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Comment by Mediterraneo10 | Hacker News Reader

The loudness war is a matter of degree. Sure, steps have been taken so that we maybe won't see another Death Magnetic where the compression has resulted in outright ear-bleeding distortion. But when most music today is listened to from portable devices in loud environments, it’s hard to believe that we are ever again going back to the level of dynamic range common before the loudness war. As I said, even some classical music (and jazz) labels are now issuing their music with considerably limited dynamic range, and a dynamic range as ample as it traditionally was is available only to those who buy the SACD (and listen to the SACD layer of a hybrid SACD, not the CD layer) or the high-resolution download.

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Add to this the 'Bass arms race' happening in the past 15 years.

It is especially noticeable if one listens to "modern" vs older CDs vs the radio. I suppose Producers now feel compelled to exercise subwoofers and thump the audience, or compensate for crappy earbuds in the target audience, or maybe that's just what people want because even radio commercials are complicit -- it's difficult to listen to someone talk with "thump/thump/thump" drumbeats in the background. Often, I simply turn it off.

In my car, I have the bass response dialed back by about 50%, and even dip the mid-range by about 15% to get what sounds to my ears like a flat response.

I have mild hearing loss from the 250 to 1k range, so my ears are already attenuating the signal -- I can only imagine how "bass heavy" it must sound to someone with normal hearing!

The only thing that any good producer feels compelled to, is to create the best possible record.

There is nothing inherently good or bad in music production, no timeless rules as to how much treble or bass, compression, distortion, reverb or anything else you need. It has all been done to the extreme and what is deemed good is subject to constant change.

Sometimes car head units have an undocumented bass and treble boost, so flat per the settings on the unit is far from flat. The kinds of compensations you are making get the unit closer to flat when it is a unit of configured with undocumented tuning. You could measure your head unit to find out.

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