Why do mass marketed CD's sound so crappy?

I received a few emails commenting on the "great accuracy" of many "studio" type monitors. While some of these monitors "may" measure well, they do so under very specific conditions. That is, they are like ANY other speaker. As such, their placement, room acoustics, spl levels, nearfield reflections, listening distance, etc... all effect their performance and what those doing the mixing tend to hear. Once again, what they hear is what determines how the disc sounds to us. Sean
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PS... even many of the engineers that are doing the recording / mixing, etc... are complaining about the demands that the record companies are putting on them in terms of sound quality. They want HIGH average listening levels, which means more smearing, less dynamic range and a loss of low level resolution. Isn't that what you're hearing with most modern recordings?

Could I have a few examples of rock music that is considered well recorded, not terribly compressed? Thanks

Sean is right with what he is saying. Eldartford I have been involved in recording as a musician for more years than I want to admit (my early days saw me study sound engineering breifly) and unfortunatley compression/limiting is what was used (or should I say even abused) I think in nearly everything I can remember being involved in. High average listening levels are what is desired/demanded.

p.s Noel Gallagher (Oasis)will listen to the mix on his old (and I mean old) portable player before approving final mixdown.

Rockethouse...My point was that there is a way to limit dynamic range without the kind of distortion caused by electronic compression..."Gain riding". For those unfamiliar with the term, this means manual gain control in real time by a recording engineer who is familiar with the music, and knows ahead of time when the loud and soft passages are coming up. He slowly "sneaks" the gain up or down a bit so as to avoid recoding problems. When I made recordings, this was how I did it because I didn't have any fancy recording equipment with compression.

Eldartford, I know where your coming from...I have the simplist of recording set-ups in my house... I still use a Yamaha MT3X 4-Track and I have used this technique for a long time(mostly)for acoustic by putting the 4-track on the floor and using my big toe on the fader (while I play). It took a while but I'm pretty good at it now. Maybe I could start hiring out my big toe as the(latest)next big thing in limiting.
Luckily I can play better than my gags.