Would a sound engineer release distorted vocals?

Yes, at mastering this might occur... vocals are often very compressed in rock and pop, and tend to be also processed so they stand prominent in the mix for maximum intelligibility and artistic feel, however I have noticed in a revealing system it’s not unusual to notice for very compressed and processed vocals that they are clipping and distorting slightly from the processors used ... I have some real recording vocal shockers .... you can sometimes look at who the engineers were on a master mix and see the tell tale traits from certain people in the business. It’s a real shame... I do find with live albums such tinkering occurs a lot less and can sometimes sound a lot better for a favourite track. Kate Nash is an example of an artist whose vocals often seem to get mangled horribly, but live versions of some of her tracks sound so much better and no horrible distortion...

I've heard it a few times on rock albums but sounds more like its clipping from over compression than anything. Sometimes its that bad you can hear it on the car stereo

Funny.  I’ve got Songs for the Lonely by Frank Sinatra on both Cd And vinyl.  On the very last track the very last few lyrics distort on the CD but not on the vinyl!

Mayor West posted:

I've heard it a few times on rock albums but sounds more like its clipping from over compression than anything. Sometimes its that bad you can hear it on the car stereo

Yeah over compressing won’t distort audibly in that sense . in fact they help do the opposite when mixing by avoiding peak clipping,  but pushing levels in processors can., or even pushing levels pre compression.

But as I say I believe much of this can be done at mastering time, and probably accounts for differences between master versions.. ie CD, vinyl, lossy download, etc.

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

Mayor West posted:

I've heard it a few times on rock albums but sounds more like its clipping from over compression than anything. Sometimes its that bad you can hear it on the car stereo

Yeah over compressing won’t distort audibly in that sense . in fact they help do the opposite when mixing by avoiding peak clipping,  but pushing levels in processors can., or even pushing levels pre compression.

But as I say I believe much of this can be done at mastering time, and probably accounts for differences between master versions.. ie CD, vinyl, lossy download, etc.

Makes you wonder though... do they not listen back to it before releasing and think, "Oo that doesn't sound very good actually?"

You already had a good and revealing system. If this compression like distortion happens after a cable change, I would at least check that the mains connections are well away from the signal leads.

Yes - I have an Eagles compilation album (I know) and on one of their tracks - peaceful easy feeling - the guitar break about halfway through this track is really distorted on the left channel, enough to make one think there is a connection problem in the system somewhere, I mean, it almost sounds like there is grit in the voice coil. This had me rather worried at first but I soon resorted to playing the same track back again but this time through my headphones (phew!) and it's the recording. I should stream the same track off the same album via qobuz really, just out of interest purposes.

Stephen - on the end of the Desperado CD I’ve noticed a slight distortion.  Unforgivable given that the original vinyl didn’t.  

Best regards,

Lindsay

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00s3h40

The Art of Remastering.

You might find this interesting, if you can get over some of the dumb questions which I hope are asked simply to inform the general public. There are 11 days left to listen to it.

Thanks for the responses (albeit confirming my concern). I am going to check all the cables later, Ardbeg10y, perhaps flexing them, but it’s a shame  if the sound fault lies in the material itself!

One of the most often applied effects on a vocal track is a tube distortion. Appart from EQ, dessing, harmonising, autotune, compression, reverb, echo, delay.... 

And that’s just a start of it.

Another trick is to take a vocal track, turn it into midi data, sample low synth underneath and mix them back.

So as you can see ‘pure’ vocal is actually hard to find

As far as I can tell from my own collection, the answer is a resounding yes for every single Oasis and Coldplay studio album ever released.

Probably no for Jennifer Warnes & Mark Knopfler's music though.

Foot tapper posted:

the answer is a resounding yes for every single Oasis and Coldplay studio album ever released.

Can't speak to Coldplay, but for Oasis I think that distorted vocals and a resultant psychedelic sound is the intended effect.

As for Adam's comment above, look back to Cher's 1998 hit "Believe" which really kindled the mainstream use of autotuned vocal distortion. Absolutely abhorrent IMO.