Amy Winehouse - Wake Up Alone (Dynamic Edit)

This is what I like to call a ‘dynamic edit’ of “Wake Up Alone” by Amy Winehouse! *Back to Black* faced a lot of dynamic range compression (not to be confused with data compression, which concerns MP3s and such), and that seems to audibly distort much of the instrumentation and make much of the vocals audibly hiss. I attempt to undo that distortion, making the album sound clearer and hopefully more listenable as a result! For those not in the know, the Loudness War is a phenomenon beginning in the mid-90s onward, in which music was mastered louder and louder, with the underlying reasoning being that louder music sounds better, and thus, sells better. As with any medium, however, there is a peak loudness a signal can reach, so dynamic range compression (which makes the louder parts of the signal quieter while keeping the quiet parts the same loudness) and sometimes even clipping (attempting to make a signal louder than maximum loudness) were used to make music as loud as possible. The issue with this is that overuse of dynamic range compression and clipping can make music fatiguing to listen to, and sometimes even audibly distorted. Additionally, clipping, poor compressors, or overuse of compressors can result in audible artifacts such as hiss or crackle being heard atop the signal. As I previously noted, a lot of the vocals from Winehouse seem to audibly crackle from this compression, such as on “Rehab”, “Back to Black”, and “Tears Dry on Their Own”. Normally I’d...