DigitalMusicProduction wrote:To summarise then, floating at around -15dBFS to -20dBFS with no peaks any higher then -6dBFS is best recommended for a clean signal recording...
Correct.
And then, as a separate stage in creating your album, you can 'master' those individual recordings to make them compliant with the specs for the streaming services.
That means using one of the Loudness metering tools to assess the Integrated Loudness of value of each track and the True Peak level. Some tools require playing the track in real time, others can do it as an off-line process by analysing the file.
Once you have the numbers for your raw track you can assess how they compare to the target loudness specified by the streaming service, and raise/lower the track level as necessary. If raising the level you may need to introduce some brickwall limiting so ensure the transient peaks don't exceed the maximum True Peak value allowed by the streaming service.
Alternatively, you could just upload your raw recorded tracks and let the streaming service do any processing required automatically.... However, although all services will turn excessively loud tracks down, not all will raise the level for tracks with an Integrated Loudness value below the target. So it's generally best to correct the tracks yourself so that you know it's as good as it can be.
The Loudness penalty website is a really great site where you can drag and drop your track, and it will analyse and tell you what different streaming services will make of it.
https://www.loudnesspenalty.com/
