The Mastering Show #105 - Loudness at the Grammys: is there REALLY a secret sauce ?

About this episode

The episode discusses loudness and dynamics of Grammy nominees for Best Song, featuring insights from Ian Vargo's article.

It was the Grammys this week - you can't have missed it ! And somewhere along the way I saw an article by Ian Vargo assessing the loudness and dynamics of the nominees for Best Song. In this episode I talk about what he discovered, and what my reaction is – and along the way, I talk about: The highest (and lowest !) LUFS measurements of the Best Song nominees How I feel about that What these songs sound like with more dynamics What difference does it make ? Is loudness really "part of the aesthetic" ? And what really does make a difference ? Links and more episodes here: www.themasteringshow.com/episode-105 Mentioned in this episode: Mastering Click HERE to work with Ian Leapwing Find out more about Leapwing's plugins Tools For Ian's mastering plugins, click HERE

People in this episode

Host: The Mastering Show Podcast

Topics covered

• loudness
• Grammys
• music dynamics
• Best Song nominees
• audio aesthetics

Keywords

• loudness
• Grammys
• LUFS
• music dynamics
• audio mastering

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Leapwing

Books & works: The Mastering Show

More episodes of The Mastering Show

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• The Mastering Show #108 - Why I was wrong about Loudness Range · April 29, 2026 · 33 min
• The Mastering Show #107 - Mastering for 1-Off Vinyl (and short runs) · March 31, 2026 · 1h 9m
• The Mastering Show #106 - Are dynamics dead ?! · February 28, 2026 · 35 min
• The Mastering Show #104 - Mastering for Sync ? What, Why and How · December 23, 2025 · 48 min
• The Mastering Show #103 – Technical versus Creative Mastering (Q&A) · November 28, 2025 · 35 min