[Arny Krueger]

"Audio Empire" wrote in message


Perhaps this poster didn't literally mean the actual IEMs
themselves, but rather the whole portable music gestalt..

There is some romance to that idea.

You know, the fact that people listen to CDs in their
cars, rip them to MP3 and then listen to those in areas
with high background noise (like on airplanes, or in the
workplace).

The third issue you raised, the part about listening in noisy situations is
real. Wide dynamic range doesn't work in noisy environments. However, it
only takes nominal amounts of compression to address that issue. The
hypercompression that is all too common today goes well beyond what it takes
to make music sound good in noisy environments.

But still, I kind of doubt that all CDs would be
purposely tailored for that kind of use and only that
kind of use.

I think that applying nominal amounts of compression, particularly to
reissues and compendiums, could benefit listeners who no longer want to pay
full attention to the music.

OTOH, they are doing it for some reason.

Modest amounts of compression and manual gain riding does make wide dynamic
range music more suitable as background music and in noisy environments.
While it is a step back from realism and accuracy, it doesn't necessarily
have to sound bad. Hypercompression is something else, and generally sounds
bad to me.

I would like to presume that music company executives aren't total idiots
and use customer surveys, focus groups and blind preference testing to guide
their audio production efforts. If that is the case, then rioting against
current music production norms is futile, as they are simply being good
business men and giving the custormers what they want.