Except I was only referring to Toni, the tiny bald lass. She has the power, and was going full volume at times, but never abandoned singing for screaming*. Thought she was excellent.

In general I agree with you, most of the participants in the "battles" seemed to think it was a volume contest, and/or let-me-show-how-many-notes-I-can-run-into-one-note contest.

As for the judges, as they'd heard the acts all week, they had almost certainly 90% made up their minds what they were probably going to do, but the ability to perform in front of the audience when the pressure is on must, in cases where it was close (there were a few) have been a factor.

The carefully timed "judge's agonising" period, invariably interrupted by the presenters pretending they were cutting them off as a decision had to be made, was pretty cringeworthy, and whilst it was different, I really didn't like the "battle" format either.

*Well, except once.

I thought that the head-to-heads were a bit unfair at times.
Just a device to whittle down 40 to 20 and make two extra shows.
You could pretty much guess, with a few exceptions, who were going out before they sang.
The old biases of age and looks coming into play.

The guy who was told to knock the power down on his voice so we could hear the 'posh' bird knock him out must have been well pleased.

''Excuse me Mr Pavarotti, do you mind stop giving it all that power stuff?''
''You're drowning out Mr Carreras!''

Just catching up with the Voice and have to say I enjoyed the audition part. Yes the judges were very cliched in the "arguing" and "bickering" and being nice to them when no one got picked, but it was, I thought, a fair way to do it, and the ones getting past that stage were pretty good, bar none, so for me that worked.

Not quite sure what Reggie and Holly added to that process though, via the family inserts. And Danny Whatever is a bit of a douche. The kid who thought he was cool at school and carries on like it when he's older. Sir Tom and Will.com are way cooler and they know they don't need to ar$e around like Danny.

So far though I'm not sure about the battle format. One song (and a duet at that) to progress seems a little unfair and some good singers have gone, as SO points out. And cutting the field in half over one weekend seems a little rushed. It's another few months till Strictly and Dr Who...