Something interesting for those of you who buy "digitally remastered" music.


Here's a Wikipedia article on the Loudness Wars.

"The practice of focusing on loudness in mastering can be traced back to the introduction of the compact disc itself, but also existed to some extent when vinyl was the primary released recording medium. Many record companies would print compilation records, and when artists and producers found their song was quieter than others on the compilation, they would insist that their song be remastered to be competitive."




Back to the Wiki article, scroll down to "Remasters".

"Many record companies may decide to increase the average RMS level of the recording with the aid of compression, limiting, and/or clipping. This is especially common with pop music remasters. Two screenshots here, of ABBA's "One Of Us", from their 1981 album The Visitors (released on CD in 1983) demonstrate the effect.

The first image is taken from the original Polydor CD release.

The second image is taken from the 2005 remaster (part of the Complete Studio Recordings box set, not to be confused with the 2001 remaster by Universal/Polydor). There is a heavy amount of compression and the dynamics and "snap" of the original track have been lost as a result.

The Examples section contains several other remastered albums that have been remastered in this fashion."