"To The Metal"... Strange Vocal Issue

[Basque]

Hello everybody, first of all I'd like to say that I'm a guy from the Basque Country, great fan of Gamma Ray since 1990, I'm also musician and audio engineering hobbyist.

I think "To The Metal" is the best work since "Somewhere Out In Space" and I really love the album. It is aaaaawesome... hell yeaaaah!.

But I've noticed something strange and weird in the vocal production. I can hear a kind of mid-high frequencies sibilant noise in most of the songs... something like a a low-quality bit/samplerate or even mp3 artifact. rest of the instruments sounds good.
I don't know if it is just only my CD or everybody else did notice that issue.


BTW, I've seen Gamma Ray more than 10 or 12 times, but for the first time one of my bands will be supporting Gamma Ray in October. I'll post my experience then.

Cheers & beers.

[SRobbins]

Hey there Basque, congratulations on the October shows, I'm sure we'll all be looking forward to hearing about your experiences!

Can you give some examples of song parts, with times, and maybe a few of us can listen to those particular parts and compare observations. That might be the easiest way to figure this out.

I do know they used a lot of overdubs, if you watch the DVD that came with the album, they break Empathy down and show the overlays, where Kai is using different vocal techniques, which could be part of it, but I guess I'll be able to listen more closely with some examples

[Florian]

Indeed they use a lot of overdubs, as Kai says in the DVD, they recorded 60 tracks just to record "Empathy". That's a quite huge number of tracks heheheeee

[Basque]

It is not just a part, but all album.
There are some moments that I can hear it more clearly.
For example in Deadlands "The silence is broken. The beast going mad"... It can be due to the dynamic compression or desser.

It is not just my album, cause I checked Youtube videos and it is the same. In some players it is more noticeable than others. Perhaps I'm a geek obsessed with the audio production matters!!

[SRobbins]

Well, have you listened to the vinyl or the digital download? Youtube is the last place I would suggest looking to hear miscrepancies in audio files. It compresses the information even more than a regular mp3 and does all sorts of weird things. Just uploading it can completely jack up a file.

I'll take a listen later on and get a more in depth idea of what you're talking about.

I do know, again on Empathy, Kai kind of sounds like he has an echo/distortion thing going on, but I really think it was just an effect, especially if you compare the keyboards and his vocals, same kind of thing. I can't honestly see them spending all that time and money and putting an album out that purposefully had issues. They're too careful and too dedicated. I could see it maybe if it was some band with no experience in the studio or a low budget...

I'll take a listen later on after I get batteries for my Discman and will definitely see what it sounds like though.

[SSpocchi]

Try to watch the last dvd, especially in "the making of empathy". i think you'll find some answer to your question