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Have you purchased a Billboard top 10 CD lately? If you have, more often that not, it’s probably very loud. That’s awesome, isn’t it? Not exactly. Most of the public is unaware of this, but this is probably the worst thing you could do to sound reproduction. This is done through a process called Dynamic Range Compression (DRC). In simple terms, it reduces the dynamic range of an audio signal. In a normal song, there are highs and lows. Quiet chapters, and loud chapters. With excessive DRC, all the nuance and range between different parts of the song are lost. To the untrained ear, this might sound good since records with heavy DRC are louder. However, you are not hearing what the artist intended you to hear through their music. It’s akin to going to an art gallery, and then having the curator smearing paint all over the art because they think it’s better that way. Generally speaking, many people have never heard a pristine, clean recording, so they have no frame of reference as to what something with minimal compression sounds like. The video below illustrates the detriment DRC is to modern recordings. It really hit the nail on the head.
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