I grew up in the '70s and '80s listening to music and vocals were sometimes buried as per the trend of the day in many cases. Only in country music was there this consistent elevation of the vocal above the music and in the 90s it got really noticeable.

Nowadays, it seems like the vocal in most pop music sits miles above the music at an 11 or 12 out of 10!

I'm of the belief that the lead vocal should be just slightly above the balance of the rest of the music 9.8-10 but I tell you, whenever a mono source for modern music pops up, I realized just how loud the vocal is in comparison with the backing tracks.

Personally, I figured that if you can hear every lyric, and if hearing the lyrics is the artist's intention for the listener, then your mix is close to perfect!

Perspectives from all ages are welcome on this thread. I confess I'm a 56-year-old who has heard it all but have come to this conclusion through years of trying to figure out 'what is acceptably the best' is in terms of mixing dynamics.

 

No, the vocals are not louder. The modern mixes are denser (reduced dynamic range) and therefore everything sounds more upfront. As we are more sensitive to the midrange and the vocals happen to be there... voila!

If you play a 70's (original) recording at very low levels half of the song (and often times the vocals) dissapears. If you play a modern mix, you'll just lose a bit of high end and very low end and the rest of the song is fully audible.

If age is relevant, I'm 41

 

I guess back in the day you had less "independent" singers and more bands, so protagonism was shared more, considering also that the way you would share it was not as "standarized" (and i'm using the term very loosely here) as it is now with modern bands

It's just an idea though, i have no proof of any of that.

That said, there's a lot i don't like about modern music, but the level of the vocals is far down the list.

 

As a producer I say this a lot. I tend to produce from the vocals out. It is the heart of the song, so I feel they need to have the spotlight, and I work to have the band not compete for the spotlight. It's a fine line, because we want the band to be heard but it's their job to support the vocals. I think this has more to do with arrangement, but mix does come into play. Pretty much every decision I make is based on what I feel the vocals need. Again this is mostly about arrangement, but I purposely put the vocals on top. I have people tell me I have them too much on top and sometimes I will agree and back it down, but I purposely put the vocals on top. As I said it's the heart of the song so why not? If done right the band can still be bodacious behind the vox, but the keyword here is "behind". Band's job is support.

 

Lyrics in modern pop are much more dense with important meanings
this is the reason why the volume is higher

 

so basically what your saying is the future sucks, I've noticed this to be the case for a few years now. Fuck the future

 

As a side note a lot of ppl render different final mixes, with several vocal levels for mastering purpose.
Mastering eng choosing the best candidate. Because it is a key.

As i said in a previous post, vocals (when present) are the reference to human ear in audio, like skin tones are reference to human eyes in photo.
A reference for the BRAIN behind them, of course.

Search for "fujifilm waxy skin" to see the problem in photography domain (human "eyes" being more sensitive to green, like human ears to mids ...and so vocals (and guitar tone ))

Another way to see things is mixing "power" : nowadays we can have INFINITE number of EQ, Compressor ... on every channel.
Back in the early days, some elements where left "like recorded".
So it was a lot harder to sit vocals in the mix. Making room for them was harder.

 

I said exactly what I said with those words. As it was the case in the past, when some records sound good and other awful - we now have the same: some records sound insanely good by any timeless standard (for example newly released Silk Sonic - and pretty much any Bruno Mars production) and some sound shitty.

Also don't forget that music, as any other art, is about pushing forward. The guitar distortion, when was invented, was consider awful. Now we can't live without it. We literally consider iconic a sound that sucks.

Luckily in this age you have the privilege (and I don't use this word very often due to current PC madness) to make your own music according to your own aesthetic and you can also curate and only listen the songs that are to your liking.

 

it depends on many factors,
what genres you're listening on what speakers at what distance,

I prefer listening/mixing on midfield 3-way speakers 1.5-2m far away, or even more, literally everything sounds at amazing clarity to me,
that said I enjoy instrumental music more, and love film/game scores with lots of dynamics,

I observed mediocre speakers are smearing vocal/voice intelligibility a lot, so for most engineers it's safer to push vocal more forward above the rest - fun fact on the opposite side is, movies are nowadays having speech buried under everything else, so without subtitles I don't understand anything

 

The "vocal buried" effect is due to bad playback of the middle front speaker.
There is a dedicated "dialogue" speaker, especially created to make vocals more audible in movies.

When original sound is in 3.1, 5.1 ... and played on stereo, "dialogue" speaker need to be mixed back into stereo.
Some settings are too low OR simply disabled.

The opposite is true, too : when you listen to stereo on 3.1, 5.1 ... middle front speaker should be a mono summing of stereo.
If not, there is a hole in the middle because side speakers are often too far away to cover a "regular" stereo image.

YES, even professional projectionists make errors in their settings.
And many ppl in general, too.

I worked into cinema projection

some reading :
https://www.howtogeek.com/218949/htg-explains-why-the-dialogue-on-your-hdtv-is-too-quiet/

 

Maybe it's cuz I download a lot of .mkv files, but yeah - you'd swear the score and the sound effects are key.

ALSO - more actors than ever think they're method masters and suffer from mumble-itis. Back in the day (70's and prior) stage actors became movie actors a lot of the time, and intelligibility and projection overrode the idea of 'natural speak'. Now, a well-mumbled line looks like realistic acting (is it?) but I'd rather have heard the line mixed louder instead of me having to put on the sub-titles yet again.

 

When you watch live performances on the late-shows (any of them) what is the main problem? You CAN'T hear the lyrics half of the time. So how consistent is it when that's going on? Is it (maybe) because the lead vocalist is really out-of-tune most of the time and no amount of Waves-Live-Tune can fix them without being noticed?

 

FTFY

 

@Cardamom that is a very good question. But sadly one that I can't really answer due to the fact that I don't watch anything like that.

I'd really appreciate it if you could give me an example.

I will say that I don't know all that much about auto-tune. I have no idea as to how it's used live, nor applying it to a recorded vocal track.

I like my vocals to be raw. Going a bit sharp or flat doesn't bother me all that much. It's me.

 

Last edited: Jul 30, 2022

Nope, I'm with you and I hate it. And on my own projects I mix vocals back in the music more and everyone bitches about it.