As a music collector, the loudness wars is one of the biggest reasons to not use the streaming services. For some old albums, services like Spotify have only th

As a music collector, the loudness wars is one of the biggest reasons to not use the streaming services. For some old albums, services like Spotify have only the remastered versions, if available. Especially in the early 2000s remasters were very loud in expense of the dynamics. Luckily it's usually quite cheap to find the original CD versions, and the loudness wars database [0] is very helpful when hunting these. Also for some new recordings the vinyl version has much better mastering because of the physical limitations of vinyl. Good examples are Radiohead or Björk, where the vinyl versions sound absolutely amazing compared to the overly compressed digital versions. Of course there are always nice surprised, like the new Kate Bush live album, which is almost exactly 89 dB and has amazing dynamics. [0]: http://dr.loudness-war.info/ http://dr.loudness-war.info/