Article in WSJ about compressed dynamic range

Any lawyers out there - possible class action lawsuit here? I have over 1000 CD's and I would estimate that at least 10% are "hard clipped" throughout - that means totally maxed out with flat square waves on peak parts in the music. In any other respectable business this kind of faulty product would be recalled.

See this site - software now exists that will tell you how bad a CD product is CD Clipping

We also have "expert" witnesses who have made public statements. It is fairly easy to prove that the product is faulty.

The most compelling reason I shy away from some contemporary audio formats and music genres.

In my area digital CBS TV station broadcacts at least twice louder (up to point of distortion) than digital NBC station. In addition CBS spikes high frequencies - probably to get more vivid sound on TV speakers without tweeters.

It is very difficult to prove that product (CD) is faulty since they will show better sales and a lot of satisfied buyers. It is all targeted toward average person and not the audiophils. I have nightmares about everything changing, one day, to only one format - MP3.

I agree with the record companies. Compression is necessary for the vast majority of consumer listening situations where the quietest sounds would be obscured by ambient sound, such as in outside mp3 player use, or automotive applications and the largest peaks would exceed the capabilites of most similar consumer playback gear. Regression to the mean is a good thing. Audiophiles, generally are a higly vocal population that is but a small sub-set of the buying public. The record companies would surely starve by catering to the high-end set, not that they aren't eating cat food already due to the downloading issues.

Viridian, wouldn't it make more sense for manufactures of electronics geared for small, budget, or portable use have an eq switch for such instances, than to forever damage historic documentations of musical performances?