Hi,

Just comparing a "pop vocal" I got from downloading stems to a Splice vocal.
The pop vocals peaks look thinner and I can drive it hard into a limiter and hear no distortion but the Splice vocal distorts even at -6db.
Do they eq a lot of the waveform out or is it the way it's recorded?
Is this the key to getting a loud pop vocal just thin it out?

Pop vocal.



Splice vocal.

 

Last edited: May 7, 2021

If you want loud things you will sacrifice bass content. The first thing to distort is the lowest of frequencies as they have larger waveforms.

 

since you have the other stems, look and see if there is not another track which is eq'd to correspond with the one you are looking at.
you can get anything "loud" in your mix right?, if you give it it's own space(s) in the frequency spectrum.

does the Splice version seem to use "upward" compression, and try to fix stuff? and without any real direction from you..

 

Yea, that's the thing. I can't get it loud. These are the vocals soloed. I can cut the lows from the Splice vocal and still distortion. Even though there is no distortion on the sample. It just distorts when getting louder.
So in a mix it's still distorting. Where as I can put the pop vocal probably over anything, smash it with a limtier raise it to something crazy like 5 Lufs and it will probably be fine.
The pop vocal is somehow just cleaner. Is it because it's less dense?
It might sound similar but looking at them in the analyzer they are a lot different and I can raise the pop vocal a lot more.

 

are you compressiong and or de essing the vocals

 

Yes.

 

Try some expansion on the splice recording. The Mdm. Grande recording seems to have a very pure harmonic structure and is very flat from 400Hz to 4500Hz, it is might be a composite based on the lowest harmonic root in the octave between c4-c5. This type of process is where things like isolation and a dead vocal booth pay off but it isn't really necessary because the only thing I can see for certain is a pure note being held long enough for pic. They could be the same recording for all I know.

However, having a low and consistent noise-floor is the hallmark of a quality recording and it does help in reducing dynamic range.

What we have here is a classical example of seeing is not hearing.

No matter how hard I've tried through my life I've never been able to get drunk by looking at pictures of liquor bottles or watching beer commercials. A picture of steak has never filled my belly and in my early teens I would have have probably gotten every Playboy bunny in the mid mid 80s and early 90s 100% pregnant if a picture was like the real thing, like Tracy Morgan said, 5x 6x times a day for a month, yheaa it's going to stick.

 

What we have here is a classic example of hearing and then looking at an analyzer and seeing a huge difference, posting a picture of it, and somebody on the internet presuming otherwise.
Hearing and not looking at analyzers is not using all your tools and engineers need to stop talking that nonsense.
If you aren't looking at and analyzing wave forms then you aren't really that interested in your craft.
I've just been listening and looking at some other Splice vocals and they are similar to the pop vocal so looks it like it is just this vocal I've been working with. If I didn't use an analyzer I would continue to think it was something else.

 

I didn't say that analyzers are not useful.

I just said that in this particular case in regards to your issue with loudness, a static picture from analyzer doesn't really say much.

If you are not using all the tools at your disposal then you are not doing everything you can.

I am glad you got it sussed out.