Ayu was never able to sound like her album recordings live... Unless you are talking about her DVDs, that always had over-edited vocals...

What means she will sound a lot better when this DVD come out...

She's always had issues with 'live' vocals I think.

I feel like people see CDLs' TV versions nowadays and all that... yet they forget it's been like this for a while now. CDL04-05 and CDL05-06's TV versions were not exactly liked at the time when they came out because her vocals were 'horrible'.

"Western fans" can have 2 meanings in that sentence. One being a collective term for all western fans, the other one describing, that the ones that are pissed off are western, not that all western fans are oversensitive, but that the oversensitive ones, at least in this thread, are western. At least I haven't seen a single non-western one. Now think about which meaning it probably has in this sentence.
In this sentence it purely meant that Shuya doesn't have to care if western fans are oversensitive, because that is not the culture the concert happens in. When japanese fans are oversensitive he has to care.

Also, I think we are listening to different concerts. This is the first time since 2005 that Ayumi has sounded really good live. :innocent In this unedited, low quality and badly mixed recording of her singing some of her hardest songs she sings better than in some DVD-released(therefore properly mixed, edited and high quality) versions of concerts full of easy songs.
She also has learned how to actually sing with the correct technique, which is the reason progress sounds so rough in the studio version before her recent vocal lessons(the opening part is earsplattering) but not nearly as rough in the concert, even when it probably was the worst vocal performance of the whole show in terms of pitch. But that will all be fixed for the DVD/Bluray and it will probably end up being her best-sounding tour. And it's completely free of playback, which probably can't be said about any of the tours between 2002 and 2009 :innocent Except for TA Live Tour, but we don't have the full thing.

And not even the editing saved some vocals she had before 03....

No, she sometimes did sound like her album recordings live....

And another thing to note is that she puts on this "strong" voice, which I find to be too harsh and not fitting for what she is delivering now. She didn't do that a few years ago; ex. when you compare a Mirrorcle World live to the MW life she recently performed you'll know what I mean. Sure, she sounds nice at times but then she overdoes it.. It's not pleasant listening to her live 'vocals' anymore, imo.

Actually, there are people who doubt that the concert was 100% live for whatever reason.

The thing about Mirrorcle World... at least it's not like the first two(?) performances in April of 2008. Those were SO BAD.

This MW live is edited, we can't know how it sounded on the actual live...

You missed my point, In that post I was talking about how she tends to overdo her 'strong' voice in this song. But while you are bringing it up again, I think that the sound effects / filters that were applied to ayu's vocal output in PoM are more exaggerated than the Mirrorcle World performance she did in 2008.

Imo, none of her performances at PoM came close to the performances she did in 2008. She doesn't sounds as she used to sound like (obviously) but still, it seems that with each year she keeps getting worse and worse (performing live that is). And it comes to the point where editing cannot save anything.

But with this voice I would like to hear how she would perform Rule, it should be average - good. :)

OMG! Now I hate Ayu, she has no respect for western fans!

Really? And you can tell that by comparing a low quality LIVE stream to a high quality, edited TV/DVD-release for which they had all the time in the world to apply unnoticable changes? The Mirrorcle World performance you think is so amazing isn't even one performance, at least two different dates were cut together for the video, where is your proof that the same didn't happen for the audio? They could easily take the best parts of 2,3 4 or even more dates and cut them together, then put a slight autotuner on, run it through a compressor and get to perfect vocals. All not as possible with a live broadcast(actually, the sound proves there are neither autotuners nor compressors(the two main electronic tricks to make voices sound better) on PoM, because their effects are simply not there, while, considering the level of Ayu's vocals in 2008 and the MW performances she did live on TV, those were both most certainly used on a-nation 2008).
Or do you think the reverb was a vocal effect? That probably is a result of the way the audience sound was mixed in and simply the sound dynamics of the arena.

I thought that after hitting a relatively low point in 2007/2008, she slowly started improving since then.

Is not that she only improves or only gets worse, it's a bit of both Worlds tbh.

She has had some horrible live performances since... ever? And at the same time she keeps creating and having awesome performances as well.

She sounded amazing last year when she sang count down and Memorial Address, particularly for this last one, it was like a step back in time, it was amazing.

My god, this person comes with "where is your proof". Are you serious???!

I said I THINK, I never made any statements....

Come on now, mods are probably pulling their hair out by now.
And yes, we're all allowed to have a discussion and an opinion and bla bla, but within the lines of being on topic and non-ridiculous.

And I should probably stay on the topic myself, so!

Was anyone besides me positively surprised over that setlist? Now that I think of it, it has a lot of powerful and motivational songs instead of a whole lot of sad ballads, at least on the limited edition setlist.

I can't believe how she can keep track of it all, must mean one heck of a lot of rehearal and good memory. But nothing new there, she's been going at it for about 11 years now :laugh

She does mess up lyrics every few shows though. It's kind of a d'oh moment when it happens since she tends to switch choruses.

I wonder if that's stress or the fact that she's got sooo many songs to keep track of.

Sorry for derailing the thread like this, but this person just annoys me with his attitude and the "oh, but it's only an opinion" way of backing out of what he said while basically completely ignoring the content of other people's responses and overlooking everything he has no response for.

Every expressed thought is a statement, but saying "I think" and then saying something that is simply not subjective just to back out of explaining how you got to that conclusion by saying it's "just a thought" is stupid.
So basically you are saying your thoughts have no essence, since you have no reasoning to them(or are not willing to share your reasoning with us)?
You brought your thought up in a discussion, thereby you turned it into an argument as to why the a-nation 2008 performance was better or worse than the PoM performance. If you bring up an argument be prepared to defend it or don't bring it up at all.

It's like saying "I think she was lipsynching" when a performance was obviously live(happened on AHS before, performances full of off notes, even with mistakes in the lyrics, were accused of being lipsynched). If it's "just a thought" and you can't prove it, even worse you don't even have any evidence for it, no reasoning that makes sense, there is no reason to bring it up in the first place, it will only piss people off and in the end it won't get anyone anywhere because well.."it's just a thought". It's a devaluing statement made seemingly less offensive and important by an "I think" placed in front of it. So the poster feels noone can attack it because "it's just a thought!" and everybody is free to think whatever they want to think, right? ;)

Keep your thoughts to things that either are subjective or you have reasoning for. You can be subjective on how you like an Ayu release, think as much as you want about that, post as many of those thoughts as you want to, no matter if good or bad, and I won't mind because it's a very subjective thing. But this is just you trying to feel untouchable because it's simply not a thing of opinion. Either you have reasoning or you don't. If you have that's good, if you don't there's no reason to even comment on it.

It's funny, because I listened to the recorded live (the fanmade one) last night and I also thought some performances were pretty impressive as regards her vocals (MA sounded almost like the cd version).
She could still sing with that feminine and gentle voice (I love) and I wished she could sing more like that in PoM.
There is both good and bad vocals in PoM. Overall it's a bit raw, off-tune and forced. Ok, it may also be a bad day. But she has so many bad days... She is improving for sure, but it's a long way to go.

BTW, I also think she could sound really close to the CD version when she was performing live, and without any struggle. Even if she isn't a good singer to some people (who seem to know what they are talking about), I've always been proud and impressed by her vocals.

As regards PoM in itself, the arrangements are just amazing. I'm really happy that a big popstar like her can do this sort of thing. I'm just a bit disappointed with the dancers and so on. I'd rather have something really different, no dancers, simple clothes and so on. But hey, it's ayu after all.

^ I thought she was an amazing live singer when I first watched CDL 04-05 and AT05. I thought, "My God, this chick is unstoppable! She can't go wrong! Just like the CD!" and I didn't notice her vocal quality getting to the point where I did not enjoy it until around AT09. Yes, count down and Mem. Address on AT10 were amazing I have to say though.

Did you watch the live TV version of that concert?