A standard alignment level for recorded music.
Recorded music in the last 15 years, thanks to the loudness wars, has gotten more and more dynamically compressed, so that all the soft sounds are as loud as the loud sounds. This means that modern music sounds terrible, unlistenable, even. It's just a tiring audio mush.

I'm sure a regulatory group exists that could place its stamp of approval on recordings that leave a bit of headroom for drums and so on. It's really pathetic that CDs use only about 4dB of their potential 96dB of dynamic range.
(Ladyfingers is in your wardrobe,, Thu 22 Sep 2011, 13:29, 5 replies)

I was brought up with the adage
"If it's too loud, you're to old."
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Thu 22 Sep 2011, 14:05, closed)

"Louder" CDs...
..are not louder. If anything, they sound muffled because the drums don't stand out above the mix. You make music louder with your volume control, not compression.
(Ladyfingers is in your wardrobe,, Thu 22 Sep 2011, 14:07, closed)

also, 'ducking' and 'pumping;
fortunately it only seems to be applied to music of which I do not frequent.
( Rotating Wobbly Hat That's not a banana. THIS is a banana., Thu 22 Sep 2011, 18:37, closed)

Home taping is killing music? Nah, music execs are killing music.
How many times can "I click I like this"?

This compression is done as standard in the pressing plant. The artist usually gets no say. It's common to squeeze it to 1.5dB now.

Even classical stuff gets squashed to 30dB or more!

Check out Mobile Fidelity pressings of albums compared to the commercial releases. Astounding difference in quality, musicianship and emotive effect.

If people could hear the music rather than the pulped multimedia shite then people with actual talent would sell more than the image makers.
( jagwap, Fri 23 Sep 2011, 12:18, closed)

Dynamic range compression is shit.
As a snobby elitist low power high sensitivity single driver loudspeaker user, I despise what's happened to commercial music releases in the past decades. Leave the compression crap to the mp3 crowd and car audio gear.
( Felis Concolor, Thu 29 Sep 2011, 2:52, closed)