Volume Wars-- Are things improving, getting worse, or status quo?

The biggest problem is not overall music quality (style preference) nor is it the mastering per se. The BIGGEST problem with current music is it is too "perfect". Every bit of human feel, nuance, etc has been removed via various devices that "correct" for slight pitch variations, time variations (feel if you will) etc. in the pursuit of "perfection". This is one of the primary reasons modern, digital, music sounds the way it does. In terms of mastering, there is a fairly lackluster approach to mastering to have digital music sound ok through a set of 100.00 headphones connected via bluetooth. This is where the $$ is, not us "audiophile" whack-a-doodles. To that, the public that music is primarily marketed to purchases one or two songs, MIGHT listen to the entire song (probably not) and push "next" on the phone. Basically, that's it. Of course, there are exceptions, and there are plenty of artists out there that actually care about the final production of their craft, but most fall into the "this is how we do it here" situation. There is a reason that there is the "Nashville" sound, the "L.A." sound etc.. Artists are pigeonholed into whatever the producer wants... simple really, and we get the garbage that comes from that. 

The Loudness Wars are still raging but you can find exceptions. The Steven Wilson Remixes of some of the big prog-rockers (ELP, Yes, King Crimson, Jethro Tull) are considered to be tastefully done with good dynamic range.

Yes these are sadly but a few that didn't get "squashed up" in the re-mix.

When there's no or little compression, not only do you get the sense of the massive dynamic swings, but also there seems to be more space between the notes, your brain must be getting a chance to relax and therefore no listeners fatigue seems to set in, compared to compressed relentless wall of sound version of the same album.

Cheers George 

I believe compression started off as product of the loudness wars, I’m not saying this justifies using compression, but these are the pathetic good point of it.
It’s better in cars as the road/engine noise won’t drowned out the quieter passages, because everything’s at the same level.
Also compressed music is good for the i-phone earbud brigade as they won’t blow up as many earbuds with sudden dynamics, and also probably save the users hearing, if turned up too much to hear the quite passages above the traffic noise while waking around.

Cheers George

georgehifi

I believe compression started off as product of the loudness wars ...

Excessive compression goes back to at least the heyday of Top 40 AM radio in the '60s, when pop records were compressed so they'd sound punchy on AM car radios that use small speakers. If you listen to some of those old Dave Clark Five 45s, you'll hear what I mean.

Then, the Top 40 stations compressed the sound even more - the more, the merrier! Loudness wars often resulted if you had two powerhouse Top 40s in the same market, such as WLS and WCFL in Chicago, each one trying to sound punchier than the other.