Level of vocal & brightness (past and present)

The sound today relative to the volume of vocals is a neo-60s sound as much as anything.  Back then the vocals on pop records were up front and *big*, because the vocal was the star of the show and had to be intelligible on any playback system in mono.  That’s the case even more so as you go back in time to lower fidelity recordings, all the way back to the singer standing closest to the mic/horn on the early sound recordings.

I think stereo and increased fidelity led to vocals moving backwards in the 70s-80s (especially the 80s) because engineers wanted to blend them into the wider, deeper stereo mixes that were now possible while keeping them mono compatible for PA and club systems and mono TV broadcasts.

If anything, vocals started moving up again in the mid 90s because that’s when digital limiting starts reducing the average dynamic range with each subsequent year, and when you hit a certain level of compression depth is one of the first things to go.  If you get a chance, listen to the original mastering of “Thriller” vs a later compressed version and you can hear how things that were originally quieter background elements are much closer to the front of the mix now.

Now it’s used because of the loudness wars, the music is barely original and sucks, the recording quality sucks, the mixers and producers suck. They hit the limiter so hard that the reverb send pumps louder than the vocal. Or it’s an insert. Level and brightness? It’s uneven, has tuning artifacts and is too loud! Sit it in space? Who cares! As long as it’s audible at that point.

And even if nothing sucks, if everything is fake but the god damn vocals, I want to shelve everything else to hide that’s it’s fake!

I always wondered if this may also be somewhat a side-effect of some bright mics that were meant to help overcome the loss of high-frequencies when recording to tape.  Those same mics got used on digital recordings, resulting in some really bright vocals, then that became a thing and everyone else wanted that sound (or maybe they were just using the same mics too)?

Fortunately I'm Limited to begin with.

heavily limited modern records that sound great? That’s very tough since the limiters have a ton of artifacts and most of them eventually become pcm sample clippers and dug in, they all mess everything up by pumping it around, distorting it, and clipping it.

Just on my phone right now that sounds great: Ahmad Jamal’s Crystals and Digital Works, Captain Beyond’s self-titled, the recent Von Karajan Bruckner remixes, the Jerusalem self-titled, Swervedriver’s Mezcal Head and Son of Mustang Ford, Rowland S. Howard’s Teenage Snuff Film.

I have some limited stuff on there that sounds okay but it would sound better if everything except the for the overcompressed vocals weren’t turned into a noise like hash of distortion or pumped behind them or you could hear more than one drum at once.

There are so many records that turn into hash because of older technology and now people misuse modern technology to turn it into hash. And sometimes I’m paid to turn things into hash and fuzz. Believe me the records would sound better if they weren’t fuzzed or slammed. I still hear good sounding at times pop, rock, and metal records where the moment the chorus hits everything becomes more distorted by the limiter or the drums pump everything in and out and even oscillate the vocal back and forth. There’s a lot of rap with subdued beats and cleanly recorded vocals now that sounds okay limited but you can still hear the vocals are so squashed and you can hear even their breaths sound maximized.