Why Does All Music Sound the Same; An Explanation

mapman said:

" Compressed dynamics and excessive loudness are two different but often related things. "

That makes sense to me. It is my understanding that it is pushing the loudness that compresses the dynamic range.

And:

" I wouldn’t worry about it too much unless you are an audiophile who imbibes mostly on mainstream/pop music."

I guess it all depends on what you call other people’s music. ;-)

I do not consider Tedeschi Trucks as mainstream or pop. Likewise with Gary Clark, Jr and Alabama Shakes.

The dynamic range in their CDs and downloads all look pretty bad from a DR standpoint. That’s my point. What we are ascribing to throw-away music is being seen in more serious ’artistic’ efforts. And it is a shame because all of their work could/should be appreciated at an audiophile level.

And:

" If it’s a catchy enough tune, isn’t that enough?"

Agreed. I’m into a new band called The Struts. Guitar heavy good-time glam-pop that sounds good on my car stereo. Not too worried about its DR or loudness (which is not as bad as I was expecting.)

Uh, dynamic range is a ratio. Loudness is not a ratio. Loudness I.e., level is what the remastering engineer can boost since the peaks of dynamic range will be lower when he compresses it. You wouldn’t want to blow up someone’s precious iPod, would you? You cannot get more dynamic range by turning up the volume however. In that sense they’re not related. They’re not related mathematically. For a given CD the DR is constant. Loudness obviously is not a constant.

+1 Geoff.
The high amount of compression is called brickwalling. The lows are pushed up and and the highs are limited by not allowing any peaks, they are all at the same level.
The result is no range in the bass, no range in the highs. All instruments lose their separation including vocals and all are at the same level, which means the same volume when played.

@n80, yeah The Struts, a breath of fresh air.
I haven't checked their releases on the DR scale, but I'll bet it's highly compressed. Fun music for the car or a party, but I won't be playing them on my system. It still irks me that all releases today are treated this way.

There is an online petition directed at the record labels to stop the Loudness Wars. Good luck with that.
Maybe if more streaming services go hires and start demanding better quality mastering, there may be some sort of change.

Streaming is why high compression will die out. No advantage to it, streaming services are set so every track seems equally loud so if they are overly compressed when recorded when they are passed through streaming services the loudness advantage is gone and they sound distorted. Probably why a lot of streamed music sounds lousy to me except for older recordings.