But as the parent says, these can be applied after-the-fact (in most modern movie players it's called "night mode"). This doesn't mean the original recording ha

But as the parent says, these can be applied after-the-fact (in most modern movie players it's called "night mode"). This doesn't mean the original recording has to be shipped with deteriorated sound. In a way, loudness compression is like a hash function: the operation itself is largely mechanical, but destroys information in the process. Shipping with good-quality audio should be the default, and let compression be applied on playback. In fact, most home theatre systems already do sound post-processing in the form of room correction anyway (Audyssey, Dirac), so why not the let player do the compression?