What dynamic range is

Dynamic range is the distance between the quietest and loudest parts of a recording. It is what makes a drum hit feel like an impact: the hit is loud relative to what surrounds it.

Compression reduces that distance by pulling the loud parts down, after which the whole thing can be turned up. The result is a track that is louder on average while having less difference between its own parts.

Why digital made it a competition

Digital media have a hard ceiling. With CD there is a maximum peak level defined by the number of bits available, and nothing can exceed it. Once a master reaches that ceiling, the only way to sound louder than the next record is to raise the average level underneath the peaks — through multiband compression, peak limiting and equalisation.

The incentive was straightforward and short-term: on a radio playlist or a shop listening post, whichever track is louder tends to be judged as sounding better, for a few seconds.

So each release had reason to be slightly louder than the last, and the practice ratcheted. The Audio Engineering Society has published work examining exactly this — including whether louder, hypercompressed masters actually sold better.

What it costs

Listening fatigue is the usual complaint, and it is a real effect rather than a preference: a signal with little variation gives the ear nothing to relax against.

The damage is also permanent in a specific way. Compression applied at the mastering stage is baked into the master; turning the volume down afterwards restores the level but not the dynamics. This is why an early pressing of an album is sometimes genuinely preferred over a later remaster of the same recording, and it is a measurable difference rather than nostalgia.

How it ended, mostly

Loudness normalisation is what defused it. Streaming platforms play everything back at a matched loudness target, which means a hypercompressed master no longer sounds louder than anything else — it just sounds flatter, having given up its dynamics for an advantage that is now cancelled out.

The practice has eased as a result, though it has not disappeared, and a great many records mastered between the mid-1990s and the late 2000s still carry it.

Did you know?

• The ceiling is the point: digital has an absolute maximum peak, so extra loudness has to come from raising the average.
• The Audio Engineering Society has published research asking whether louder, hypercompressed records actually sold better.
• Mastering compression cannot be undone by turning the volume down — the dynamics are already gone from the file.
• Streaming loudness normalisation removed the competitive advantage that drove the practice.