De-clipping Adele - was I wrong?

[@AstronautDown]

It’s perfectly valid for anyone to say they would do different settings here, and also perfectly valid to say “leave it as is, we don’t care”. But there’s no validity in arguing for any actual artistic merit in this distortion because it is not the result of artistic choice. Unless Adele’s mic technique is so good she chose on the spot to dial in this clipping :)

[@quintessenceSL]

Just to be the loyal opposition- the artistic choice is in the releasing of it, so obviously it was good enough. I'd say there is nothing to be gained from leaving it that way though. It was made more clear, not given the ambiance of Hammersmith with orchestral accompaniment. For a restoration, it was tasteful and in-line with the original recording.

[@Beatsbasteln]

who says that this recording was not edited before upload? it likely is digital clipping

[@ReeseWitherknife]

This really went from painfully unlistenable and my girlfriend would yell at me to turn it down, to completely fine. Really interesting to see these tools in action by someone adept at using them!

[@ProductionAdvice]

That's great to hear - follow-up, does she think the result is listenable? (I've heard it suggested that women are more likely to dislike distortion of this type)

[@Leo.Brodie]

I definitely prefer to remove distractions that take me out of the performance, but only in a way that is not itself distracting. The little bit of distortion that remained in your version subtly works to emphasize the amazing power of Adele's voice, without hurting my ears. Thank you for the great demonstration of this tool!

[@wvvwkx]

Izotope RX is pure magic

[@DerekPower]

This reminds me of the attitude when it comes to film restoration. The goal is to have a nice clean image and that is true to the original. But sometimes the sources can only give you so much. Furthermore, you can get to a point where you can ruin it by trying correct everything. While it’s not always clear, the aim should be having as a few distractions as possible.

[@joelonsdale]

Yes, you fixed it. Arguing that the original is in any way better is just dishonest. In a way, the cleaned version is MORE "authentic" as Adele's intention was certainly not to record a distorted mess. Besides, the original still exists for all to hear and recoil from.

[@daleclyne6057]

Great job. I have no problem with doing this kind of cleanup because the distortion was not intended by the artists.

[@Miraki]

absolutely amazing cleanup, i enjoy seeing how you use rx to process the audio. Much more listenable by the end, the original is...painful. Fantastic insight here, thank you for the video.

[@MakePopMusic]

This came out great! Definitely a solid technique for mixing and engineering less than stellar source files. I still stand by my opinion that this isn't totally necessary because it was just a laptop video for promo, and I feel like the original still holds merit. But this is unarguably easier to listen to (so maybe something her team should keep in mind for the future).

[@amirjubran1845]

Trying to argue that the original is closer to the artistic intent is lost on me. Ideally we would be in her room listening to the live performance, and the tools used in this video brought us closer to that ideal.

[@rtosborne4]

I think this is an excellent teaching opportunity and discussion. I personally love the performance Adele gives here and love that she feels comfortable to just throw a video like this on KZbin. I’ve seen lots of artists post voice memos as promo material and it’s an excellent tool for engagement; this video hits that same part of my brain, as a fan: “Wow, Adele sounds amazing even while lounging on a couch!”. That said, I have trouble with the distortion as well. I’d probably watch the video once, show it to some friends (“How is she so talented?!) and then hope she records it with a better setup in the future. Ha! But I love that you’ve shown how to clean up audio like this. I’ve gotten more than a handful of iPhone recordings as a mixer/mastering engineer that I’ve been expected to “fix” (usually because of damaged source files or Covid restrictions hindering access to better equipment). Your advice here is super helpful as both a technical tutorial and as a basis for facilitating conversations on “fixing” in mixing/mastering. Cheers!

[@ProductionAdvice]

My pleasure, that was why I made the video so I'm really glad you liked it 👍

[@macktheinterloper]

I'll put it this way - your de-clipped version didn't have me throw my headphones off in horror and disgust, so it's quite the improvement. I don't know what the people mixing the original were thinking, but I can't stand this clipped shriek. It's genuinely painful to hear. Granted, there's only so much you can do with this sort of source material, but I feel this was a job well done.

[@ProductionAdvice]

To be clear, no-one "produced" the original, Adele just recorded it herself on a laptop. It's strange that no-one suggested cleaning it up in this way to her - maybe they did and she didn't want it...? We'll probably never know

[@dominatusonido]

Very interesting, Ian. What amazes me is how an artist like Adele can do that and go with it. I mean, I am an audio engineer, but my wife came when I was watching this video and she said “why the fuck does Adele sound so bad?”. I mean, she likes Adele but she doesn’t even listen to music so often. I then showed to her what you did to restore it and she went like “and why didn’t Adele do it in the first place? It’s so much better”. That was fun. Thank you!

[@ProductionAdvice]

Thanks, great to hear that it’s not just studio nerds who feel this way 🙂

[@TheMirolab]

Capturing "the moment" is of course a precious thing... but I would think that most artists, if they could go back in time and capture that moment at higher quality, they would do so. There are of course artists that seek out lo-fi distortions as part of their sound, but that's a different argument. As an engineer.... I simply see this as a "problem that needs fixing" to make a final product sound better.

[@Aaezil]

its amazing the tech we have now! Thank you for the video.

[@paszTube]

The clipped distorted audio almost certainly wasn't an artistic choice, so fixing it made sense.

[@MrKrisstain]

Thanks! Always nice to learn new things about RX. I agree with all your choices except the second after 5min and 56 seconds (timecode 15:53). The high frequency gritty distortion during really causes me pain. The physical reaction is actually so great that I do not even hear the subharmonic problems during that second: the higher frequency simply completely masks it. Guess this is a part of the subjective nature of this kind of work!

[@samphelps856]

He also didn't touch it because it's really really hard to catch. The lower is a lot more straightforward without effecting other frequencies

[@Bluelagoonstudios]

You can have great results by using an iPhone and a external microphone, if you know what you you doing. A few months ago I mixed a song where an acoustic guitar appeared recorded in Atlanta the night before and got mixed in LA. 24bit and 48Khz like the rest of the tracks. I love progress and the internet. But if this has done by herself, it's time to learn her a few basics about recording audio. Maybe with a small interface and a decent microphone. With a better end product? a win win without to use plugins to repair her vocals.

[@AvithOrtega]

Very good and interesting. I am willing to do this to many recent albums that got this annoying clipping distortion, such as the album Utopia by Bjork.

[@PatMcGuireMusic]

Yes, 100% correct to remove that distortion. I really do believe that there are a good few people out there who have lost their critical listening abilities. It's a shame. I hope Adele has not.

[@volchonokilliR]

A bit unrelated advice, but if someone will be inspired to use declipping on material that is just very slightly clipped, declipper can do more harm than good on settings that are even just a little bit not fitting. Listen very carefully to articulation and dynamics of the voice before and after using this tool

[@ProductionAdvice]

Yes, good point. Although it can give outstanding results on lightly (digitally) clipped material

[@XtremeKremaTor]

Her voice sounds like call to prayer through the tannoy.

[@liegon]

I wonder - maybe another way to deal with this is might be not to get rid of distortion, but to try to make it more pleasant, for example by modifying the overtones so they follow the harmony, or sound more analog.

[@ProductionAdvice]

You mean using Melodyne or something? Maybe, but I think the distortion harmonics will be such a jumbled mess and bunched up so tightly you’d really struggle to identify and disentangle them. (And BTW please let’s avoid the trap of saying this sounds ‘digital’. It sounds like badly distorted digital, but done right digital audio can sound every bit as good as, and often better than, analogue)

[@liegon]

@@ProductionAdvice I was thinking of using filters that react to the harmony or the fundamentals. Sure, I know that digital audio resolves much higher than analog. I meant 'analog distortion' in the sense of odd harmonics or a more complex harmonic spectrum than what would be produced by digital clipping. But that was just a guess, I won't claim that I am an expert here. ;-)

[@ProductionAdvice]

@@liegon It's an interesting idea, I wouldn't know how to do it in practise, but maybe there's a Melodyne ninja out there who can give it a try...

[@rocketman374]

Well, this almost tempted me to upgrade to RX9 advanced. ALMOST... Lol. That Deconstruct tool looks pretty handy!

[@ProductionAdvice]

I'm using RX 7 here 🙂

[@rocketman374]

@@ProductionAdvice ah, that must be an advanced tool then. I just have the standard edition

[@soundproductionandadvice]

Thanks, Ian but OUCH. ;)

[@ProductionAdvice]

I know 😕

[@Dani-El.]

I'm not a fan of Adele at all (too much whining and wailing), but you did a good job here. That software is like witchcraft - when used with the right ears and know-how of course. Well done!

[@nealgiedd4689]

How much of this type of work could you do with Reaper's spectral editing features?

[@ProductionAdvice]

I'm not a Reaper expert so I can't comment I'm afraid. 80% of the work in this case is done by de-clipping, and spectral editing is useful but the Deconstruct process does a great job in this example. My guess would be that you can do some of it, but if you're serious about restoration then RX is worth every penny

[@bobrv8]

Definitely not Ian. I know your goal is to make the music the best it can be and do no harm. Personally I couldn't stand the original distorted section - it was painful. This video is part of Adele's amazing journey and so is part of music history. As such I think her amazing performance should be preserved in the best possible manner without destroying the performance. I think you achieved that. I would love to have heard the conversation between Adele and the mastering engineer for this video :-)

[@ProductionAdvice]

Oh, I’m sure no audio engineers came anywhere near it, Bob! I think this will have been a straight upload. What’s interesting is wondering whether anyone suggested cleaning it up, and whether Adele said no…

[@bobrv8]

Hope so Ian.

[@RonnieVaiArovo]

Painful video to listen to Lol but well articulated. 👍

[@purpletapes1940]

Bless you!

[@chemeketacommunitycollegeb1617]

I'm guessing she owns a Macbook. Maybe someone should show her how to adjust input levels?

[@themagicianofsound]

I am really impressed by what you did and by the results, this is really amazing, I didn't know that we could do that much to remove distortion in music, thanks for sharing your great knowledge ! 😀🙏. Regarding the "is it better or not better", if I think like an engineer or audiophile, then your version is, to me, absolutely better. Let say that there are 1% or 2% of people "like us" 😂😂😂, I guess this process could please 1% or 2% more people than the original haha, and the 98% or 99% other people may just "don't care at all", but I'm just blindly throwing numbers here from my little experience in music on the social media.... Maybe some additional EQ and light compression could be added after your processing to bring back some little lost power in the vocals to make the results even "more perfect and impressive" (but I know at some points we have to stop haha). Although I am not a fan of it, there is that relatively new trend on the social media about live phone recordings which I will formulate in the words "we don't care about the music's quality but rather about the artist and its authenticity", but again, this is just what I see all over the place and not my point of view. There are singers ("social media artists") on KZbin who only record from their cell phone with very average quality, no sound editing, and they have millions of subscribers and millions of views on their videos and almost only positive comments. Others will record perfect sound and incredible video clips and they barely get a few hundreds of views per videos and can barely reach 1k subscribers after years on the social media. And others will record perfect sound and videos and also get millions of subscribers and views so, what really attracts the fans, that's hard to clearly say and every context is different too. Most artists that I know or work with prefer to release their stuff unedited when it's from their cell phone but for sure they care a lot about the quality when it's about singles and albums. And another reality of this modern era is that most people listen to music on the social media from the speaker of their cell phone or from cheap earbuds in noisy environments like in the bus or in the train, so they don't pay attention to these details. They also listen to each live performance only one time, maybe 2, then it's gone and in the garbage trash forever, contrary to many years ago when people were listening hundreds of times to each performance and were paying attention to every subtle detail in the sound. These kind of live recordings in 2021 are intended to be quick and throwable stuff by most artists (although it remains on the channel or Instagram page, most people won't listen to it again after the first time so they won't judge severely). These quick releases create "movement" on the social media page, which is just good for the social media algorithms. But I repeat it, I am not a fan of this philosophy, but I can clearly perceive that it's everywhere like this now. If I was Adele and knowing the traffic that she gets, I would send you my cell phone recording and would possibly choose your version or a further fined-tuned version with subtle final EQ for example.

[@ProductionAdvice]

Thanks for the reply, glad you liked the video. I'm sure you're right that many people wouldn't think this was necessary/worth doing, but I really hope you're wrong that only 1-2% would appreciate it! I like to think that most people would prefer the less distorted version if they heard it. As far as your comment about phone speakers etc goes, I often hear this argument, but I'm going to push back gently. My son was listening to this on his phone with earbuds, and I could tell how distorted it was simply from the leakage...!

[@themagicianofsound]

@@ProductionAdvice I love that story with your son ! 😍😂 I personally totally agree that it sounds terrible, to me as well. But I copy/paste here a few of the recent comments that I just found under that video on KZbin... How, very honestly, can we explain this ? 😂 "OMG this is equally or even better than the studio version. Aside from that voice that only Adele have, it's really the soul,the heart and the story telling. Love this song,and you Adele!" "Adele's Raw Voice is healing :)" "At the end she complains there were a couple notes. LOL she kills me. This was effing flawless!" "This recording is so amazing, really beyond anything that words can even try to express. What a special woman, what an astonishing voice, just a force of nature. Thank you, dear Adele, for being you!!!!💗🌺" I mean... these comments ARE THERE, how is that possible ? 😂 An interesting comment though is this one: "anyone else feel like the audio topping out just adds to the heartbreak of this?? dang she's something else"

[@DonBernhard]

I think most untrained ears will hear the difference, even if they don't know exactly what the difference is. If Ian's edited version had been released first, listeners would likely have the same (or even higher) praise for Adele's performance. The geeks in the room (those here) would be less put off and this discussion wouldn't be happening. Regarding listening to something once or twice and throwing it away, I believe there is a lot of truth to that these days. So, the recording/mixing/mastering quality matters less. I have a favorite recording on Deutsche Grammophon of Karl Boehm, Vienna Philharmonic playing Brahms. There's one instance in there--a brief moment--when I could hear a non musical rattle. It could be a chair creak or a floor when someone moved or even the conductor's bones (jk). I doubt that I would have ever noticed it had I only listened a couple of times, but as a favorite I would listen to it dozens of times, hearing something new each time. Different times, and certainly a different genre.

[@themagicianofsound]

​@@DonBernhard Very interesting response ! Also the fact that music is now free plays a role in all this. In the past, we needed to buy the music, or wait until it plays on radio. So it was "precious". It had great value. The artists making music and their production teams knew that people who would buy the album would listen continually to it and would pay attention to every single detail. Today, music is free. So we listen one time or 2 to a new song, we click on "like", we write a quick comment and maybe we listen again another time and then, we switch to listening to tens, hundreds or thousands of other songs in free playlists on Spotify, on KZbin, on Instagram, on TikTok, etc... and even worse, we spend so much time on the social media that we just don't have time anymore to REALLY enjoy music ("we" I mean the modern society in general) . That contributes to this trend of making things quickly one after the other and making music that, to me, is far from what we had in the 70s, 80s and 90s in terms of complexity and care in regards with the sound. I was listening to a Queen song on radio while driving yesterday and I was like "WOW we are millions years from this quality and complexity these days", it was a sublime listening experience compared to the modern pop music that we hear all over the place these days.... Also, who will remember that cell phone recording release by Adele in 5 or 10 years... but most Beatles fans or Queen fans know every single detail of every single live performance that they did through their career. The perception and overall appreciation of music releases has changed drastically in the last decade and even more in the last 5 years with TikTok, Instagram stories and all these social media network which highly promote short-lived stuff....

[@ProductionAdvice]

@@themagicianofsound I actually think Adele will stand the test of time, precisely because she's authentic and genuinely musical, even if the productions aren't as complex. Here's another reaction from my son, after watching the start of this video: "Wow, it sounds so much worse when you can't see her video!" - which I think is really interesting and another valid point. We (perhaps) have different standards and a different type of focus on "real" video versus pure audio recordings. And perhaps audio engineers are less likely to be influenced by this...? BTW there are also comments like this one: "The fact that she sounds better than most singers are able to deliver in the studio, while chilling on her couch is simply amazing, although her MacBook microphone was not able to capture this amazing performance." - which I think nails it, for me

[@normalizedaudio2481]

Those darn clippers. We got the right to hear what we want. KZbinrs are too loud. You tell them and they just ignore.

[@bootlegnjack]

Mate its all good I don't think you need to agonize over the ethics just show us how you did it.

[@michaelglennwilliams6278]

I personally cringe at the distortion, both in the first and improved versions. The distortion is not part of her voice at all, and doesn't feel authentic to me. Rather it sounds artificial. You did a good job of reducing much of it. I would have personally gone farther.

[@Beatsbasteln]

about 4:40: you said it yourself. it's from a file ripped off youtube. so yeah, i'd say this is pure digital clipping + the youtube encoder. when exporting audio for web uploads it is common knowledge that one should always have the highest peak at less or equal -1db exactly for this reason. peaks can just appear quite randomly due to this perculiar kind of interpolation. i personally assume that adele originally recorded this without clipping, but then some editor realized that she wasn't in tune at some of these notes, because that's definitely true, but melodyne would sound too obvious with the piano and room noise all over the place, so they had to take a different solution. the only other things that can distract from wrong pitch are reverbs and distortion, but not one would like to hear an adele ballad with tons of reverb, so clipping distortion is the best solution. you can just say it was not on purpose and kind of happened in the moment at the end and it will also nostalgically trigger all the kids who ever made some recordings of concerts with their phone. the end result is not a sound that is supposed to sound good, but just to remind people of good times

[@ProductionAdvice]

Wow, that's quite a conspiracy theory. Personally I think the idea that she just didn't know she was recording so hot is more plausible

[@Beatsbasteln]

@@ProductionAdvice i don't know a lot about adele. not my type of music. but i think the glorious tone of her voice is kind of her main selling point. i can barely imagine someone with such a vocal talent failing to recognize a recording being way too crappy. i can however imagine marketing-orientated sounddesign decisions happening for a global pop music artist's social media output. anyway i'd rather call it an assumption than a conspiracy. after all i'm not dissing her or her team for it or saying that an evil elite is trying to lure us into hell or so

[@TheMirolab]

Even a good engineer would be hard pressed to "guess" at how much headroom to leave for Adele's massive voice! Overdriving the end of the song is not surprising at all.... and if she was really recording and listening just on a laptop, and she's not an engineer... totally easy mistake to make.

[@Beatsbasteln]

@@TheMirolab honestly i just don't want to believe that she can be so sloppy about a recording of her own voice. i am already finding her tracks annoying in the radio because they are just so strong. but at least they are clean and have attitude. now with this new information it could be that adele simply doesn't hears how she sounds and that would be sad

[@1loveMusic2003]

The distortion was not intentional IMO. When Adele is no longer around; everything she did will be cleaned up I guarantee. If I was able to hear a Bach concert, I would want to hear it clean. It's musical history.

[@thelongplaylp]

Not wrong!

[@DonBernhard]

To be honest, the recording doesn't do much for me in the first place. Maybe because I'm not a huge fan. (I do appreciate her talent.) The room sound is not pleasant. The piano is barely audible, at times. The mic, even when not clipping, does not capture her voice well. I guess I'm old school and think the goal of recording is to capture the performance as transparently as possible. Any artifacts, distortion, or other effects, especially accidentally introduced, take away from it all. The value of such archival recordings are for historical interest, I guess. Much like the Beatles "Get Back" documentary. But it's near impossible to predict what nugget of an archive will be valuable in the future and to what audience.

[@SamHocking]

Wasn't it just recorded on a mobile phone? Not sure I was expecting more than crap sound really.

[@ProductionAdvice]

@@SamHocking Straight to a laptop. And with that in mind, I don't think it's too bad - but not hi-fi, for sure

[@SamHocking]

@@ProductionAdvice Thanks for the info. I think it's a shame it wasn't better audio, but all quite spontaneuous and naive I guess. Having a mic and recording gear all setup making it perfect would also have removed quite a bit from the performance. A good use of iZotope RX though. I regularly use it to improve all sorts of audio and commercial music not to my liking.

[@Wourghk]

This passes for music today?

[@ProductionAdvice]

You should listen to the rest of the song

[@mathyoooo2]

While I really dislike the clipping distortion of the original to me it still sounds more natural than the swirly artifacts rx introduces

[@ProductionAdvice]

Interesting - I think many of those artefacts are actually remnants of the clipping distortion - intermodulation distortion interacting with her vibrato. So the restoration is actually revealing them once the massive HF distortion is reduced, rather than being caused by the de-clipping. (Unless you mean specifically the "de-construct" processing, which does cause some perceptual coding artefacts.) Either way I can't agree that the original distortion sounds 'natural' in any way - but thanks for the feedback!

[@mathyoooo2]

@@ProductionAdvice I guess natural is the wrong word, familiar might be better. I'm used to hearing distortion on vocals, but not used to hearing the reconstruction artefacts

[@ProductionAdvice]

@@mathyoooo2 Fair enough - do you really hear distortion *this* extreme that often, though ? I've heard distortion like this before, but mostly on really aggressive genres

[@mathyoooo2]

@@ProductionAdvice not this extreme of course and as you said only in more aggressive genres. But as you said this recording doesn't sound great before or after restoration and I wouldn't really listen to either version. I just prefer the sound of the distortion over the rx artefacts.

[@mathyoooo2]

@@ProductionAdvice regarding the intermodulation distortion: I think that is why I prefer the original. I like that the clipping distortion masks the sizzling intermodulation distortion

[@PANTECHNICONRecordings]

This would have been fascinating had I not had to stop watching because, distorted or not, it’s just an atrocious bit of singing.

[@ProductionAdvice]

I’d encourage you to listen to the rest of the song, she sings it beautifully, I chose the most distorted moment for technical reasons, not musical ones 🙂

[@Jimthehumanoid]

I'm not sure there is any rescuing that performance.

[@ProductionAdvice]

Harsh. Did you listen to the rest of it ? I chose those notes for technical reasons, not musical ones

[@Jimthehumanoid]

@@ProductionAdvice Apologies for my glib comment. I appreciate the technical aspect of the the video; What you can achieve with RX is nothing short of incredible and the end result is much cleaner. I would argue that it is still as shrill and unlistenable as it was to start with which is more down to the quality of her voice.

[@ProductionAdvice]

@@Jimthehumanoid Fair enough, but my question stands. Two thirds of the performance are in the softer part of her register and are quite lovely, IMO

[@Jimthehumanoid]

@@ProductionAdvice I respect your opinion and apologize again for my original harsh comment. She just isn't my cup of tea I guess!

[@BukanIbuMu]

@@Jimthehumanoid you just don't like her voice. I love her voice too much lol.

[@bogatibokorakos]

Adele seems to be the Beyoncé of the UK :))) you can't say anything (even constructive things like in this video) about her :))))) The "holy cow of Europe" :))))

[@kadiummusic]

Sounds like she's in pain!

[@ibits9527]

The original is utterly awful, and while your attempt to clean the mess resulted in it being less offensive, it's still awful. i have no idea how anyone can say that this type of distortion is natural, authentic, or in any way artistic tasteful. The appropriate course of action for such audio is hitting the delete key.

[@joelonsdale]

No man, no! Would you also delete the crummy off-mic ramblings of the Beatles? Dispose of an out of focus photograph of Queen Victoria? No. It might not be a-grade but it's interesting, warts and all.

[@ProductionAdvice]

Are you sure ? I saw one comment suggesting that this was the first time she'd recorded a demo of the song, before she even started working on the album in a studio. I don't know if that's true, but if it *is* then I think this could be a recording that her fans would value even with the audio faults. I agree, the distortion sounds terrible and my attempts to improve it only have limited success. I'm still not sure deleting it is necessary, though...

[@chemeketacommunitycollegeb1617]

@@PureHoney_ASMR LOL

[@adissabovic]

You got paid to de-clipp?

[@ProductionAdvice]

This video ? No. For client's projects ? Sometimes

[@circemuller1933]

ilike not Adele She Screaming and Horror

[@AGS1000]

I simply would not listen to a track that distorted, no matter who was singing. The distortion brings no pleasure to my ears. Adele did no justice to her talent by releasing such badly produced audio. I would have to have a personal connection (or serious profit potential) for me to listen to that over and over to fix it.

[@ProductionAdvice]

Are you suggesting I have an ulterior motive ?! Of course I do, I want people to watch my videos 😛

[@garethde-witt6433]

It didn’t help her

[@cresshead]

or just hit mute :)