Great voice, good performance, good song but........so much compression.....I hope it is only on the clip, but my experiences with Adele recordings is that the production is very maxed out, so loud I hardly have to use my ampI sincerely hope they will release a more ''audiophile'' version in 24 bit, Adele's immense talent deserves it.
Vocals: Waves Q6 & De‑esser, Digirack EQIII, Lo‑Fi & Trim, Pultec EQ, Urei 1176, Tube‑Tech CL1B, various spring reverbs and delays.The Lo‑Fi plug‑in got another outing on the backing vocals, where some tonal shaping was applied with EQIII.
"I had the Q6 on the chorus vocal, notching out 930, 1634 and 3175 Hz very, very heavily: ‑18dB, ‑18dB and ‑12.1dB respectively, with very narrow Q. I also had the EQIII on the lead‑vocal sub, notching something out again. Something obviously needed to be taken out. The vocal is the most important thing in the track, and taking those frequencies out allowed me to keep it up front in the mix, particularly in the chorus. You can never account for what mic the vocals were recorded on, and whatever it is that bugs me, I can take it out. 'T' on the lead vocal bus is the [Massey] Tapehead plug‑in, which wasn't used, but I did use two Waves De‑essers, one taking out at 5449Hz and the other at 11004Hz. Rather than use one to try to cover all the sibilance I used two. I do that quite often.
Tom Elmhirst always creates stem mixes, and in the case of 'Rolling In The Deep', these were recalled and augmented with extra sub‑bass and vocal parts for the release version."Regarding the outboard, I had the Pultec EQ, Urei 1176 and the Tube‑Tech CL1B on the lead vocal sub insert (desk channel 25). The Pultec boosted around 100Hz and 12k. It's colourful, but not drastic. There was not a lot of gain. The blackface Urei had fast attack and fast release, whereas the Tube‑Tech had slow attack and slow release, it was more evening out the level. You can use compression as an effect, but on the vocal you mainly want control. You want to set it up right so you're not constantly moving the channel fader to fit the vocal in the mix. If you're constantly moving the fader, rather than just doing the occasional ride, you know that you need to look at your compression. There's also Paul's Roland Space Echo track, which I used throughout, and which was the only lead vocal effect in the first chorus. On the backing vocals I had the Digirack Trim, again the Lo‑Fi, and the EQIII, cutting a bit around 405Hz and boosting a little around 3.17k. I used quite a few spring reverbs on the backing vocals, because I wanted them to have a lot more ambience. In the choruses I would also have added several delays. The delays make the backing vocals swing a bit, and they also fill up the space and make sure that they fit in the mix.”
Final mix: Manley Vari‑Mu, Chandler Curvebender, Cranesong HEDD.
"The session was in 24/96, and I mixed back into it, going via the Manley Vari‑Mu, the Chandler Curvebender EQ and the Cranesong HEDD tape simulator, which did the A‑D conversion. I like the colour that the HEDD adds. I'd have sent a reference mix to the record label, using the [Waves] L1 and the UltraMaximizer to beef up the volume, but I took these off when I sent the file to the mastering engineer. As I said earlier, the loudness wars are a daily battle for me, because all reference mixes come in pumped, and I have to compete with that. I can't send in a mix that sounds 10dB less loud then the reference mix. These days I use the UAD Precision Maximizer for that, which is the best one I've heard that doesn't shred the sound.” .
This is very good. Great songs, great sound quality, very laid back but also deep and intensive. This is the follow up to the ''Thousand Shades of Blue album'' and although a tough act to follow, Carmen Gomes third album for Sound Liaison does not disappoint.
