More Audiophoolery.

[Mechatrommer]

...additions to their music systems when what they really should be doing is complaining to the record company and CD producers about these shit flat recordings with no dynamic range.

afaik, compression will try to make the sound wave simpler, ie killing higher frequency/harmonics out. the case and problem with "make it loader" that i can see is... digital data "clipping", and that obviously kills dynamic range, as the softer sound get boosted closer to the clipped louder sound. my 2cnts.

[dimlow]

Dynamic range compression does not clip the sound, what it does is make the lower volume sounds louder, it will also not harm the frequencies or harmonics. They are not just making it louder by amplifying the samples, if they did that then the clipping would be very bad. Dynamic range is the difference in amplitude between the quiet sounds and the loud sounds Altering this makes the overall "vibrancy" of the punchy sounds, softer. That kills the music.

http://www.sciencemedianetwork.org/wiki/Tutorials/Dynamic_Range_Compression

[the_raptor]

Modern music is engineered for people playing it in their cars or through shitty mp3 player headphones, this is the reason for the loudness war.

The reason Vinyl is back is because even new Vinyl is normally engineered properly.

[saturation]

All recorded music is engineered, its not 'natural'; its made to sound like the engineer wants it to sound, and that people who like music will enjoy hearing.  Its tempered to sound with "common" equipment that the consumer who buys music will play it on.  Its much an art form, and they still give Grammy awards in this category.

When music is remastered and/or re-engineered, it may not sound like the original, unless the same sound engineer works on the material.

If you've ever played music and record yourself, you'll find that making it sound like what you hear, or the audience hears takes a lot of doing, that's unique for each venue and the number of people in the recording studio, and even changes in environmental conditions that can skew the analog segments of the recording process. 

[Mechatrommer]

So (as Lance said), I learned something new today! i thought i'm best in listening music, turned out me among the worst. CD Audio vs low/carefully compressed MP3 sounds the same to me, i just care the punch of treble, middle and bass (high, mid and low freq) and the balance between them. I just blamed the hardware between the actual music data and my ear (ie amp, speaker, player), i guess there is more than that, that i'm not aware of.

[Balaur]

Yep, the loudness war has really negative consequences.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

It's one of those things that cannot be "un-heard" (also like autotune; don't get me started on this). Once you are familiarized with the process, you quickly become aware of how wide-spread has become.

I remember lessening to the Metallica "Death Magnetic" album on CD. The sound quality was rubbish IMHO. The issue is well documented:

http://mastering-media.blogspot.com/2008/09/metallica-death-magnetic-stop-loudness.html
http://www.wired.com/listening_post/2008/09/does-metallicas/

One anecdote is that the title song version that was delivered with "Guitar Hero" video game is correctly remixed while the album version is bad.

[saturation]

Yes, remember that people, clothes, rugs, curtains ... absorb sound.  So, room ambiance will differ.  Even if a 'audiophile' mic is used, it won't conduct sound flat 20-20 or whatever specs it has, due to manufacturing variation.  Then, as the devices age, the bose plot could change too.  So, the engineer has to tweak, or equalize, the sound at frequencies to compensate for these losses or changes, plus compensate for reflections in the room that can reduce or enhance sound too much. not to mention the analog input stages of the recorders.

So in the end, the 'audiophile' is really just listening to at best, what the engineer has to offer.

Take your CD and look for the credits, particularly the audio engineer.  Often stars like Michael Jackson or others, tend to use the same engineer so that all his recordings have the same "sound."  Change labels, change engineers, changes sound.

Time/Life reissue of the 'best of the 1990s', fully remastered?  It may not sound like the vinyl you remember or the 1st release, again, due to reengineering.

Lastly, as folks age, the ear changes, just like a speaker or a mic and the brain can reinterpret the signals from the sensor, the ear.  The 'brain' works like a MPU, or CPU, and does cognitive 'equalization' to 'normalize' the sound.  When the brain can't cope anymore, you are now deaf at that spot, regardless of condition or your ear.  Have you ever 'concentrated' to hear something?  That what that is.  We know this because folks with brain injury to the hearing center get unusual equalization or are deaf, that later change or 'recover' as the 'programming' rewires and compensates.

Its another reason why having 'pure amps' without tone controls or equalization is also questionable practice, because the ear has inherent highs and lows, add to it your actual room acoustics can change sound character, and needs to be equalized to compensate, just as you would also do if you take the same music from headphones, quiet room, to a noisy car, or worse a motorcycle!

[Zad]

Strange, but I was talking to someone about loudness/compression the other day. I have analogue tapes of original recordings that now sound better (albeit noisier) than the current CD. the intro to Dire Straits' Alchemy Live now sounds better on my old Walkman II than it does from a digital source. The musicality has just gone. I just wish the compression algorithm was linear and predictable so it could be decompressed back to the original dynamic range, to give it back some slam.

Another vote from me for a cheap amp and expensive speakers. I use a £12 amp block from Creative Labs, hacked to send full audio levels through the headphone socket. From there I have plugged in a 3.5mm to 2xRCA transition, and then on to a pair of 60W Technics speakers, 1990 vintage. It will only drive a true 2W per channel, but I hardly ever wind it up that far. People have got seduced by the "Peak Music Power Output" fudge factor where 2W somehow becomes 32W.

[Simon]

my little ebay amp will easily be heard all over the house, I have some philips speakers connected at the monent but when I've got the carpets in and decorated I'll put my 100W warfdales back on. they sound lovely. The problem these days is everything has to be tiny, and tiny speakers aint speakers, just noise makers