[Dan Belcher]

The "loudness war" is very frustrating. Nuance is a thing of the past. Dynamics don't really exist anymore. Instrument separation, likewise gone. It's even happening to remasters of old albums. While a slight bit of compression just to limit the peaks is not really noticable on most music, flattening everything out and clipping everything is just plain offensive.

Thankfully, some musicians, engineers, etc. still appreciate those finer points of sound. Take a listen to any of the 5.1 surround sound DVDs from Steely Dan and/or Donald Fagen for example. Absolutely fantastic sounding. (on Fagen's solo album Kamakiriad, the song Snowbound in particular just comes to life in full surround) The standard stereo CD releases likewise sound great thankfully, even Fagen's Morph The Cat album which was just released last year.

Of course, on the other hand, I looked at the waveform of a few country songs that have come out in the past year or two, and it was ugly. No variation whatsoever, almost completely flat the whole way through. Disgusting. The songs are well written and the playing is good, but the sound quality overall suffers quite a bit thanks to this. Everything ends up blending together and sounding muddy.