"The Death of High Fidelity"


Just received the new issue of Rolling Stone in the mail today. It has an interesting article: "The Death of High Fidelity." It deals with dynamic sound compression, reducing "the difference between the loudest and softest sounds in a song". Various sound engineers and producers weigh in on the subject. It's worth picking up a copy.
valinar
Bongofury I thinky you're confusing the 2 types of compression. I think the Rolling Stone article deals with how engineer's go crazy with compressors in the studio robbing dynamic music of all its dynamics. You're talking about file compression(which still robs music of some of its fidelity but in a different way).
Both go hand in hand. With downloading now the dominant format, engineers are remixing tracks louder to compensate for the technical limitations of the newer formats.
http://www.turnmeup.org/

Personally, I hear it and I'm no golden ear, but I can tell the difference between a smashed record and one that isn't. Recordings from the 70s and earlier have a breadth that's missing in a lot of music (and I guess I'm principally talking about rock here) these days.