The mastering engineer should take care of this.

You're mastering at home? Well... fill the waveform until it distorts. That makes it about the same as everyone else.

I'm just a newbie in my home setup. About to get a MacBook Pro and Logic and see what kind of trouble I can get into.

You live in Scotland? I used to live in Ayr back around 1980 when I was a pre-teen. Now I'm in Colorado, U.S.

Same thing applies :)

"I.e. that when listening to songs and then mine comes up, the listener doesn't have to reach for the volume knob one way or the other. "

Want them to reach for the off button?

Make all of YOURS the same levels as each other. You'll never get them to sound just like everyone else's.

Pull up 5 or 10 different songs from 5 or 10 different artists and play them. Do they sound the same? Probably not.

If you want it to sound as bad as the latest Metallica offering...do as Codemonkey said.:wink:

And, there's a difference in "peak levels" anyway. If you settle at, say, -6...whatever, but you have some that are compressed to nearly a straight line, and some that are more dynamic....they will both peak at -6, but the compressed ones will be louder, overall, then the dynamic ones. But, the dynamic ones will probably sound better once you turn them up.

Kapt.Krunch

Read the bob Katz book, see the chapter about K level system. Adopt that.

Depends on your style of genre.
Hip-Hop musicians should keep their instrumentals at -3 to -6 db BEFORE laying the vocals. If you need more help, message me. I'll help you out.

majormusic wrote: Depends on your style of genre.
Hip-Hop musicians should keep their instrumentals at -3 to -6 db BEFORE laying the vocals. If you need more help, message me. I'll help you out.

Uhhh....really?

I don't know if you understood the question. If you did, then your answer is even more scary.

He's talking about root means squared levels.