Is this a digital clip, or something else?

[Rimbo 27002]

I'm definitely not hearing this with my best headphones, but I can't help but think that the "Go ahead" around 18s into this Adele track has a clip in it. It might be thin picks on the guitar, it might be a guttural click in her singing, but honestly ... sounds like clipping.

 

[Rimbo 27002]

Definitely hoping @jimmyjazz can chime in here ---^

[jimmyjazz 47127]

I'm on shitty earbuds at work . . . I hear what you're referring to but I'm not sure what it is.  I'll listen on monitors at home.

[Rimbo 27002]

6 hours ago, jimmyjazz said:

I'm on shitty earbuds at work . . . I hear what you're referring to but I'm not sure what it is.  I'll listen on monitors at home.

Same problem. I put on my monitors and... I'll post what I heard after you've had a chance, so I don't poison the well.

[jimmyjazz 47127]

I don't think it clipped.  On (reasonably) full range monitors it sounds like a guttural vocal phrase.  

I'd be shocked if the mix or mastering engineers on such a record let it clip.  Vevo couldn't be trusted, but that's surely not the loudest point in the song.  I think it's just a phrasing thing.

[Foggy Notion 1202]

If you're interested, here's a fairly detailed explanation of the recording and mixing of that song by the guys who worked on it...

https://www.soundonsound.com/people/tom-elmhirst-recording-adele-rolling-deep
 

 

[Rimbo 27002]

1 hour ago, jimmyjazz said:

I don't think it clipped.  On (reasonably) full range monitors it sounds like a guttural vocal phrase.  

I'd be shocked if the mix or mastering engineers on such a record let it clip.  Vevo couldn't be trusted, but that's surely not the loudest point in the song.  I think it's just a phrasing thing.

When I put the good headphones on, I actually heard what sounded like a couple of clips on that. And not volume-oriented clips, but the kind that happen with cheap audio editing software, when the waveform is cut near its peak and then pasted back into a spot where the waveform was off. I used to have to manually edit these all the time when I was hand-modifying samples back in the 90s. The DAW I used later on, SONAR 1.0, fixed those for you, so it's truly astonishing to hear it here, since I assume Pro Tools does what SONAR does. It didn't sound anything like a guttural click on the headphones, although it could've passed for thin picks on the guitars.

This was forwarded to me from a friend who had heard the exact same thing on the CD. And this wouldn't be the first time I'd heard bad mixing on an album that otherwise had no business being mixed badly -- it typically happens when the artist tries to do their own producing, or you have an inexperienced producer. (Rush basically had to remix the whole of Vapor Trails, Geddy did such a horrid job the first time.)

Thanks for the reference, @Foggy Notion.

[kopp0e 1135]

The closest thing yo might get to a DMX concert anytime soon: (old video clip): 

 

[kopp0e 1135]

8 hours ago, Rimbo said:

I'm definitely not hearing this with my best headphones, but I can't help but think that the "Go ahead" around 18s into this Adele track has a clip in it. It might be thin picks on the guitar, it might be a guttural click in her singing, but honestly ... sounds like clipping.

 

That chick is superb in her vocals...

[Paul Wesley 3313]

You can’t hear it on the YouTube video, but if you go to a streaming site and play the song, you hear almost the same sound right at the top of the song (like before the first note of the acoustic).  

I’d guess that somebody’s headphone cable tapped against the mic stand, or a wood chair made a pop, or something else in the room that we’d have a hard time guessing.  It’s not in her vocal, and I doubt it’s an artifact from an amateurish digital edit.  

I’m kind of happy they left it in.  As y’all know, it’s pretty easy these days to make something hypertuned, grid-perfect, uber-clean, and in that process, absent of emotional content.  

I mean, truthfully, I’ll bet you could get it out pretty easily with izotope or several other noise reduction programs. 

Edited December 21, 2018 by Paul Wesley

[kopp0e 1135]

I have no idea what this is the intro to, but I like the song: