Why do mass marketed CD's sound so crappy?

Speaking of this, my girlfriend received the latest release from a band called "The Darkness". This disc sounds SO bad it is insane. I'm not just talking about the recording quality either : ) Sean
>

I consider "The Darkness" the modern day British equalivalent to KISS for campy rock with a touch of Spinal Tap and British humor thrown in. It is a spoof that is making those guys as rich as KISS.

I like Darkness's new album, too. But I do NOT like listening to it.
Talk about slamming the levels! The mid-range is painful.
That album should be the posterchild for not compressing the mix buss. Compression is best used lightly while tracking vocals.
Allen

Something is going on that I just don't understand. "Stereophile" just listed U2's latest as recording of the month and gave the sonics 4 stars??? WTF's up with that?

Considering a CD takes 2secs to press ( including cooling ), and the ´master-copy´ looses detail on every press ( can take 2-10K of cycles ), your lucky if you get one of the first ones off the press, as the rest will decrease in quality. Buy two of the same CD, play them, chances are good that they will differ in quality.

Serious press-companies runs with a new master in very short cycles. Getting better quality sounding CD´s.

The first one off the press sounds just astonishing!

Also, I just get scared when knowing that a lot of studios plays with a simple transistor-/household-/megaboom-stereo
for reference/mixdown-reference. Because they know that there´s were the music will be played the most. They make it sound good on those thus they know that will sell them more records. Ugly, but true.

Thanks