You get the message on a Tuesday afternoon. “Sounds great, but can you make my mix louder?”
You already checked. The master hits -13.8 LUFS integrated, true peak at -1.1. The vocal sits at -8 momentary during the choruses. If you push the limiter harder, the transients will start pumping. If you don’t, the client thinks you didn’t do your job.
This is one of the most common feedback loops in freelance mixing, and it almost never has anything to do with actual loudness. When a client asks you to make my mix louder, they’re usually reacting to something else in the mix that reads as small, thin, or quiet. Your job is to figure out which one before you touch the limiter.
Here’s how to handle it without lecturing your client about streaming normalization or making your mix worse in the process.
What “Make My Mix Louder” Actually Means to a Non-Engineer
Clients don’t hear LUFS. They hear energy, presence, and impact. When they compare your mix to a reference they love, they’re comparing feelings, not measurements.
That’s why the request to make my mix louder can mean five different things depending on the client. Each one has a different fix.
- The reference track they’re comparing you to was mastered harder than yours
- The vocal isn’t sitting on top of the arrangement
- The low end feels weak on their playback system
- The mix has too much dynamic range for the genre
- They’re listening on a phone speaker with loudness normalization off
Only one of those problems is actually solved by raising the limiter ceiling. The other four get worse if you do.
Step One: Ask Where They Listened Before You Touch Anything
Before you touch a single fader, ask two questions. “What are you listening on?” and “What are you comparing it to?”
Ninety percent of the time, this reply unlocks the real problem. A client listening through their laptop speakers is going to think every mix sounds thin. A client comparing your -14 LUFS mix to a smashed 2005 rock reference is going to think yours sounds quiet, because it is by design.
Get the reference track. Import it into your session. Match the LUFS so you’re comparing apples to apples. If you drop the reference to your mix’s level and it still sounds fuller, then the problem isn’t loudness. It’s tonal balance, arrangement clarity, or bus glue.
However, if your mix at matched LUFS actually sounds smaller, you have a mix problem, not a mastering problem. Fix it upstream.
The Real Reasons Behind “Make My Mix Louder”
Once you know what the client is comparing you to, you can diagnose. Here are the four most common culprits behind the complaint, in the order you should check them.
1. The Reference Is Smashed and Yours Isn’t
This is the most common one. Your client picked a reference that clocks in at -8 LUFS integrated with three dB of crest factor. You mixed to -14 LUFS because that’s what Spotify normalizes to and you know a harder master will just get turned down anyway.
You’re technically right. It doesn’t matter. Your client’s ear says the reference sounds bigger, and that’s the only vote that counts.
Two options. Either master a second version to -10 LUFS so the client can hear it match at unity gain in a DAW, or explain briefly why Spotify will turn down anything below -14 anyway. If you go with the second, keep it short. The first option usually wins because clients trust their ears, not your explanation.
For more on handling client references, see “Make It Sound Like This Song” Is the Trap Every Mix Engineer Falls Into. Reference tracks are diagnostic tools, not spec sheets.
2. The Vocal Isn’t Cutting Through
If the client says “make my mix louder” and their reference is a hip-hop or pop track, they’re often really saying “I want to feel the vocal harder.” Vocal presence and mix loudness are easy to confuse.
Check your vocal at short-term LUFS. In pop and hip-hop, lead vocal peaks should sit around -8 to -10 short-term LUFS during choruses. If yours are at -12 to -14, your vocal is technically in the mix but it’s not on top of it.
Try these before you touch the master:
- 2 to 3 dB of parallel compression on the vocal bus
- A gentle 1 to 2 dB shelf around 3 to 5 kHz for presence
- Sidechain the music bus 0.5 dB against the vocal so the mix breathes around it
Do this before you add another dB of limiting. Every time.
The reason this works is perceptual, not technical. The Fletcher-Munson curve tells us the human ear is most sensitive between 2 and 5 kHz, which is exactly where most of the vocal’s intelligibility and presence live. Pushing the vocal in that range makes the entire mix feel louder without changing the master fader at all. If you want to go deeper on this, the AES has published extensively on equal-loudness contours and why they matter for mix decisions.
3. The Low End Feels Weak on Small Speakers
Small speakers can’t reproduce anything below 60 Hz. If your client is listening on a phone, laptop, or budget earbuds, all the sub work you did on the kick and 808 is invisible to them. As a result, they feel like the mix has no weight, and they translate that feeling into “make it louder.”
The fix isn’t more low end. It’s harmonic reinforcement in the 100 to 200 Hz range where small speakers can actually produce sound. Saturate the kick and bass so the harmonics live in the range consumer speakers can hit.
You’re not making the mix louder. You’re making the mix translate to the playback system the client actually uses.
4. The Dynamic Range Is Fighting the Genre
If you’re mixing modern country pop and the verse-to-chorus difference is 8 dB, the chorus is going to feel weak in a playlist context. The client hears it against Kane Brown and Morgan Wallen, both smashed to about 6 dB of crest factor, and the request follows.
Genre convention matters more than technical purity here. A folk record at -8 LUFS feels wrong. A pop record at -16 LUFS feels weak next to the rest of a playlist. Learn the loudness conventions of your genre and mix inside them, not around them.
What Not to Do When the Client Asks for a Louder Mix
The wrong answer to this request is almost always “add more limiting.”
Here’s what happens when you crank the master limiter another 2 dB to keep the client happy:
- Transients get flattened, so the mix loses punch
- The vocal starts pumping against the kick
- The stereo image narrows because the limiter compresses the sides differently than the center
- The mix sounds objectively worse on studio monitors, even if it reads louder on a phone
Furthermore, because Spotify normalizes to -14 LUFS anyway, the client won’t actually hear the loudness gain when the track streams. They’ll just hear a worse mix, and they won’t know why.
You made your work worse to solve a problem that wasn’t really about loudness. That’s the trap.
If your client insists on a hotter master after you’ve done the diagnostic, deliver two versions. Give them the -14 LUFS master you know is right, and a -10 LUFS “hot master” they can A/B against. Let their ears do the work. Nine times out of ten they’ll pick the quieter one after listening back.
How to Explain Streaming Normalization Without Sounding Like a Professor
If the diagnostic reveals that your mix is fine and the client just wants a higher number, you need to explain streaming normalization. However, you have about thirty seconds before their eyes glaze over.
Skip the LUFS acronym. Skip the history of the loudness war. Try this instead:
“Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube all turn every song down to the same volume before playing it. If I make yours louder here, they’ll just turn it down there. The songs you’re comparing this to are getting turned down too. Your ears aren’t lying, but the platforms have already leveled the playing field.”
Then send them the official Spotify loudness normalization page if they want to read more. Most won’t. But now they’ve heard it from an authority, not just from you.
The key is to explain it once, briefly, and then move on to the actual mix problem you diagnosed in Step One. Clients don’t want a lecture. They want to feel their song is done. For more on decoding vague feedback, see What “It Sounds Good But…” Really Means (And How to Fix It).
When “Make My Mix Louder” Really Does Mean the Mix Is Quiet
Occasionally, a client asks make my mix louder and they’re right. You mixed at -18 LUFS integrated because you were being conservative, and now the mastering handoff has to fight to get to release loudness without stripping dynamics.
The fix here is upstream, not on the master bus. Push individual elements harder. Saturate the drum bus. Bring the vocal bus up 2 dB. Add subtle harmonic excitement to the guitars in the 2 to 4 kHz range where the ear reads as loud.
Therefore, real loudness gain happens in the mix, not in the mastering chain. If you’re relying on a limiter to make your mix competitive, you’re doing it wrong. The mix should already feel loud. Mastering just puts a bow on it.
Set Expectations Before the “Louder” Question Comes Up
The best way to avoid the make my mix louder conversation is to never let it start. That means setting loudness expectations at the start of a project, before the client hears a single mix.
When a client sends you their initial files, ask three questions:
- What are two or three reference tracks you love the sound of?
- What platforms will this song release on?
- Do you have a mastering engineer, or am I delivering the final master?
Those three answers tell you the loudness target before you print a single fader move. If the client’s references are all smashed pop and they want to release on Spotify with no separate mastering, you know you’re mixing to hit around -10 to -12 LUFS integrated so a light mastering pass gets to -8 to -10 without brick-walling.
If you don’t ask those questions, you’ll spend three revision rounds guessing. Every revision round is time you’re not billing for.
Another move that saves a lot of downstream pain: send the client a quick note during the mixing stage that describes what to expect at delivery. Something like “the final mix will land around -14 LUFS integrated, which is the streaming target. When you A/B against your favorites, drop them down to match before comparing.” A one-line message like that, sent early, prevents the entire louder debate from starting in the first place. Clients almost never push back on numbers they were told about in advance. They push back on numbers they discover at delivery.
This is why organized client handoffs matter. When files arrive scattered across email, Dropbox links, and WhatsApp voice notes, you lose the context you need to make the right call before you start. A dedicated upload link like session.trackbloom.com keeps stems, references, and client notes in one place, grouped by instrument, so you’re not hunting for the reference track when the loudness debate starts.
The One-Sentence Answer to “Can You Make It Louder?”
When the message comes in and you know your mix is right, the shortest true answer is this:
“I can. But before I do, tell me what you’re comparing it to and what you’re listening on, because sometimes ‘louder’ means the mix needs a small change, not a hotter master.”
That single reply does three things. It shows the client you took the request seriously. It moves the conversation from a knob-turn to a diagnostic. Furthermore, it gives you the information you need to fix the actual problem, whatever it turns out to be.
Most of the time, once the client answers, they realize the reference is on their laptop speakers with normalization off. Or they haven’t compared at matched LUFS. Or they’re listening to a demo they smashed themselves as a rough mix reference. The request quietly goes away.
When it doesn’t, you have the diagnostic to make a real change. Either way, you didn’t crush a good mix to solve a fake problem. That’s the whole job.