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> My 1996 Mustang's CD player has a "Compress" button on it, to make listening to highly dynamic music more feasible in a noisy car environment. I believe _thi
by tech2 3y ago
> My 1996 Mustang's CD player has a "Compress" button on it, to make listening to highly dynamic music more feasible in a noisy car environment.
I believe _this_ is where the issue mostly originated (well, radio, really). Radio is already massively compressed, and many people were either listening to things in the car, on some tiny little radio in the kitchen, or with awful cheap headphones with their walkman's built-in radio.
All of these weren't great environments to start with, and the dynamic range of radio was tiny given the overall bandwidth available to most FM stations.
So, companies compress, people get used to it, and thus the horror continues.
- ShadowBanThis01 3y agoFor sure, radio stations always compressed in order to sound "stronger" on the dial. Just another reason that compressing the actual recording was unnecessary.
- tech2 3y agoRight, and because radio stations do that I'd wondered whether marketing choose to "make it sound like radio" so people don't complain when they buy the disc
- ShadowBanThis01 3y agoNot out of the question. When I was a little kid I'd buy 45s and notice this difference. I asked for an equalizer for Christmas, thinking this was the issue. But of course it wasn't, and before long I realized that I liked the sound of the records better.