Trying to opt out of loudness-war

[JEL]

UPDATE:
I screwed up on the first attempt (I blame the horse for throwing me off and will get back up on it, as the saying goes) so I went back to my old and more traditional method. Less experimental.

This one is louder but still relatively bright (I like bright, but I have tinnitus so maybe my bright is off relative to how others hear it)
I actually aim for a 3 dB curve (thank you Hollywood Records), and not the 4.5 or 6 that some recommend. I guess it's a matter of personal taste, or perhaps just a result of having listened to too much too loud music over the years.

Anyway, I was so inspired by Roy's sound (hear his version, it's super-cool) that I deliberately wanted it to sound like a big open-air stage concert.
So I put some monitor-bleed into her vox-track... which is likely a big no-no, but I did it anyway It does dirty the sound up a bit, but I think it has some of that flavor that you get at such concerts (loud sounds and the resulting feedback-loops that happens)

So the listener is supposed to be somewhere in the middle of the crowd, between the stage and the audio-engineer's booth. Not drunk, but not totally sober either. And the sky is dark-blue and it's lovely warm and people around you are in a good mood

I do hope I won't find tomorrow that I screwed up again, but let's see
(So this is for version 11)



////////////old post below (for version 07):
So I am trying a new method of mastering with this one.

During spring of this year I studied the effect of high-frequency content compression on sound-quality and found that if I leave more head-room than found in normal modern music; the sparkle of the sound improved significantly (it's subjective of course, but that was how it sounded to me)

I found that lower frequencies can be compressed much more than high frequencies before beginning to sound 'dull'.

With that knowledge I designed an auto-equalizer for such a sound, which I am using in this mix.
The side-effect is that the master-mix can not be heavily compressed (since the headroom is needed by the higher frequencies)
So the mix I ended up with, of this song, may sound lower compared to other people's versions.

I obviously think it sounds better that way, but at the end of the day it's the audience (those who buy the artist's music) who end up being boss of all this.
Do they skip lower songs sitting between 2 loud ones when listening to radio, or will the extra sparkle (that I believe is present with this method) lead them to buy this artist's CD (or download, or whatever people buy these days). That's obviously going to be the decider in whether my mix will stand out or drown in the sea of heavy compression

Anyway, I thought this song sounded pretty good. I like her creamy voice, which triggered me into wanting to give this one a try

I opted for a LIVE-sound, since that appears to be how it was recorded/performed, so it is not super-tight and 'sound-designed/sculpted' like a studio-album version might be.

So that's my take on this one
Thanks
JEL