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.