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That is very interesting to see-- you don't even have to listen to it to tell how compressed it is. To my mind, there is no reason to release an alto/acoustic piano artist with this treatment. Compare that with Norah Jones' first record (probably the template for this new generation of piano singers?) which was very well-recorded and performed. It seems clear that hyper-compression is a sonic choice now, just like autotuning, quantized rhythm section, etc. So this is an example of a producer taking a $250,000 acoustic piano and a good singer using a $10,000 mic and making it sound like 49 cents.
I believe it isn't an example. I believe it is the overwhelming norm. Adele's voice is among the biggest reasons to listen. In most of this album, its swallowed up nearly all the time. We could offer additional examples, but a list a couple orders of magnitude smaller are finding those not like this.
This is from the album 25 which was the #1 selling album of 2015 world wide. Is that because the sound production is so good, or because it was Adele's first album in 5 years?
Telefunken U47 microphone on her voice. So yeah, not far from $10k.
Here are the culprits behind the sound though maybe they were just making a customer happy. Lists mastering and mix people.
https://sterling-sound.com/discography/25/
The mastering guys won two Grammies for their 'masterful' work. Album of the year and record of the year for mastering.
Doing a little looking for more info. 5 layers of reverb were uses on her voice prior to mastering. 4 layers of compression on her voice just during the initial tracking. Along with EQ, multiple delay steps and some other bits of gear along the way to add color and vibrancy.
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