Compressed recordings? HiFi enemy 1?

For my system & ears, definitely yes!

Danner: classical recordings have compression -- lots of it, unfortunately :(. Indeed, in some cd versions of old recordings you can hear the effects quite clearly.
Dynamics are too high going from a pianissimo to a full-orchestra forte, it seems!
An expander is next to useless here, I suppose; Danner explained the reasons above.

Hey Hi:
Well, I'm not the one to ask, but IMHO for about 98% of the music out there they can't compress it enough! With any luck sometime soon we won't be able to hear it at all. Worrying about the recording quality of the stuff is like worrying about what wine to serve with spam. Which is one reason why most of the more discerning folks at Agon find it harder and harder to find good recordings of their favorite music. When the music is disposable why worry about how it's recorded? The recording standards are under assault.

Seriously, there are some smart folk working hard on recording and I hope they pull it off. Here is one good discussion. www.zainea.com/percept.htm

Sincerely
I remain,

A little compression is a good thing. It fills out the sound and gives it some weight. Too much compression sounds really bad. Flat, undynamic and generally uninteresting. Unfortunately, once compression has been applied to music its effect cannot be undone.

BTW, it wouldn't sound like rock n' roll without a good deal of applied compression.

I believe many years ago Dbx marketed such a CD player.

I still have that dbx DX5 cd player in my bedroom system...it has settings for "ambiance, compression and DAIR"...it improved the dynamics of almost all cd's...I used to run it on a Marantz 2270 with BIC Venturi 6 speakers and then a Sony GX67ES until I did a full system replacement a few years ago...I have fond memories of it