What makes music so congested?

I did a bit of research on the dynamic range of this Yes Fragile album. there was some info on a Head-fi.org forum by a person skilled in the art of mastering & there was some data on avaxhome.ws. In both locations the dynamic range of the various tracks on this album showed the range of DR12-DR10.
The info shared on the head-fi.org forum stated that tracks having a DR14 ie. a dynamic range of 14dB are likely to sound very nice & spacious. Those tracks having in the region of DR10 will sound very aggressive (due to the hard clipping of the waveforms at both the top & bottom ends thereby creating a lot of distortion).
I'm thinking that even tho' it might be your equipment the real reason for the congested sonics is that this album was compressed a lot during mastering to make it loud. You can optimize your equipment & speaker placement & that might help a bit but the source of the issue is the high level of compression in the source material. No way around this unless someone else remasters the analog tapes & we hope that the analog tapes were recorded with plenty of headroom.....

the head-fi.org forum link:
http://www.head-fi.org/t/492421/dynamic-range-of-cds-examples

One way to figure this out is to lower the volume and see if you get less congestion. Or, use decent headphones with your system, and see how it sounds. If either of these reduces or eliminates the congestion, the issue is probably in your amp and/or speakers. If the congestion remains roughly the same, it may be your source components and/or preamp and/or AC power.

I am not enough of a Yes fan to test it for you, but a recent speaker upgrade determined that, in my system, the speakers were absolutely responsible for congestion at higher levels.

the original vinyl always sounded bad to me

constrained highs and mids (or congested as you suggest)

Philjolet, did you hear the British or American press? I never found the US press to my liking but the UK is great.

Atmasphere,

I presume I have the american version

I always bought the cheapest records I could when they were available and I doubt it is not a first pressing either

finding it could be a chore though ;)

I will keep the UK version in mind - thanks!