CD mastering a lost art?

There in article over at Stereomojo.com where a recording engineer lays down the sad truth. It seems that most artists want to be the loudest in order to stand out amongst the rest while audiophiles want dynamics to better appreciate the recording. That, and the mediums dominating the market nowadays don't take into consideration the serious listener.

There is no doubt that the technology is available in the here and now and wonderful recordings can be made but it all boils down to the intended audience.

No amount of technology can save a bad recording so one must look for the better ones to fully appreciate this hobby. The results can be very rewarding.

Siding with what Nonoise says, it's my experience that most of my older CD's sound better than my newer... compressed CD's.

Off the "cdbaby" website, I just ordered two CD's by the New Orleans Jazz Vipers that I'm hoping were mastered uncompressed by some esoteric lab. I mention this only because Amazon wanted $41.00 for one of them, but the "cdbaby" website is selling them for $15.95.

It never was "art". In the 80's it was a new technology, lot of new processors, no noise from tapes, endless digital mixing were possible, more data speed, re-clocking for laser burners and so on. When CD sales went down, there was only ONE priority: cost reduction.
No one talked about sound "quality", everything had to made cheap, no, wrong, super cheap, close to nothing. Next was: Internet downloads, no one needed "quality", CD sales went downstairs, the Standard for everything is MP3, Radio Stations send from Harddisc and use limiters to push the midrange frequencies.
I agree, when you want digital "quality", go for CD's from the 80's.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

This should answer some of the points raised above. Some talk of the war being over....I'm not sure and haven't heard enough very recent stuff to know.

The very first CD I ever bought...John Mayall, Eric Clapton as the 'Blues Breakers', recorded in some garage in the '60s still sounds amazing. Bought it the day I bought my first CD player....A Magnavox / Phillips FD1000. A 14 bit reference player.

I agree that most cds aimed at the top 40 sound like crap, but I find that many artists out of the mainstream put out very good sounding cds. Most of the remasters of classic rock, country, blues and jazz sound very good also.

There's more good stuff out there than I can afford to buy.