Quite interesting article on the loudness wars and how it stifles developing better quality audio

http://spectrum.ieee.org/aug07/5429/1

The last page (3) is the more interesting.

I have found several CD with no dynamic range at all and some quite nasty distortion that make the music experience horrible.

Page 3 notes some gain controls added to CD players to keep all songs at about the same level which may circumnavigate any loudness tricks.

Good - I want my dynamic range back

I too hate this practise and wish to hear and have my music in its true dynamic form. I find listening to most modern CDs - even remasters of archive material - headache inducing and earsplitting because its a constant bombardment and assault on the eardrums.

I do a lot of work with Sound Forge and indulge in creative audio editing. It is horrifying when you load up a file to see the wav file looking like a rectangular blob. That is just not natural. It should have peaks and dynamics... you just don't make the quieter moments as loud as the loudest parts.. whatever happened to subtlety? It strangles the music to death and all in the alleged name of "radio" so everything is at a consistently permanent loud volume.

It appears the art of compression has been forgotten. We know how Phil Spector and Joe Meek used compression to their own stunning effect creating dynamic aural wonders and in the days of vinyl, compression was a fine art. CD was supposed to give us full dynamic range but has sadly degenerated into "its got to be as loud as everything else", so instead of applying compression, they "normalise" the sound file, compress it again, and repeat the cycle until there's no space left. It's a major reason why I cannot bear listening to much "new" music.

Very good article indeed.

Another old thread we had, was whether to buy one of those vinyl to MP3 tranfer turntables.
I decided against as I did not like the look of the platters much, however I have just purchased this little beastie.

www.superfi.co.uk/index.cfm/page/moreinfo.cfm/Product_ID/3488


Ears and time will tell.