The Distortion of Sound

Of course it should be pointed out just in case, that volume and dynamic range are not you can't for example reduce the dynamic range by turning down the volume. Apparently the powers that be at a lot of the big music companies got together and decided, gee wouldn’t it be great if all those young dudes and dudettes with boom boxes, iPhones and iPods could turn up the music loud without clipping their tiny little players and without destroying any speakers? Well, guess what? They compress the dynamic range and increase the level (loudness) on the CDs. That’s why some of your CDs at the same volume setting on your preamp or player are louder than others. That’s because they’re compressed. But the peaks are a lot lower. Problem solved! Lol

Us Classical Buyers can but the Swedish BIS offerings which are musically superior and have as much dynamic range as the media can have .
The Hyperion label has good dynamics as well.
I never did understand why pop music fans need more than a good boom-box and I'm not trying to be funny .

Only a very small % of listeners (commonly referred to as "audiophiles") care about a recording seemingly sounding like an original performance. Few are equipped to even have a prayer of achieving this. Most people just want things to sound clear and perhaps with no clearly audible distortion. Most modern recordings outside the pure commercial pop genre seem to accomplish this fairly well on the variety of listener gear commonly in use today, including "high end" systems where the recording itself is mostly the bottleneck, not the playback system itself.

So the angst of audiophiles in the know looking to get the most out of their big investments in gear is understandable but as a music lover (as opposed to "audiophile" which I might well be labeled as well given the time and money invested in getting good sound at home) I find no shortage of good quality recordings with engaging dynamics. In general more CDs I listen to these days sound very good to me than ever before. Some even achieve the level of perhaps providing the illusion of sounding live, sometimes even compared to listening in the good seats at the best venues.

Like all art, recordings are what they are, human renderings of something real. Even the best works of art or photography, despite their unique pleasures or drawbacks, are no substitute for experiencing the real thing.

The dr dynamic range database is a useful and interesting resource that seems to clearly depict general trends in how recordings are made over the years in regards to dynamic range, but I have found the metrics there insufficient to account for whether or not I find a particular recording to be good or enjoyable or not. There is more to music than dynamic range, though that is something that audiophiles in particular tend to obsess about. Myself included, but more so in the past than in the present. If one is a music lover it really does not pay to obsess about things like recording dynamic range metrics. It will just tend to get in the way of potential enjoyment of music in general, which is based on so much more.

But I would say it still makes sense to invest in a system that has a good chance of never being the bottleneck in regards to dynamics and all the rest. That is needed to help assure an audiophile gets maximum enjoyment possible out of their music library or sources, including those releases that truly excel sonically in some way.

Schubert, 1) there is not just classical and pop but everything else in between as well and 2) even the purest pop tends to have some softer things going on as well as all the loud "noise". An "audiophile" listening wants to hear everything in all recordings. If just a pop music fan and nothing else, a boom box will likely suffice.

Mapman, as usual, has contributed eloquent and insightful commentary.  He's a tough act to follow.  :)

I can't say with certainty that my enjoyment of recorded music has increased commensurately with the improvements I've made to my system.  Almost without exception, the pleasure that music provides me has little to do with the hardware.  Once my system got to the point of being "good" or "excellent" much of that satisfaction was due to figuring out the usual audiophile conundrums and concerns.

Full disclosure: I must say, however, that I've never met a boombox I've truly loved.