First, decide which “louder” you mean
There are two kinds of louder, and they need different fixes. The first is level: the song comes out of a speaker louder, with nothing in between. The second is how loud it sounds next to other songs once a streaming service has evened the levels out, which most of them now do by default.
On its default setting, Spotify plays music at -14 LUFS, so a master that measures louder is simply turned down by the difference. Pushing the level higher does not make the song louder for that listener. It only removes dynamic range the normalizer will not give back. How Spotify’s normalization works has the details for that platform.
So if the goal is to sound as loud as a commercial release on a streaming service, the work below is about how loud the song feels at the same measured level: balance, low end and tone. If the goal is a file that plays loud everywhere, including places that do not normalize, the same work comes first and the master comes after it.
Measure before you change anything
Two numbers tell you where you stand. Integrated loudness, in LUFS, is how loud the whole song is over its length. True peak, in dBTP, is the highest point the waveform reaches once it is rebuilt for playback. Our free LUFS and true peak meter reads both from the finished file in your browser, without uploading it.
Measure the bounced file, not the mix bus, because the file is what ships. Then measure a commercial track you admire the same way. If yours measures quieter, there is level to gain. If it measures about the same and still sounds smaller, the answer is in the mix, not in the master.
Compare by ear at matched levels, too. The louder of two versions almost always sounds better for the first few seconds, which is exactly how people fool themselves while pushing a limiter. Turn the louder one down until both measure the same, then decide.
Why turning it up clips
A digital file has a hard ceiling, 0 dBFS. Any sample that would go above it is cut off flat, and that flattening is clipping: the crunchy distortion you hear when a song is simply turned up too far.
The ceiling arrives sooner than most meters show. A file stores samples, and the waveform rebuilt between them can rise above the highest sample, so a track that never touches 0 dBFS on a sample meter can still clip in a converter or in a lossy encode. That is why masters are measured in true peak. LUFS vs true peak explains the difference.
The practical consequence: the loudest few milliseconds of a song decide how far everything else can be raised. Usually those milliseconds are drum hits and the low end.
Loudness is made in the mix
A limiter on the master can only raise what the mix allows. Most of the extra loudness people want comes from four mix decisions.
- Control the low end. Bass usually carries more energy than anything else in a mix, and together with the kick it sets most of the peaks. Cut the low rumble from every part that is not bass or kick, and let the kick and bass share the bottom instead of stacking on top of each other. A tidy low end leaves room to raise the whole song at the same peak.
- Give the midrange its weight. Hearing is most sensitive in the upper midrange, where the presence of voices and most instruments lives, so energy there reads as loudness far more than energy in the deep bass. It is why a mix that sounds huge on studio monitors can sound small on a phone.
- Tame the sharpest transients. A snare that peaks far above everything else forces the whole song down to make room for it. Gentle compression on the drums lowers those peaks so the rest can come up.
- Keep the arrangement clear. Two parts fighting in the same range add level without adding loudness you can hear. Removing one of them often makes the song sound louder at a lower reading.
How to EQ vocals covers the midrange side of this for the part listeners follow most closely.
Then the master: compression, then limiting
Once the mix is balanced, the master adds the last few decibels. In this order:
- Glue first, gently. Light compression on the whole mix evens out the level between sections, so the limiter has less to do.
- Set the limiter’s ceiling in true peak. Use a true-peak or oversampling limiter with its ceiling at -1 dBTP. That is the ceiling Spotify asks for, and it asks for -2 dBTP on masters louder than -14 LUFS, because louder tracks distort more easily when they are encoded for streaming.
- Raise the input in small steps. Listen to the drums as you go. When the kick and snare start to lose their punch, or the song starts to pump, you have gone past the point where more level is worth having. Back off a little.
- Measure the exported file again, loudness and true peak, and compare it at matched level with your reference.
Some engineers put a clipper before the limiter to shave the sharpest peaks, because brief clipping of a few samples can be less audible than a limiter working harder. It is a real technique, and an easy one to overdo. Let your ears, not a target number, decide when to stop.
How loud is loud enough?
There is no single correct number. A streaming service that normalizes plays a -14 LUFS master and a much louder one at the same level, so there extra loudness buys nothing and costs dynamics. Where nothing normalizes, a louder master does play louder, and the trade runs the other way.
A sensible default is to master for how the song sounds, keep true peak under the ceiling, and stop when more level makes it worse. How to master a song walks through the whole process.
When the quickest fix is a master
If the mix is finished and you want a release-ready level without learning a limiter first, Euphona’s AI mastering chooses the loudness for the material and the destination, using the platforms’ published figures, and reports the measured loudness and true peak before and after. You can hear the result free, matched in level against your original, before deciding whether to buy the full-quality file.
The questions people actually ask
Why is my song quieter than other songs?
Either it measures quieter, and there is level to gain once the mix leaves room for it, or it measures about the same and sounds smaller. The second is a balance problem: too much energy in the deep bass, too little in the midrange, or sharp transients holding the level down. Measure first, because the two have different fixes.
Can a limiter make my song louder without clipping?
Yes, up to a point. A limiter with a true-peak ceiling stops the waveform crossing that ceiling, so the file does not clip. What it cannot do is add loudness for free: past a certain amount of gain reduction you hear it as lost punch and pumping, which is distortion of a different kind.
What LUFS should I aim for?
For streaming there is no need to beat -14 LUFS, because louder masters are turned down to that level on Spotify’s default setting. Master to sound right, keep true peak under -1 dBTP, and let the platform set the playback level.
How do I make my song louder on TikTok or Instagram?
The same way as anywhere else: balance the mix, then master with a true-peak ceiling. The app will encode your file again when you upload it, and a master that keeps some true-peak headroom comes through that encode cleaner than one pushed right to the edge.
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