i'd just like to note the over compression of lots of music today. the cd is ...~25 years old and we still have not adopted a higher bit rate/fidelity media widespread.
i haven't listened to the new Metallica, but a friend said people are complaining about clipping in tracks or a track... that should not be happening. 10 years ago i bet most high signals were still below "0db" ..the s/n rating of 16bit is ..90-98 or something? we have SACD and DVD audio, yet both are very nitch markets. all we need is something like 24bit 80Khz (make a huge difference), but sadly "most people" don't care or can't hear a difference. when i read about anything to do with SACD's it's always astounding the specs of it... "very high sampling rate of 2.8224 MHz. This is 64 times the sampling rate used in [cds]" wiki ...a dynamic range of 120 dB from 20 Hz to 20 kHz. "Now, with the CD, we have more than 90 db of dynamic range to utilize, and no surface noise or risk of groove skip to worry about. So what has become of all that wonderful dynamic range? The loudness wars have come back. While most classical CDs still make use of the CD's dynamic range potential, once again the fallacious belief that "louder is better" has permeated the record industry." from http://georgegraham.com/compress.html
same thing with autotune program used on lots of people that are making money that really can't carry a tune better than people that can win RB just by hitting the designated note and not actually singing....my friend does that. it's hella annoying, but he feels proud cause he can get 100% on expert on RB2...it's like cheating, no one would pay to hear you just hit notes, so why fake it? society has become very lax with the standards we put up with.