Are the loudness wars fake so record companies can destroy the music?

I don't buy into conspiracy theories.

I also don't buy into digital vs analog debates. I hear good stuff in both formats.

What I do buy into is that most new music is horribly compressed. There is a fair amount of good data to support this. I probably have the least 'golden ears' of anyone on this web site but I can typically tell over DR compressed music immediately, at least on my system. And I hate it. It ruins the music for me in terms of hi-fi listening. In the car, no problem.

But here's the gist of why I'm responding: Many conspiracy theories are born when credible explanations are sparse. I don't believe record companies are trying to ruin any one's music. Those of us who are bothered by DR compression are a tiny percentage of people who pay for music.

So the question remains: Why does DR over compression persist? I know there are bands who meticulously produce their music but the final product is overcompressed. Why? Alabama Shakes and The Teskey Brothers stand out as bands who release well engineered stuff that is then over compressed. And it is not a CD vs vinyl issue. Both formats can be and frequently are over compressed. Vinyl seems less likely to be but is hardly immune. So the format is not the issue.

There are also bands out there releasing music that is not over compressed. So it can be done. Mark Knopfler comes to mind.

So to me the question is not one of conspiracy. But it is still a question of why? What drives it?

Over compressed music is just about a requirement for any music to sound acceptable to the masses on the near universal phone and earbuds setup.
Us audiophools comprise a tiny segment of the customer base and we are not the ones who are downloading songs and paying for said downloads to our iPod or whatever similar piece of gear.

Now streaming at a fixed cost per month has changed the landscape a bit as to what service they use but not really the way they listen.

Perfect example is my daughter who has a more than acceptable rig in her room but 95% of the time she is listening via YouTube on her phone and air Bud's.

How do you overcome that?

Just the way I see it is that most portable playback devices are so low on power that they need all the help they can get for the end user to play it loud.
Hence the over compression and loudness boost/ leveling whatever you prefer to describe it as.

The quiet passages just get lost on phone/ earbuds so they boost it up, reduce the dynamics range so it all sounds nearly the same level.

WE KNOW it's wrong but to the average consumer it works for them.

Maybe that's it.


And I agree, at this point it just seems to be a fact of life.

At the risk of hijacking the thread it seems to me is that the next question is what can we do about it? I'm not talking about changing the industry, I'm talking about what we can do within our systems to make an overly compressed song sound better.

I personally don't think you can do much. You just can't work with data that isn't there. One Audiogon member, I don't recall who it was, suggested that if you knew what you were doing and how to tweak your system and room etc you could make overly compressed music sound great.

I don't mean any offense and I'm probably the least qualified here to say so but I wouldn't believe it until I heard it. I'm sure it can be made to sound better, but I'm skeptical about a recording with a DR value of "4" (acceptable being 10 or more) ever sounding good.

I did experiment with  couple of Neko Case albums with average DR values of around "7" using the EQ in iTunes. You could mess with the curves and definitely improve things. That has always made me wonder about a component equalizer and if that would be effective. It also made me wonder if anyone makes a component EQ with presets that can be changed via remote.

With Sonos you have a very simple EQ and loudness setting. I have not played with that.