Does Ayu's voice ever hurt your ears?
 

This isn't meant to be a mean or funny post, but lately I've found her voice to be EXTREMELY difficult to listen to in some songs where she sings high notes.

For example, UNITE and Hello new me have a few parts in the chorus where I literally have to turn down the volume because there's parts in their choruses where her voice creates a sharp pain in my ear.

I'm not sure if this is just bad mixing or bad EQ settings on my part, but it's been a problem for me and I wonder if anyone else has experienced this with her voice on some songs?

Sometimes If I use cheap lq earphones I can't bear her voice, lol.

There are a lot of variables that can cause this.
It could be that you are listening to music with the volume too high. It can cause damage to your hearing. It could also be your headphones. If you are using cheap ear buds, they may have a very tinny, sharp, treble heavy sound and Ayu's voice is really pushing the limits. If you are using EQ settings on a music player I would try setting it to Flat and see if that helps. Also mastering/mixing is awful these days. The dynamic range is killed when they create the final version of the song that is released to us. Music is literally louder today.
When I first heard forgiveness I also had to turn the volume down because it was a bit much for my ears.:dead2

Her voice hurts my ears since 2006.

I have it with lots of songs from Love songs (November, Thank U, crossroad, Like A Doll and Virgin Road and some from her older discography, like the ones you said, and SEASONS and Endless Sorrow..

I do not know how most songs from her debut album sound like, because songs like For my dear... have ruined it for me.
imo, her voice is most beautiful during RAINBOW - GUILTY eras. I wish I could say it is even better now, but then I realized songs like Step By Step, NO FUTURE, Mr. Darling, The Show Must Go on, snowy kiss, Missing, petal, Hello New Me, Feel The Love and even Zutto... hurt my ears. Luckily, it does not make me dislike the song, so I still love a lot from the songs I just called out.

Not sure whether I am just becoming deaf, or that the quality or some songs are just... like that. Because to me it does not really matter if I use crappy headphones or when I just listen from my laptop.

LOL!

I don't have any issues with her voice tbh. Although I personally think she ruined Terminal by trying to hit notes that were well outside her range.

I love For My Dear... but when she specifically sings the ii parts, it hurts my ears

Her voice always hurt my ears... Well except 2006-2010

I actually miss her deep vibrato from around the (miss)understood/Secret/GUILTY/NEXT LEVEL era. One of my favorite tracks from her is still Secret.

I wouldn't say Ayu's voice causes any pain for me, but when she sings like she does in You&Me (the baby-ish voice), it actually causes me noticeable physical discomfort. There are other tracks she's done in recent years where this is much more common in her singing, and they all cause some level of physical or mental stress. Songs like The GIFT, Anything for You, Feel the love, where she's singing too much in head voice throughout the song, it's just too much for me.

However, I love songs like Last angel... Jesus. That song still makes the hair on my arms stand. When Ayu shows more versatility in her singing, she blows me away.

On a side note, I have a hard time with Namie's voice in a lot of songs too. She always seems bored of her music, her videos, her dance routines, etc.

sometimes

I really enjoy Ayu's voice until 2006. Even the high notes on "Connected", "Kanariya" and even on "UNITE". But I can't bear her vibrato when she ends in "a" vowel since 2008. I dunno. I think it doesn't hurt my ears but my feelings.

no... her voice has never caused any pain. if it did why would I listen to it? this topic however was quite painful lol.

Absolutely. The excessive yelling parts in "Terminal" make it hard to enjoy the song as a whole but I love "Terminal" with passion in terms of its instrumental and the parts where Ayu sings in a more tranquil tone. The "Kimi nii" for instance sounds beautiful and trancy unlike the distorted hyaena-esque screaming.

Imagine Ayu would have yelled like this in "Connected". It'd have destroyed the entire trance vibe. Vocals have to fit that genre perfectly or else it just won't work.

For this very reason my first choice always is the dub mix of "Terminal", a really nice tune. Alas we don't have an instrumental version of the Original mix, though. It sounds quite different from the dub mix and Avex failed to add it to the single for whatever reason.

No. Not at all. I actually love her iiiiiii. They're addicting. There were times when they're out of place or not properly done especially when i'm on her lives but generally, her voice dont hurt me :D

Feel The Love especially.

Only the chorus of Hello new me. But I think it has to do more with the mixing (the backvocals make it worse, I feel?).

I've never experienced that, except her performance of Terminal, she sounds like too much high on minute 2:21 but I know it's not because of her, but because of the sound technician, I guess.


Link: https://youtu.be/EaeqaFlcClY

LOL memeo x'DDDDD

Ayu is going deaf, she's doing her best. Leave her alone

I used that part as an alarm for a while xD it's so sharp that it woke me up (although I did grow to resent the song as a whole because of it lmao)

i only have to skip ASFXX and Loveappears albums because i HATE her voice there. I just cannot stand it. But from then on i'm perfectly fine with it.

Has listening to any of her songs caused me any pain? No. Sometimes I've had the volume up too loud or the Equalizer settings needed to be adjusted because I had them in the wrong places. Sometimes I think the mix of a song can be a bit off but that's it. They haven't caused any physical pain in my ears.

Not really. I think the only voice that ever "hurt" my ears was misono's.

Terminal with cheap headphones gives me a headache lol. A song is born, too.

It's not mean or funny, don't worry. I love Ayu to death and listen to her and talk about her all the time, but yes, sometimes some of her vocals hurt my ears a bit. Like, the orchestra version of End of the World from ayu-mi-x III hurts my ears.

To be quite honest, yes. I.E: the "...dareka wa subete wÓ..." just before Out of Control second chorus, and the "...Ikite iku tte nÁn darou..." on the last chorus. She did a lot of those ~off-key~ notes on Music Station Super Ultra Fest, on the "wÒa yeah"s of evolution and "kekkyoku nani mo ka mo iyasaretÉ'ru" on M. I also heard these notes on FLOWER and Mad World (min 3:43, "...Kono jidaÁi ni kokoro kara...")
These are the only times my ears hurt/have hurted.

QFT

No. I like her voice, especially from 2000 to 2004.

Her voice in JEWEL actually has hurt my ears when I listened to it blasting in the car. XD It's when she says any words that have the I sound, like "hitori" or when she sings "omoi ga itai kurai ni." Is it just me that notices whenever she says words that has the I sound, it is very high pitched? I hope someone understands what I'm talking about. XD

JEWEL is such a beautiful song and really at least for me those high pitched Iiiis also add an certain charm and feel to it. :yes

I know what you mean about JEWEL. I think lowering the volume on Ayu's voice during the making of the song would help make certain notes softer.:think

It truly is a beautiful song! I also don't mind the high pitched notes, but it was something I noticed when listening to it on full blast in the car. Even though those notes pierce my ears, I actually enjoy it when Ayu does them! I'm weird :ytongue I agree! They add charm! But I could understand why her voice would be unpleasant or would hurt someone's ears.

Although her voice is high pitched, I think lowering those certain notes would take away from the song. I don't know why, but I guess I feel that it adds kinda like power to the song? Probably because it's more of a softer quiet song, and those higher notes adds that balance. Hope I explained that right :ytongue

My mother, the closeted Ayu fan if anyone remembers that story, will not let me play Pride in the car because that Sono mae NIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII~ part. She says it literally hurts her ears if I have it playing too loud. And, to be honest, I respect her wishes and also kind of agree. I can't really listen to it on my headphones because of that one note--which is strange because it's not like it's too high or off-pitch or something, it just really does physically hurt sometimes. Though, I suppose that could be my own fault, I was basically born with headphones in my ears so maybe I've hurt my own hearing listening to music too often and now certain notes kind of strike a damaged nerve or something. Who knows?