Current CD mastering practices, And why I now buy so few new CD's. Options

[RockFan]

Although I've been aware of the ever more destructive levels of compression/limiting used over the last 5-10 years (and taken part in discussions here and other places), it only dawned on me recently that I had unconciously practically stopped buying CD's the last year or two..

By that I'm referring to largely rock, indie, jazz etc, incuding so-called 'remasters'.

There are recent releases out there which I would like to own, but with what I've come to expect from modern CD's, I know that an album which I might have 'played to death' over weeks or months in years gone by will simply get boring after a few plays. So I don't buy them. Dynamics, soft/loud contrasts, drama - squashed out of existence.

New Queens Of The Stone Age? Probably a great album - but once bitten .....

I'm increasingly going to exchanges to try and find older releases of albums I want, or even buying vinyl versions of new albums where they're released, as they tend not to be afflicted as badly.

Obviously there are a proportion of buyers who only lsiten to CD's in the car or on personals in noisy environments who couldn't care less and will keep buying, but there must be a lot of others who, like me, are completely disillusioned with this 'loudness fetish' crap and have simply lost interest.

In fact I wonder how much this has contributed to the stagnancy in sales over the last few years that the 'industry' whines about so frequently?

R.

[Lyx]

oh
my
god!

Maybe even that animation on loudnessrace.com was an underestimation of what would follow... if i read that db-waveform correctly, then this track has 10db dynamic range? wtf?

- Lyx

This post has been edited by Lyx: Aug 16 2005, 07:00

[Hermit-ically Se...]

oh
my
god!

Maybe even that animation on loudnessrace.com was an underestimation of what would follow... if i read that db-waveform correctly, then this track has 10db dynamic range? wtf?

- Lyx

It's sad. The current CD's and re-issues of originals that have been compressed to the point of destroying the very thing they're supposedly trying to sell (good music), seem to be the path of the future. Whatever, If these record co's want to self destruct and continue on their path of destroying music so be it. Good thing I have almost no desire for modern music especially the most affected (pop crap). I'll gladly pay much more for a rare used OOP cd that the record co wont make a penny from.