for good or just old people whinging?..
Ps… i’m oldish but not moaning, just interested to see what people think? as I think there’s ‘dynamic’ music still out there?
I think it’s just that the style of modern music focuses less on dynamics and it really doesn’t matter if it suits the style of music imo. I don’t think its something to complain about unless the certain type of music would actually benefit dynamics (ex. Removing large amounts of dynamic range on orchestral music or more instrument and vocal oriented music). Also compression is not a bad thing either. It’s commonly used in almost every song produced. Overcompressing can cause issues.
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I have no clue what is meant by dynamic or compressed…but what the heck are those cylinders that guy sis standing between? 
Dynamic range is the range between the lowest volume point and the highest to oversimplify
The speakers are Infinity IRS 5’s (I think)
Compression is the act of reducing the loudest sounds and increasing the quietest sounds to make it easier to hear the quieter sounds and making them closer to the volume of the louder ones, again to oversimplify
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okay, so compression reduces dynamic range by pumping the quiet sounds volume to be similar to the loudest sounds.
is this something that’s very noticeable if you compare an original dynamic track to a compressed version?
Yes if applied generously. Most music is compressed, even some with really large dynamic range. Compression can change the sonic properties of sounds, and is a critical tool in music production. I myself when mastering sometimes find that I will run sounds through up to 4-5 compressors to get what I want. It’s bad practice to compress the entire mix alot, but compressing sounds within a mix is extremely common.
Edit: none of this is concerning the type of compression regarding file sizes or music information. Only dynamic range
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Yeppers. They are 8 feet tall with a D-shaped cross-section. I think the idea, called line source, is that when the sound generation extends from floor to ceiling this largely eliminates floor and ceiling reflections. There is another pair of same size speaker enclosures a few feet behind these that contain the sub-woofers. (I think one of DMS’s recent YouTube vids is on making his own line source system.)
Search YouTube for “loudness war comparison”.
There’s a whole implicit judgmental thing going on. You’re supposed to be shocked at how badly ultra-compressed dynamics sound. Similarly, we imagine Chopin would run screaming from the room if exposed to electric guitar with some serious distortion.
This bias works on me because I’m looking for beauty and the sensitive emotions from music. But other people are looking for the energizing, FU to the universe of sheer power, not for beauty.
No argument that max compression got started as a competition between radio stations. But I suspect its taken on a life of its own and is here to stay. Beauty is for wimps.
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I imagine compression is also a side effect of the fact that most people listen to music on shitty earpods, crappy factory car radios and, garbage Bluetooth speakers.
To get anything to sound halfway decent on the above, everything needs to be jacked to the max (bring soft sounds up to the loudness of loud sounds - aka compression).
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It can also give the allusion of “more detail” since its easier to hear more information from the song, albeit not in a good way. Some masters of certain songs can sound better then others, so some prefer vinyl masters over cd because of heavy compression or poor quality mastering from the early days of cd. Most remasters of songs also increase the volume and brickwall at 0db as well and compress a bit more if they do it wrong. I really don’t want to get into more because there is a crap ton to talk about, so look up all this stuff if you’re curious, its really diving down the rabbit hole
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