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Comment by ShadowBanThis01 | Hacker News Reader

"my daughter and her friends are a precursor to a fatigue with the ephemeral nature of digital purchases"

Maybe, but I strongly suspect that her preference is a great example of LISTENER fatigue caused by the dynamic compression that has destroyed all post-'90s releases.

I wish Apple and Spotify would somehow put the boot down and reject ruined masters, the way Netflix dictates technical quality for new material. That's really the only hope of fighting the "loudness war" that has ruined music for your daughter's entire life now.

Your daughter, and a vast numbers of her peers who are so into '80s music, should be a wakeup call on this issue. But unfortunately there are very few people who even understand what it is... even artists who decry the shitty quality of today's recordings often blame data compression and want to increase sampling rates or bit depth. NO. The problem is dynamic compression. Period.

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The strangest part is, the compression has absolutely zero benefit. From the listening experience, to the production process, to the business aspects of making music, it has no redeeming qualities.

Exactly. I'd say it's the saddest part. The one time I remember reading that some record exec was challenged on it, and the excuse was "nobody wants to have the quietest CD in the changer."

WHAT? As if anyone on the planet would go over to the changer, eject this allegedly offending CD, look at the label, and then declare, "Welp, I'm never buying another album put out on Arista records!"

The utter stupidity of it is mind-boggling.

And add to that the fact that, if people wanted compression so much, it could be done by THE PLAYER. In fact, this used to be done. My 1996 Mustang's CD player has a "Compress" button on it, to make listening to highly dynamic music more feasible in a noisy car environment.

> My 1996 Mustang's CD player has a "Compress" button on it, to make listening to highly dynamic music more feasible in a noisy car environment.

I believe _this_ is where the issue mostly originated (well, radio, really). Radio is already massively compressed, and many people were either listening to things in the car, on some tiny little radio in the kitchen, or with awful cheap headphones with their walkman's built-in radio.

All of these weren't great environments to start with, and the dynamic range of radio was tiny given the overall bandwidth available to most FM stations.

So, companies compress, people get used to it, and thus the horror continues.

For sure, radio stations always compressed in order to sound "stronger" on the dial. Just another reason that compressing the actual recording was unnecessary.

Right, and because radio stations do that I'd wondered whether marketing choose to "make it sound like radio" so people don't complain when they buy the disc

Not out of the question. When I was a little kid I'd buy 45s and notice this difference. I asked for an equalizer for Christmas, thinking this was the issue.

But of course it wasn't, and before long I realized that I liked the sound of the records better.

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