Dreams or Landslide demos or outtakes?

[drzubritsky]

Originally Posted by silvasprings

This is the best way I've heard this described! I was trying to explain this to some people the other day. Top 40 radio stations just sound "pixelated/mechanized" to me (*cough* I'm talking to you Gaga, Katy Perry etc etc)
This version of Landslide is no where near as good as the version on Crystal Visions. The first time I listened to the Soundstage CD I thought it sounded strange, especially Beauty and the Beast. It just didn't sound right to my ears.

What you're hearing is almost certainly Autotune, a ubiquitous software these days that automatically corrects vocals so that every note is perfectly on pitch. Almost all mainstream pop & country records today have their vocals autotuned.

Autotune is actually a variant of the same software that created the vocoder-like sound on Cher's hit "Believe" back in the late 90s.

Unfortunately, heavy autotuning results in an overprocessed, un-human sound. Even the best singers have small moments when their voice strays slightly off-pitch; this isn't really a bad thing...it adds character and depth to the performance. Autotune kills the character of a vocal by making everything "perfect".