Are todays digital recordings engineered to sound best on a smartphones?

@gawdbless : I should have been more specific. Both the Tedeschi Trucks and Gary Clark, Jr. albums I was referring to are studio albums. Their DR has been tested and in some cases by more than one person. DR is terrible.

As far as Tom Petty, I was only referring to the CD of "The Best of Everything". But that was just based on reviews. DR testing has not been reported on the CD.

I will also say that compressed DR does not seem to bother some people, even people who seem to be picky about lots of other SQ nuances. It baffles me how though. When DR is compressed nothing in the component chain can bring it back. And when the tonal range is compressed there is ’less’ to hear in terms of tonal variation.

There are some very very experienced people here who also suggest that by room and system tweaking a low DR recording can be made to sound good. I don’t have the experience or knowledge to refute that and none of us has any basis for questioning someone else’s ears but I still don’t see how you can significantly improve something that simply is not there.

oh the loudness wars continue. But I bet a majority of pop rock rap ect is mixed for headphone listening as 75% of those targeted listeners only listen through headphones- computer - Bluetooth speakers. ( ok I'm ready for the other 25% to lambaist me here)

@n80- I apologize, I do not have the CD ’the best of everything’ or the studio versions of either Tedeshi Trucks or Gary Clark jr so I cannot comment on those.
I think its not a case of Improving something that is not there, just making what is there musically acceptable. Better quality Hi-FI component’s will be better at extracting the Information that is there that some lesser qualitied components are not very good at.

glennewdick, You might be right. But it still doesn't make sense. Most of the folks playing through the computer or cell phone probably have Sound Check or some version of it turned on and don't even know it. So the attention grabbing effect of high compression is completely neutralized. Radio stations essentially do the same thing so no advantage there. 

And all that makes me wonder why this technique is so ubiquitous. It is an added step in the production process, not something that has to struggled against. So even from the prospect of production cost it does not make sense. So far I have heard no reasonable explanation why this phenomenon persists.

gawdbless, I understand what you are saying but when critical tonal variations, which are probably one of the primary components to rich, lush sound, are not there, maximizing what is left seems fairly futile from a hard core hi-fi perspective. Not saying it can't be improved. As mentioned, I can improve things a little with judicious EQ. I'm assuming that takes advantage of the fact that the perceived loudness of various frequencies is different even at the same output volume. (There is a name for this but I forget). In the end though, without critical variations in tonal range (probably not the right word...it is all complicated) it seems like pretty much else we do to the signal is, pardon the vernacular, polishing a turd.

And when I say that I'm talking about recordings with average dynamic range in the 4-5 range, which is common now. I think when a recording is in the 8-9 range more can be done with it and those, even though many consider that range to be unacceptable, sound okay to me.