Well not all artist, and their producers go that route. I know Johnny Sandlin when he was having Bonnie Bramletts "Beautiful" CD mastered fought to make sure that CD was mastered well, and mot let the mastering engineers compress the hell out of it, and basically ruin the recording. Glad to see that there are some producers/engineers that still care how their artist recordings sound, and are not bending over backwards to apppease the Ipod and MP3 crowd.
Wall St. Journal article
Anyone see the WSJ Thursday 9/25 about Metallica's latest cd "Death Magnetic" and how it was mastered for ipod's and was the loudest recording ever? The band wanted it to sound loud through earbuds. The mastering engineer was embarrassed to be associated with the project because we all know that by compressing levels at the mastering stage, the dynamics are completely lost. No subtle cymbals, no strumming guitars. No surprising nuances for audiophiles.Now I realize that Metallica is not exactly marketing to the audiophile set. However, Springsteen's latest cd "Magic" used the same strategy and I thought it sounded like crap.The recordings are designed for low end reproduction and not bringing out the best performance by the artist. If I want a wall of sound, I will crank up my maggies. Comments?