The Mastering Show · February 28 · 34 min

The Mastering Show #106 - Are dynamics dead ?!

I see it every day: “The Loudness Wars are over - loud won. Get over it” And it’s easy to see why. The average mainstream release hits -8 LUFS integrated or more; club releases regularly hit -6 or even -4 LUFS and are peaking well above zero; every other post you see on social media is about a new limiter or clipping strategy… As the creator of Dynamic Range Day and Loudness Penalty, I should probably just give up and get my hat, right ? Maybe…. But maybe not. In this episode I dig into the evidence in 2026, and try to decide whether dynamics really are dead or not, looking at: The LUFS of the biggest recent releases Why no-one hears it Are mixes built too loud to be dynamic ? Why music fans don’t care (which could be good news) - and who does What do we do about it ? Reasons to be optimistic about dynamics in 2026 Links and more episodes here: www.themasteringshow.com/episode-106 Mentioned in this episode: Mastering Click HERE to work with Ian Leapwing Find out more about Leapwing's plugins Learn to master ! Click HERE to see Ian's courses and mastering resources

0:00-34:49

Play in

transcript

No transcript — this publisher did not publish one.

show notes

I see it every day: “The Loudness Wars are over - loud won. Get over it”

And it’s easy to see why. The average mainstream release hits -8 LUFS integrated or more; club releases regularly hit -6 or even -4 LUFS and are peaking well above zero; every other post you see on social media is about a new limiter or clipping strategy…

As the creator of Dynamic Range Day and Loudness Penalty, I should probably just give up and get my hat, right ?

Maybe….

But maybe not.

In this episode I dig into the evidence in 2026, and try to decide whether dynamics really are dead or not, looking at: