CD mastering a lost art?

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.

Tomcy6,

Agreed. There are some really great recordings out there off the beaten path that don't require that big of a walk to find. One just has to widen their tastes a bit, and look outside the mainstream labels. The sonic rewards can be breathtaking.

Dynamic compensation, equalization, whatever. Tonally they are unlistenable. This major fault of most recordings is intentional. I know this to be the case because a "poorly recorded" CD sounds listenable on my ipad or in my car, and is horrific on my hifi. Maybe someone should make a modern high end audio CD player that is voiced accordingly.