Jessie Ware - What's Your Pleasure? - mixing quality.

[MitchT]

Love this album - the songs, the music, her voice... but has anyone else listened to it and felt that the whole thing sounds somewhat muffled? It's like the mixing lacks that essential width and clarity that it needs in order to really pop. OK, I listen on YouTube music, but other things I listen to the same way have all the sparkle that this seems to lack. I can't believe something that sounds so muddy was signed off for release.

[MitchT]

I'd never heard of her before she released "Spotlight" as a single, but having checked out some of her older stuff it seems that this sound is a theme throughout her work. "What's Your Pleasure" is quite a dancey and electronic sounding album and, IMO, should really have been produced with the clarity that you associate with dance and electronic music. To me it sounds like it lacks width and has been compressed excessively.

Anyway, I dragged my favourite track from the album ("The Kill") into Logic Pro, hit it with some mastering plug-ins and it's now a long way to sounding like it I'd prefer it to. I suspect the only way to really sort it though is to go back to the mix and master it again.

[MitchT]

Actually, I think big part of the problem is visible here...

[MitchT]

Louis Balfour said:

What are we looking at there?

It's been mastered so loud that there's no dynamic range left and it sounds like it's suffocating itself!