Sonnox Dynamics Manual

[Lavonda Busing]

Ourlistening environments (speakers, rooms, and headphones) each have unique quirks that we must learn to listen through and workaround. Without consistent listening habits, these quirks are difficult to learn.

Listening to the same thing on repeat - this is what happens to us when we lose all objectivity; we become fixated on some details and miss others altogether. The bigger picture, the mix and the music are entirely lost. ListenHub gives you the perceptual resets and consistency required, so you can hear with fresh ears again.

The macOS desktop app runs in your menu bar and controls the systemwide audio device, just like the desktop app/mixer window for your audio interfaces. It can be controlled by the mobile app or by its own desktop window.

When the desktop app is not running - not visible in your menu bar - audio continues uninterrupted but the mobile app will be unable to connect and FX Chain plugin processing will be inactive.

Insert the plugin in the final slot of your mix/master bus. Or, if your DAW allows it, insert the plugin after the mix/bounce bus to ensure that your monitor control processing cannot affect your bounced mixes.

Since our perception of frequency balance changes with loudness, we will be able to make more consistent mixing and mastering decisions when we choose our listening loudness intentionally. This includes:

For safety, ListenHub's Loud volume setting applies no boost or attenuation: 0 dB. We recommend initially selecting Normal volume and turning your speakers up by about 6 dB so that Normal is as loud as your normal listening volume before using ListenHub.

To protect your ears and speakers, ListenHub automatically mutes itself if the output loudness will be higher than +12 dB. The mute happens immediately, preventing any excessively loud signal from escaping.

Summary: What we most care about is whether our music will sound as exciting and powerful or as calm and soothing (or anywhere between) as the other music our fans will choose to listen to. To do this with ListenHub: Make all the loudest sections similar in Loudness and balance quieter sections to taste. Keep Dynamics green to stay competitive, though squashing into the yellow for a few seconds is OK!

Loudness is typically measured in LUFS (Loudness Units relative to Full Scale). This measurement emulates how our perception of relative loudness is affected by the frequency balance and dynamics of a signal.

However, if two signals both appear to be the same level on your DAW's track meters, one will usually sound louder than the other. Signals which show the same level on a LUFS meter will sound about the same loudness as each other.

Music streaming services typically measure the loudness of each song and turn it up or down so that each song sounds about the same loudness overall. This prevents large differences in loudness between songs in a playlist that would have us frequently reaching for the volume control constantly.

They don't all use exactly the same measurement, but they do all use Integrated Loudness or a similar measurement that integrates over the entire song. There can also be different loudness normalisation targets depending on your player settings. However, platforms are converging on normalising to an Integrated Loudness of -14 LUFS by default.

Imagine a song with loud sections and quiet sections. Its Integrated Loudness will be somewhere between the Short-Term Loudness measurements during the quiet and loud sections. So if we want to ensure that a streaming service doesn't need to turn it up or down, we would need to re-run an Integrated Loudness measurement over the entire song each time we adjust our mix/master processing!

If we watch a real-time Short-Term Loudness meter to save time, trying to tweak the mix so that the meter tends to read around -14 all the time, we'll end up with very little loudness contrast between different sections of the song. Sometimes that is what we want, however, it's a choice best made for purely artistic reasons.

Imagine two songs that both measure an Integrated Loudness of -14 LUFS. Song A measures the same loudness all the way through with little contrast between different sections. Song B has large loudness differences between verses and choruses so that the choruses sound particularly exciting and ear-catching (compared to the verses!)

After loudness normalisation, the loud sections of Song B may sound louder, and more impactful, than Song A! There's no right or wrong here, neither is better than the other. What matters is the artistic decision about which experience we want our listeners to have.

A single Integrated Loudness value doesn't help differentiate between or guide towards either of these experiences while mixing and mastering, and the streaming platforms will normalise our music no matter what we do. Therefore focusing on Integrated Loudness doesn't help us make decisions.

There's a faster, easier, and more useful thing to focus on! We can let the streaming services turn our music up or down as much as they need to - they're going to do it anyway - and switch our focus away from "loudness" and onto excitement and impact.

We've seen how two songs that have the same Integrated Loudness value could have large differences in their loudness contrast over time. Two short sections of music that measure the same Short-Term Loudness value can sound more/less exciting, punchy, or tiring based largely on how much transient detail has been left after compression and limiting. Since those characteristics, rather than absolute loudness, are what we care most about, we need another measurement!

If we want the loudest, most impactful moments of our music to sound impactful and competitive compared to other music, we need a healthy balance between the Peak Level and the Short-Term Loudness. This measurement is often referred to as PSR (Peak to Short-Term Loudness Ratio) and gives a sense of how dynamically compressed/limited the signal is. This is what ListenHub's Dynamics meter shows.

Aim for the loudest sections of the song to have enough Dynamics and transient detail left to sound exciting and impactful but not so much that, once loudness normalised, it sounds weak compared to other music in the genre.

Extreme compression and limiting, such that Dynamics (PSR) reads very low, tends to result in music that sounds exciting at first but is tiring to listen to. And due to how Integrated Loudness measurements work, it will tend to be turned down more by streaming platforms and hence sound overall quieter than if it had a little more Dynamics!

Ensure that the loudest sections show a healthy level of Dynamics for the genre. Generally speaking, compressing and limiting so that ListenHub's Dynamics meter reads yellow for a few seconds is fine - that section of the music will sound loud and impactful. But very low Dynamics for a long time tends to mean that transient detail has been compressed more than necessary.

One of the most useful perceptual resets is to compare your mix/master with other music that either represents the sound you're aiming for or that you are extremely familiar with. When comparing like this it's important for the audio streams to be loudness-matched and for the switching back and forth to be fast and glitch-free. ListenHub helps with both!

The ListenHub audio device always has three stereo inputs, even if the hardware audio interface it's sending to has only one stereo output. This means everything continues working the same way if you switch from a studio audio interface with many output channels to built-in speakers/headphones or a smaller audio interface, for example when taking a laptop on the road.

Audio from music and video player applications (Apple Music, Spotify etc) will stream into ListenHub's System input. Route audio into the Main input by changing the output channels of your DAW's mix bus to 3&4. See How to change your DAW mix bus output channels if you aren't sure how to do this.

If your audio interface has multiple stereo outputs and you have a second pair of studio speakers, enable the Alt output by selecting which output channels it should send to in ListenHub's preferences page

The inputs are matched by trimming each to -20 LUFS (short-term) so that an unmastered mix is unlikely to overload ListenHub's output after being matched. This LUFS level can be adjusted in the preferences page

Match Input Loudness is useful even when you are only using one of ListenHub's inputs, for example when using only the plugin. Enabling Match or tapping Update will trim the output to -20 LUFS, or the chosen level in the Preferences page. Thus, whenever Match is enabled you will be hearing a consistent level from your speakers or headphones.

It can be easier to focus on listening for when something is not quite right than to decide when it is just right. Try switching Mono on and off while listening to the full mix. In Mono, hard-panned instruments and vocals will become slightly quieter. If the centre-panned lead vocals, bass, and lead rhythmic elements are not the loudest things in the mix in Mono, they're probably a little too quiet overall.

After working on a mix for a while we become accustomed to differences in frequency balance between the left and right. Toggling Swap L/R is a very quick way to reset your ears, sometimes revealing that what has sounded balanced for the last few hours is leaning to one side or the other in some parts of the spectrum.

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