... thoughts on Taylor Swift's REPUTATION CD...

Agreed. And as a new audiophile you begin to experience this through different formats. I've ALWAYS been a music lover. As in sit down and listen to music and do nothing else for extended periods.

But in the last 10 years or so that has meant iTunes on a low end (but pretty darn good) system.

Hearing good songs that are well produced and uncompressed (from a digital file standpoint) is a revelation in itself. Hearing them on a decent system (who can define that?) is another revelation. The good part is that you get a whole new level of enjoyment.

The downside is that you can become less tolerant of less-than-hi-fi sound.

I still don't mind pop music in my car or wherever I'm in the mood for it even if it is lo-fi.

Also agree not to get bothered by other people's taste in music and how they feel about yours. Those of us who get real serious about our rock music can easily be reminded that even at its best it is relatively low brow compared to Bach, Beethoven and Brahms.

Actually the average dynamic range measure of 10 for that recording is better than average. Regardless, no one measure including dynamic range alone is a reliable indictor of whether a recording will sound good to someone or not. I’ve heard some metal recordings on the very low end of that scale like the CD release of Death Magnetic by Metallica that deliver quite well for The genre but only if the system is up to snuff and can play loud without clipping and adding distortion.

Just in my very brief experience I have found that 9 and up (on the scale used by the dr-loudness wars site) seems pretty good. Some of the albums I've cited hover around 6 or 7 and even to my untrained ears it sounds unpleasant and seems impossible to find that just right volume level.

@mapman , the average DR of 10 is for vinyl and I agree with you that it's better than most digital files which are pressed to vinyl. 
The CD and download (itunes mp4) measures an average of 6. This digital file is what most of this demographic will be listening to. This is the issue that the article addresses; other genres besides pop music get the same treatment and that's the problem.

I also agree with your point about some highly compressed heavy metal sounding acceptable. The difference may be that pop music is a mix of electronic effects layered throughout. Metal is well mic'd musicians recorded and mixed using standard industry techniques.

The whole reason for aggressive compression is to be able boost the level. Those aggregious CDs, downloads or LPs are *already loud*. But they don’t have dynamics.That’s why they call it the Loudness Wars. *Turning up the volume doesn’t help dynamics.* You can’t fool Mother Nature. It still sounds stupid. Hel-loo! As I keep saying, if it doesn’t have dynamics it ain’t music! I refuse to listen to it. But feel free to knock yourself out. 10 is not really acceptable in my book. It’s logarithmic, remember. What you want is up around 14 and above. Those are good numbers. Ten is barely acceptable. And when ten is average that means much of the recording is unacceptable.