loudness wars: digital recording to improve?

Mapman... True.

Manipulation in the form of equalization, compression, peak limiting, echo, etc are intended to change the way it sounds, and are therefore fair game for opinions. Error correction, on the other hand, changes nothing between the original data and the data played back, and so is inappropriate for discussion in context of sonic quality.

"Error correction, on the other hand, changes nothing between the original data and the data played back, and so is inappropriate for discussion in context of sonic quality. "

Agreed.

I suppose you like the sound of: click,click,click,click rather than what the artist recorded? If the original data is compromised, it can be fixed.

This war will never end and I'll tell you why in one simple word:

"Compression"

Tracks that are compressed will always sound louder than those not compressed.

Compare an orchestral piece like Mahlers 3rd or a live recording to a typical Pop studio recording. If you look at them with DAW software you will see that all three have peaks that meet 0dB. However, the studio recodring with compression will have significantly more energy in the audio band than the other two non-compressed recordings.

This is not likely to change. Here is why: Studio Pop recordings are intentionally compressed to sound good on boomboxes and car stereos that have compromized sonics. The orchestral recording is made primarily for audiophiles, so it usually have no compression and maybe even no EQ applied.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio