---
title: 'Why It Feels Almost Impossible To Make Loud AND Clean Music'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=UXOMLu3Xz6I'
video_id: 'UXOMLu3Xz6I'
date: 2026-07-01
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 mix in master to sound like the pros, 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. Here's 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 that? 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. Here's 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. But 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. This is the challenge we face when we compare our song to other professional mix and masters.
Every genre has its typical or expected loudness levels and if 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 DJ. So what about streaming? This 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? Hey, to break it to you. Every little thing is not going to be all right.
Let me explain. Loves or loudness units full scale is the measurement we use for comparing perceived 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 loves 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 minus 14 loves, so they are the same perceived loudness level. Correct? You listen and be the judge.
Wait a second. I thought if I just make my song minus 14 loves 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 1 is a much more balanced mix. It provides ample volume in the lows, mids and highs.
Where song 2 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. So although they're both minus 14 loves, the mix balance in song 2 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.
There's so much shit that goes into this and that is exactly what I want to talk about now. 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. Now 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. They've 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. They weren't given some able to interact to magically achieve loudness. Straight up, they know their shit. They've 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. I'll drop a link in the description and comments for anyone who wants to work with that level of personalization. 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. Step one for everyone is going to be using reference tracks to learn what the general loves range is for your genre. This will be drastically different, dependent on the kind of music you make. If you're 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. The most 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. Those sounds will just mask each other. 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 timbre characteristics from layer to layer
spread them across different octaves and frequencies. Have them sit in different parts of the stereo field. Think monover stereo. Left, 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 synths, but it could also be applied to things like your drums. All 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. I'd 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, making sure the contour of our mix was correct. One of my favorite little cheats to get this right is using a tool called match EQ. However,
I'm not going to use it the way you might think. Think you're poising in terms of which match EQ 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. Metric AB 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 plugin is going to start to understand the general mix balance in the low, mids, and highs. Let 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 EQ my mix to match the balance of the reference track. It's showing me where I might need to push some volume or where I might need to reduce some volume to get my
mix balanced to be similar. It's pretty sick, right? Good. Now turn that plugin off because we're not going to use it. Instead, we're just going to have it guide us to those problem areas and we are going to fix it ourselves. For 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, so flip back and forth between yours in the reference, focus on those frequencies and notice which elements in your track are a little
quiet compared to the elements in their track. Find a little tip though with this tool, try to use more than one reference track to compare to. The more the merrier here, you will get a more accurate mix balance if you do it that way. I can also do a pretty simple eyeball test by using a spectrum
overlay like this in metric AB. I 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. These play a huge role
in the perceived loudness of your song. Dynamics are good. We want things to sound dynamic but not necessarily be dynamic. The 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. The three dynamic tools we're going to talk about are compressors, clippers, and limiters. Compressors can do some very helpful things. They can be
used to shape a sound similar to an ADSR 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 their incredibly dynamic performance. As the volume
changes word to word, phrase to phrase, we can level that out or take this drum loop as an example. Notice this one hit is louder than the 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 do? 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 and lowering the volume, right? Of course, I could also do this by putting a compressor on and it's going to do the same exact thing. 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 Moosa 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? But 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 stray peaks, eliminating them allows your whole song to be louder. Now, you might be thinking, my song doesn't have those stray peaks because if they did, I would have heard
them and I would have fixed them already. Well, I hate to break it to you. You can't hear these, neither can I. Let's run a test. Which of these two sounds is the louder one hitting zero decibels.
Let me guess, you naturally thought the one that sounded louder is probably the one hitting zero dB, right? Well, you would have been wrong because the louder sound was actually quieter
in terms of peak volume. What my meter was telling me, your ears don't always understand peak volume. They're better at understanding perceived volume or average volume, volume over time. Peak 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 ear to understand. So, these peaks could be all over your mix,
spiking way above everything else, preventing you from pushing things louder in the end. But, if we can clip these earlier in the process, problem solved. Now, how do we figure this out if we
can't hear them? You can visualize these peaks on individual sounds, groups or even your entire mix using an oscilloscope plugin. Once you've identified them, you can go in with a clipper and begin to remove those peaks by having the peaks exceed a 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 are noisy to begin with. The distortion sort of blends in with it.
We're on like a smooth musical instrument. That distortion and crackle become super obvious.
I do think it's worth mentioning here that 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. Soft clipping usually sounds better if you're going to be pushing things. This could 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.
Limitors are another tool that can be used to control dynamics, including those peak examples we just went through. Limitors are often a bit cleaner sounding and this usually works well when you do need to control peaks on those musical instruments. They typically don't produce
the distortion as fast as a clipper would. Limitors 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. They're 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. A limiter or clipper is usually the final plugin on our chain that we slam our song into. This would be your safety net which doesn't allow volume to exceed zero dB. It 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. But notice 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 dBs, let's compare it to the reference tracks. Here on Metric AB, I have my loudness section which shows me all my loves values and I can make comparisons. I 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 that has a shit ton of low end. Come join Rus and I over there.