RE: her voice. Her early stuff sounds more natural, you can hear her voice without effects added to them (although compressed, as is all digital now). The "Reputation" tracks have the gain on the electronic processing so high that it is mixed into her voice. Yes, it’s a manipulated amalgam of voice. Her voice has been run thru processing and cranked-up to the level of her natural vocal. Not all the tracks have this and I noticed it comes and goes within some tracks. As everybody can hear, her early music didn’t have all this crap added. Same with Katy Perry and the like, their early releases were more organic. The abuse of these effects have been embraced by Hip Hop producers and in turn was added to pop. Even in Kanye’s early music you could hear his voice. Now it’s sounds synthesized and electronic, and to my ears, I hear buzzing sounds in the vocals.
This has nothing to do with loudness, as I stated earlier, the recording, the mix, and the effects are separate stages in music production. Before the compression is added by the mastering engineer, I’ll bet her vocal track stands out above the backing tracks. After the high compression is added and the master is brickwalled, the gain can be boosted and all tracks are compressed together. There’s no more separation of vocals and instruments. We can call this the loudness stage, if you wish.
