Don't even get me started...

http://createdigitalmusic.com/app/uploads/2011/07/loudness.jpg

The LOUDNESS War

(aka, what ruined the sound of modern music)

You may not be familiar with what the loudness war is, but you are definitely familiar with its effects. To explain, try to picture yourself in this situation. You are selling newspapers on the sidewalk of a busy street, you shout, "Extra! Extra!" People hear, and buy your paper. Now imagine a different newspaper hires a different newsboy to sell across the street from you. What are you going to do? Probably shout a little right? Shout louder, more people hear, more people buy. Now imagine that the number of paper boys increases tenfold... you're probably screaming at the top of your lungs. Well that's exactly what happened in the music industry.

For some reason people decided that louder is better. I have absolutely no idea why. However the fact remains that the new philosophy is that louder is better, so let's make all these tracks louder, purely in a sense of decibels. To do that one needs to decrease something called dynamic range. Dynamic range is the difference in sound between the softest and loudest note playing in a track. The thing that lets a song develop and move and sway and have... well... range. 

The three steps done in this process are as follows;

1) Decrease the dynamic range so no note is significantly louder or softer than any other

2) Increase the overall volume of the now modified track

3) Sound terrible

So say goodbye to crescendo, range, powerful vocals over soft instruments, focus on the specific instrument in a solo, and clear cut, non-scratchy music. So this, this is why digital music fails miserably in comparison to vinyl.