I'm a bit of a yes and a bit of a no to this. I was absolutely flabbergasted by Shuji Inaba when I saw him live - on paper, without volume markings, his songs aren't much different to a Dylan or whomever. In fact he goes from super-quiet whispers to screaming. His screaming isn't as loud as your Napalms or whoever, but it seems moreso because of the extreme dynamics.

The Fall are a pretty good example, as Mr Smith seems to have quite a good control over drum sounds (I'm thinking of Blindness' intro particularly). Maybe it doesn't make that much difference, but the over-mastered trend annoys me quite a bit - I like 'loud bits' to seem loud. Perhaps I'm deluding myself, but I like to think I can tell the difference. I never listen with a VU display, so maybe I should.

i didn't say i was for or against dynamics, just pointing out that it's more an arranging tool than songwriting and that it's not crucial.

dynamics can certainly make or break a song, sometimes doing without them is not such a bad idea but that's painting yourself to a corner, in a way, and you should be able to really do some badass graphics on that corner.

dude, the core constituents of a song, any song, from time past to the present, are
rhythm, dynamics, melody, harmony

one can pick and choose of course, but it does get old to hear music without dynamic range, or music with no rhythm, or music with no melody, just harmonies (that shit makes me ill!) etc.

i wish the big black backcatalogue would be "remastered" by pushing the master volume up a few notches,.. those cds are soooo quiet!!!!!

and trumans waters milktrain album, and in fact the majority of shellac releases......... there is a few more but hey..... my stereo goes up to 11

just tutrn up the volume, and check yr EQ

http://www.audioasylum.com/cgi/t.mpl?f=digital&m=133575

that stuff is kind of bogus. in fact, i think that guy has taken an mp3 as an example. when wav files are compressed into the mp3 standard they tend to do that kind of shit (clip out badly). mastering is intended to fill out the sound and make it round and nice to listen to. overcompressing sucks the big one. but a nice mastering adds to the quality of the release.

no i am on glice's side with that one, a ltiny bit of internet research doesn't show shit. i can rip qotsa's songs for the deaf at higher quality than cd and i can show you waht it looks like with 192khz sampling rate at 24bit depth. you are stating something that is not true, in fact i can say completely false. i.e. wav files tend to clip out when converted to mp3, sorry but that is absolute and utter garbage, you either don;t know what clipping is or you are using the wrong language... sorry, don't mean to sound harsh and nothing against you max, however, yes nice mastering should add something, it is not easy to find

ok and just as an example the picture that says "And finally, this is what Audition (clip restoration) reckons it should look like, given 6dB of headroom to play with" is actually limiting at 0db, check your sources dude....

edit: ok sorry i'm a bit drunk but i can convert a say daydream nation to any mp3 bitrate and sample rate and take screen shots for the compariosns, because really this topic has come up many many times and is kinda getting tedious, who's up for it

lots of ignorance being tossed around as knowledge.

thisd is not about ripping music
it is about the original MASTERS being over compressed

completely different subject