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RE: It's not that simple…

Well, mild to moderate compression has been a fact of life since the birth of the LP and went largely unnoticed by listeners for decades so I can't agree that mild to moderate compression harms the music, at least not in most home environments where room size tends to limit maximum levels anyway. You need large spaces if you're going to enjoy the reproduction of real life maximum peak levels. Such levels don't sound nice in small spaces in my view.

In addition LPs and CDs aren't capable of reproducing the full dynamic range of some music so some compression is an unavoidable necessity of the use of physical playback media. There's no way it can be totally left to the listener if you're going to rely on physical playback media and there's an awful lot of audiophiles who want to do just that.

The only way to avoid dynamic compression entirely would be to rely on high quality analog tape playback or high def digital data files. I don't think most people would go for the first of those options and a lot still aren't going to go for the second.

In principle I'd like to see the end of dynamic compression but done properly and with sensitivity I don't think it reduces the enjoyment of reproduced music in home environments.



David Aiken

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