[RRod]

 
One of the possible answers is that classical and jazz may rely on dynamics more than let's say pop and rock. Obviously you don't want your recordings to get compressed, you can do that for yourself if you want to. Magically "decompressing" something is quite hard if not impossible.

 
I guess my question is more "whose deciding that the dynamics matter enough?" This is what seems to be missing for popular music right now: someone to say "yeah this is too much", which leads me to believe, as suggested above, that everyone (who has actual power) is just fine with it: artists, producers, listeners.

 

[pinnahertz]

  One question I've always had on the topic is "why haven't genres like jazz and classical fallen prey to loudness?"

Classical and Jazz music is not subjected to the competitive play scenarios that popular and country music is.  Radio play, even background music in bars and restaurants, mp3 playback in cars and portables...all of that motivates aggressive loudness processing.  Not that people don't listen to jazz or classical in the car, but radio is already processed for loudness (something record producers still don't seem to understand).  

 
One of the possible answers is that classical and jazz may rely on dynamics more than let's say pop and rock. Obviously you don't want your recordings to get compressed, you can do that for yourself if you want to. Magically "decompressing" something is quite hard if not impossible.

Yes, there's emotion in dynamics.  But there's dynamic rock too, if you go back a few decades.  
 
Back when HD Radio was first being kicked around I had the idea for receiver-based processing linked to a "rosetta stone" track embedded in the bitstream.  The idea was listeners could dial the dynamics up or down to taste.  The choices were not generalized or wild, but rather were producers choices burned into a dynamics control subcode.  The "knob" might have had settings for "wide dynamics", "light", "original" and "loud", or better, would have an automatic adjustment based on the ambient noise level in the vicinity of the receiver.  Squashed/loud dynamics for cars, motorcycles, and portables out in the noisy world, softer processing for background use, wide dynamics for foreground, etc.  It would have eliminated over-compression on the air as well as in recordings, and put dynamics control in the hands were it belongs--the listener--without the producer relinquishing complete control of the result.  
 
My idea never made it off my desk because at the time this was all happening, I worked for one of the companies invested in and lobbying for the messed up HD Radio system we ended up with.  
 
Oh well...another idea got flushed. 
 
Oh, and "my" HD radio system was 5.1 surround.  Might have revitalized the music industry by creating a new market for all new mixes.

 

[Randos]

new to "high" end audio so sorry for my ignorance.
 
How much does this effect vinyl record? I bought a turn table recently to play my dad old records from the late 70s to mid 80s soo i assume they are fine. As far i am concern this only really effect modern era music industry. I have checked these out when i downloaded music from google play and imported to audacity, there are usually **** loads of clipping thinking i should stay away form those digital downloads and just get cds. But cds dont seem any better apparently  so vinyl?
 
The only recent vinyl i purchases in the last 2 years  is Taylor swift 1989, red hot chili peppers greatest hit limited edition and pretty lights A coloured map of the sun. 

 

[castleofargh]

  new to "high" end audio so sorry for my ignorance.
 
How much does this effect vinyl record? I bought a turn table recently to play my dad old records from the late 70s to mid 80s soo i assume they are fine. As far i am concern this only really effect modern era music industry. I have checked these out when i downloaded music from google play and imported to audacity, there are usually **** loads of clipping thinking i should stay away form those digital downloads and just get cds. But cds dont seem any better apparently  so vinyl?
 
The only recent vinyl i purchases in the last 2 years  is Taylor swift 1989, red hot chili peppers greatest hit limited edition and pretty lights A coloured map of the sun. 

you're right, the total abuse of dynamic compression is a thing that came with CDs, because only CDs really had the accuracy to do it(sad paradox). on principle some CDs can and will have better dynamic than vinyl, but in practice it's still the opposite most of the time as can be seen on the DR website.
now vinyls have their own problems that CDs don't have, the ideal audio format is digital if fidelity is the main objective. we only need the industry to stop fracking around with CD mastering. until then, enjoy your old records. they're not high res anything, but they can pass the emotion quite well.

 

[Joe Bloggs]

How about a digital audio format with floating point data points...

 

[JWolf]

 the loudness war is IMO the worst thing to hit the industry after guys making artistic decisions based on money prospect only. but there is more to a good sound than the DR value. even when focusing only on dynamic. a voice is by nature very dynamic, but if you leave it untouched to get "the real sound like the artist blablablah", it often sucks big time. to me that's not relaxing or very enjoyable for long. if it's fun as a once in while thing, I wouldn't want highly dynamic music all day long at home, or even worst, in noisy environments with my IEMs.
so while dynamic brickwalling should be punishable by law, I believe that a lot of materials are much better with some degree of dynamic compression. I guess our preference for masters with higher DR values comes from how we're often comparing compressed stuff with brickwalled stuff. making us hate compression more than we should.

I've been listening to live music for 8 days now and compared to a lot of today's recordings of pop/rock music, it's a breath of fresh air. The dynamics are natural Andrew music is not flat and lifeless. A lot of today's recordings are flat and lifeless. They are flat because the dynamics are gone. I've also been listening to older music where the dynamics are not gone. The music sounds very good because it's not all a mash of sounds.