Why Does All Music Sound the Same; An Explanation

lowrider57 said:

"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."

After doing a lot of reading on this topic this afternoon I think the statement above really simplifies and clarifies how to look at this complex topic.

The long term use of hypercompression in the mastering studio has finally killed pop music. Not only does it suck out all the dynamic range out of the music, in so doing it scrubs all emotional content as well.

Devices such as the following are also partially to blame:

Mastering Clipper, Loudness Meter, Multiband Saturator. This device makes the recording as "loud" as possible and strips the music of anything worth listening to.

Absolutely! stevecham

Happy Listening!

Judicious use of compression isn’t a bad thing. George Peckham, whose masterings are sought after (Porky, Pecko, etc.) used a classic Fairchild tube compressor as part of the mastering chain to juice the recordings he was mastering.
To me, music is about building tension, reaching a crescendo and releasing it. That’s true of classical music and of much ’classic rock’: think about the anthemic songs such as "Stairway," or "Freebird" or "Hotel" (yeah, I know, but they got overplayed for a reason and it wasn’t just marketing). Each of those songs has softer acoustic passages that built to a heavier, darker sound; the joy is in the contrast as well as the build up, knowing that things were going to get louder, harder and more pounding. (no sexual entendres here but ’rock and roll’ is itself a euphemism for the act).
I like a lot of ’psych-folk’ because it is a study in contrasts. I don’t think jazz fits into this model, but I haven’t thought that one through. (too many different styles of jazz for me to get my head around as I write this).
Highly recommended for a study in contrast is Roy Harper’s "The Same Old Rock" from the album, Stormcock. It is a virtual textbook of contrasts, of one style of playing morphing into another. It didn’t hurt that Jimmy Page played acoustic guitar on this track.

Judicious use of compression, absolutely good; George Peckham and Bernie Grundmann good; saturating limiters bad.