ytliek wrote:
When you say the "whistle's getting swallowed by the band..." could that be a matter of who is "leading" at the moment? Does the whistle have to lead at all times? Could Noreen be moving away from microphone momentarily? (looking around at band, looking at sound engineers booth, etc., hence the whistle level drops out?) Or possibly, is it during postproduction where the engineers "adjust" everything, tracks, that the whistle level is dropped somewhat for whatever reason?
Could be any/all of those things in other circumstances, but here it's pretty well got to be a conscious artistic decision to present these tracks more as 'band' numbers because you'd never put out studio takes (as opposed to single-take live recordings) where you were 'losing' key instruments as suggested above. So, yes, the engineers (NB 'mixed by Frankie Gavin and Noreen O'Sullivan') will have known what they wanted and (as already stated) I 'still quite like the changing colours these bring to the whole', but some might argue that the whistle's still quite recessed for a 'solo' album on these two tracks.
Quote:
In sound recording, are each of the instrument levels/decibels supposed to be equal to each other?
No, balance is something you'd expect to judge by ear and is at least as much subjective as objective.