marley carroll + melanaster records

Ephemera : NPR on the Loudness Wars

NPR has done a great job of summarizing the loudness wars in this article.  The infographic [.pdf] is beautiful, even if it documents the degradation of audio quality over the last thirty years.

The backlash against excessive compression and loudness has already begun (see: fans petition remastering of Metallica’s Death Magnetic).  Hopefully in time we can bring back some dynamics to recorded music.