This is both frustrating and depressing. Unfortunately, when/if a new medium is developed capable of a wider dynamic range, record companies will just say to themselves "Yea! Now we can make it even louder!!!"

Death Magnetic is a sickening example.

Informative. I guess I didn't realize you could compress at the mixing stage and/or the mastering stage. It sounds like this album was done during mixing.

When I discovered the LP was compressed as well - I can't tell you the betrayal I felt. It was like there was a field of beautiful untrodden snow, and someone pissed all over it. Or when George Lucas and Spielberg raped Indiana Jones (figuratively, in the new movie, and quite literally in South Park). Yeah, it was kinda like that. Keep your compression-loving solid-wall-of-loud-noise crap off of my wax!

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/aug07/5429
http://funl.blogspot.com/2007/06/loudness-war.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_level_compression
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

you can compress at the tracking, mixing, and mastering stage.. or all 3 if youd like!. I am not a fan of compression at all, UNLESS it is used as some sort of effect..that is to say I do not use it as a means to an end or remedy to a problem. I was mentored by a gentleman who came up in a time when engineers rode faders and , god forbid.. the MUSICIANS controlled the dynamics.
I encounter this garbage in classical recording too, nothing is safe. everyone equates louder with better for some unknown reason. the best we can do as engineers and musicians is to educate/inform our clients. the catalyst for this whole thing was a lack of education..

This very topic is EXACTLY why there is no need for me to improve my system from high-midrange/lower high-end status that it's currently in.

All of my music is on CD. The overwhelming majority of it is rock music from 1994 to the current day. Running them through a program like WavePad illustrates the magnitude of the problem...they're all so overly compressed during the recording and mastering process that I can count on one hand the number of discs I've purchased within the past 5 years that DO have some dynamic range. Worst of it all, some of my absolutely favorite bands are the worst offenders!

The idiocy of it all is that once it hits a radio station they're all normalized to be the same volume level so that you're not constantly reaching for your volume knob. The same normalization technique is offered in most MP3 player/file programs as well, for the same exact reason.

I applaud the efforts of TURNMEUP and I can only hope they succeed but with the backseat music now takes in most people's lives it not likely to become a standard.

Bill