new music. its all noise

No, I don't hate the current crop of chart toppers. I'm feeling old but I'm not quite yet a geriatric complaining about "what young people listen to these days!".

I'm talking about the current trend by record labels to artificially compress music to make it "louder". Ever get really tired or headaches while listening to music? the culprit is the over-compression that makes the music "louder", but it also doesn't allow your ears to relax during the song. hence after a few songs your ears are too stressed leading to tireness and/or headaches.

Its yet another reason why live music is so much better than any recorded music experience (unless you're watching Britney), but thats rant for another time. For a good explanation on how it all works check out this article.

There are 2 main reasons for the current loudness war.

1. To get noticed.
   
2. Our listening environments have changed. most people enjoy their music in their cars these days. The inside of a moving car is typically a very noisy environment. Music in cars has to overcome other noises ie engine, road/tyre and wind noise. thus the louder the music, the easier it is to hear over the other sources of noise.

Now I can agree with the 2nd reason for digitally remastering tunes to sound better for where you listen to them. but with the current digital formats it isn't difficult for this to be done at a hardware level instead of in the music format.
The 1st reason won't work and will lead to catastrophe. the reason being it disregards the fallacy of composition. That is if one person does something its good. If everyone does it then its usually bad. This is exactly what's happening in the music industry at the moment. There's a loudness war, everyone is compressing the bejesus out of music to gain loudness.
The end result? nada! no one gets an advantage out of something that everyone is doing! What the current loudness war will give us is a generation of iPod users who are destined for deafness. (maybe a good time to invest in Cochlear shares). perhaps this is a window for someone to forgo the loudness and compression and dazzle us with unadulterated music with some dynamic range!