
I'm sure of it
because it's worked for the 700
plus students
I've taught here at Cosmic Academy.
used these exact techniques
we're about to go through
to sign to the biggest labels
across all genres.
But please understand they don't have
some secret, step by step recipe
that they were taught.
weren't given some Ableton Rock
to magically achieve loudness straight up.
They know their shit.
truly learned the tools and techniques
to achieve loudness and clarity
in their music, in their genres.
This concept is just so important
to understand.
It's why we do one on ones during our boot
camp.
drop a link in the description in comments
for anyone who wants to work with that
level of personalized But regardless,
I can still help you a shit ton.
So let's go through the tools
and techniques
so you can use this in your own music.
one for.
Everyone is going to be using reference
tracks
to learn what the General Lofts
range is for your genre.
This will be drastically different
depending on the kind of music you make.
making bass music, don't be shocked
to see levels of minus two or minus three.
If you're making something
like melodic techno,
you might be seeing minus six,
seven or eight.
truthfully reaching these levels
and having a loud master
is only going to be possible
if you have a good production and mix.
So let's revisit balance.
But this time we're going to look at it
from a sound design and sound selection
standpoint.
important thing here is going to be
to think about creating differences
amongst your sounds.
if you have similar sounding instruments,
sitting in the same frequency space,
also sitting
in the same part of the stereo field,
sounds will just mask each
they're not able to provide audible
value loudness or clarity
because they're overlapping one another.
So instead focus on selecting different
sounds, different timbral characteristics
from layer to layer,
spread them across different octaves
and frequencies.
Have them sit in different parts
of the stereo, feel,
think, monitor stereo, left versus right
or even front to back.
by creating these differences
in your sound selection, you're able
to bring value to the mix loudness
and clarity to the mix.
this concept is not even just limited to
your sense, but it could also be applied
to things like your drums. right.
Once we have balance in our sound
selection, we need to talk about balancing
those instruments
in terms of their level and volume.
I've made an entire video on this
which is going to pop up here.
I've also linked it in the description.
highly recommend watching that,
because it's extremely detailed
and going to pair very well
with this next point I'm going to make.
We spoke about mix balance
before in the Spotify example,
sure the contour of our mix was correct.
one of my favorite little cheats
to get this right
is using a tool called the Match e q
however, I'm not going to use it
the way you might think.
your poison in terms of which match
IQ plugin you'd like to use.
I'm going to go with the isotope version
here and it's placed on my master channel.
Before I start,
I do like to match the perceived
loudness of my song and the reference.
So when I flip back and forth,
they're on a level playing field.
B can do this in one click,
but if you don't have the plugin,
you could just use your ears
and manually adjust the fader on a channel
to match those levels.
You want to be able to flip
between the two songs and have them sound
like they're roughly the same volume.
Next, I'm going to play my reference track
and hit this capture button.
the plug.
It's going to start to understand
the general mix balance
in the low mids and highs.
it play for a little bit
and then I'm going
to repeat the same thing
and capture my song.
What you'll notice is
the plugin will try and IQ my mix
to match the balance of the reference
track.
showing me where I might need
to push some volume or where I might need
to reduce some volume
to get my mix balance to be similar.
It's pretty slick, right? Good.
Now turn that plugin off
because we're not going to use Instead,
we're just going to have it guide us to
those problem areas
and we are going to fix it ourselves.
example, if the plugin is telling you
that you need more volume in the upper
mids and highs, figure out why.
Which elements in your mix
sit in that range and make them louder.
It's literally what
the plugin is telling you you need to do.
flip back and forth between yours
and the reference
focused on those frequencies and notice
which elements in your track
are a little quiet
compared to the elements in their track.
Final little tip though with this tool.
Try to use more than one reference
track to compare to.
more the merrier.
Here you will get a more accurate
mix balance
if you do it that you can also do
a pretty simple eyeball test
by using a spectrum overlay
like this in metric A, B, can visualize
my general balance
and those references in real time.
Moving on.
Let's refocus here
because we're about to get into dynamics.
play a huge role in the perceived
loudness of your Dynamics are good.
We want things to sound dynamic
but not necessarily be dynamic.
more dynamic a sound or performance
is, the less perceived volume it has.
So if you're not addressing this
on your individual sounds, your groups,
your masters, you could be missing out
on a ton of potential loudness.
three dynamic tools
we're going to talk about are compressors,
clippers and limiters.
Compressors can do some very helpful
things.
could be used to shape a sound similar
to an ADR envelope in a synth
where you can shape the front, middle
and tail end of a sound.
They can also be used to balance out
the volume of an overall performance.
Think of a singer
where we can create consistency in there.
Incredibly dynamic performance
as the volume changes.
Word two word phrase, the phrase,
we can level that or take
this drum loop is an example.
Notice
this one hit is louder than the rest rest.
So I have a question for you.
If you wanted to hear
the quieter parts of this loop,
which we can't really hear right now,
what would you Would
you turn up the volume so we can hear it?
Well shit
I was able to hear it,
but now that one loud hit is even louder.
So that didn't really work.
But what happens
if that one hit wasn't as loud?
It was closer
to the other parts of the loop.
I could do this by just taking this
one part in lowering the volume, right?
Of course,
could also do this by putting a compressor
on and it's going to do the same exact
I can set this threshold to only compress
and lower the loud part that exceeds it.
now, if I compare these two loops,
which one sounds louder?
they're both
technically peaking at the same volume,
but the compressed loop
does have a louder perceived volume.
If this concept of balancing dynamics is
making sense, give my boy moose a pound.
Whether you're on your phone, laptop
or TV screen.
Next, let's talk about my favorite part
of this entire video.
And for all my cosmic fan that have taken
the program, you know, I love this shit.
Clippers and limiters Both of these
dynamic tools do a similar thing.
However, they have their strengths
and weaknesses and really
I just want you to be able to use them
to get the best sound.
Clippers are the shit
and they could provide insane returns
in the form of loudness.
They're really good at removing
stray unnecessary peaks.
Let me show you what I mean by that.
Imagine we're mastering your song
and we're bringing it up to zero decibels.
It's final mastered level.
What's going to hit the threshold First,
these peaks, right?
notice, because they stand out so far,
they're going to prevent
the rest of the track from getting up
to that threshold and being louder.
Now, imagine you were able to create
a more balanced, dynamic mix.
Notice when I bring everything back up
to the threshold again,
the entire song is getting there
rather than those straight peaks.
Eliminating them
allows your whole song to be louder.
Now you might be thinking,
song doesn't have those straight peaks,
because if they did,
I would have heard them
and I would have mixed them already.
Well, I hate to break it to you.
You can't hear this.
Neither can I. run a test.
Which of these two sounds
is the louder one hitting zero decibels.
me guess.
You naturally thought
the one that sounded louder is probably
the one hitting zero DB is right.
Well, you would have been wrong
because the louder sound
was actually quieter
in terms of peak volume.
my meter was telling your ears
don't always understand peak volume.
They're better at understanding
perceived value, more average volume
volume over time.
volume is this instantaneous
snapshot of your volume.
It could be a split second.
Your sound hits a certain level,
but it's too quick for our ears
to understand
so these peaks could be all over your mics
spiking way above everything else,
preventing you from pushing things louder.
In the end.
what if we can clip these earlier
in the process?
Problem solved.
Now, how do we figure this out
if we can't hear them?
can visualize these peaks on individual
sounds groups or even your entire mix
using an oscilloscope
Once you've identified them,
you can go in with a clipper
and begin to remove those peaks
by having the peaks exceed the threshold.
Keep in mind though, Clippers can add
a noticeable amount of distortion
pretty quick.
and because of this
they tend to sound better on drums
rather than musical instruments,
because most drums or drum samples
noisy to begin with, distortion
sort of blends in with it.
we're
all like a smooth musical instrument.
That distortion
and crackle become super obvious.
I do think it's worth mentioning here
There are many genres
that will use clippers to shave
those peaks and create that distortion
more as a creative sound design choice.
Knowing your tools allows you to break
the rules, the two modes of clipping
you can mess with would be hard
clipping and soft clipping.
if clipping usually sounds better,
if you're going to be pushing things,
this can be utilized, especially from a
sound design perspective, as the harder
you work into soft clippers,
they can add a significant amount
of perceived loudness
and it sounds pretty damn good.
This distortion is harmonic
and much more pleasant than the hard
clipping form.
Limiters are another tool
that can be used to control dynamics,
including those peak examples we just went
limiters are often a bit cleaner sounding.
And this usually works
well when you do need to control peaks
on those musical instruments,
typically don't produce the distortion
as fast as a clipper would.
Limiters can also be used to balance out
a dynamic performance over time.
Just like we were doing
with a compressor earlier.
However,
it's in a much more exaggerated form.
usually not going to sound as natural
as a compressor.
All three of these dynamic tools
are typically used
during the mastering process as well.
limiter or clipper
is usually the final plug in on our chain
that we slam our song into.
This would be your safety net,
which doesn't allow volume to exceed
zero DB also allows us to achieve
maximum loudness in our song
because we can push beyond
that zero DB threshold.
For example,
I can drive the input gain on this limiter
and raise the volume of my song.
Eventually it will try and cross zero DB,
which in that case
the limiter begins to work and squash
those peaks down.
I can push it further and further
and eventually it does sound like shit,
there's usually a small window
of a few decibels that can exceed that
zero DB threshold and it still sounds
pretty natural and transparent.
This is typically what we do on a master
So now that I've got my song
at this rough, mastered level of zero DB
is let's compare it
to the reference tracks here on Metric B,
I have my loudness section
which shows me all my law's values
and I can make comparisons.
also like to use this dynamics tab,
which shows me just how compressed
and squashed my song is relative
to the reference tracks.
Okay.
Then next up, let's talk about low end
and how
this is impacting loudness
in terms of our master.
This one requires us to go a bit deeper.
So I made a whole video
on this exact topic
so I can show you how to compress
your master.
This is going to be especially useful
if you're making music, which
I think you are, but as a shit ton of low
end, Come join Moose and I over there.