Sound quality on What About Now
 

Is it me or is the sound quality of Jon's vocals really bad. It sounds like they put his vocals only a old style MP3. I thought I'd bought a fake copy of the album first time I heard it. Jon's vocals (and indeed all the music instruments) usually sound a lot clearer.

It's really noticable if you play the songs alongside all the other albums.

The mixing/mastering on What About Now is horrid.

Yeah, the overall mix is terrible. Only a few songs sound decent to my ears. And it's not just vocals. Army Of One for me could be a great instrumental song if the overall sound was much more clear. Also for me, Richie's back vocals seem even more autotuned than Jon's, wondering what's that all about.

Wondering how that's all about, cause with Shanks, for better or worse, his previously mixed Jovi albums had a much clearer sound. Sure, Jon's vocals may need some effects to sound better, but why make the whole band sound so "dirty"?

The whole production is horribly compressed on that album. Just completely brick walled and zero dynamic range. The same can mostly be said for and Bon Jovi album after Crush so it's not just a John Shanks thing.

There have been several topics regarding the loudness war (which is what WAN and most CD's from the last 15 years suffer from) but the mixing of this album in particular was discussed not long ago...

http://www.drycounty.com/jovitalk/sh...light=Loudness

The album is pretty much a write-off from beginning to end.
I really wonder in the future if Jon owns up and admits it's shit in the same way he does with the 7800 album.

The production it's crap, I think the record wouldn't be that bad if it had a better mastering.

Ever since Shanks arrived, things have gone downhill. I don't think it's a coincidence.

Get Rick Ruben in for the next album.

It's just the direction they took with the album. If Jon's vocals were mixed in a dirty way to hide his damaged vocal chords and the instrumental part of the album was to sound cleaner it would sound really disjointed. But, I do believe it's less to do with covering up and more to do with sounding relevant. More and more records these days sound like that. It's not just a Shanks thing, it was a creative decision made by the entire team. Check out Richie's album, a number of tracks are mixed that exact same way, I can barely hear 'Burn the candle down' because of it.

Just wanted to add, people can say all they want about John Shanks, and I might even agree on some points but, The Circle was beautifully produced, mixed and mastered. Definitely light years ahead of WAN....

Oh yeah I hate the effect on Burn the candle down.

What's left of me has possibly the worst vocal mixing on any bon Jovi song. It's painful to turn it up which is annoying as I really enjoy the song.