I'm working to put stuff together in the original post, and it's frustrating because it seems to be taking longer than I want it to, but here's something that I wrote so far, and an accompanying real-life example. Also, if you want more information on this I would definitely check out Bob Katz's discussion on the Loudness War linked in the op. He's a great speaker on this subject, and he goes into detail about dynamics in that presentation.
From text that will be posted in op soon: A waveform, like a peak meter, is a measure of signal amplitude, but it changes over time and is designed to highlight changes and dynamics in a signal’s amplitude/loudness. Large changes in amplitude indicate a dynamic track, while the flat-line plateau we see on many new records indicates a loud, compressed mix. When a mix is always loud, it is really always quiet. Perception in dynamics and energetic shifts in music require us to perceive a loudness shift, and an increase in the signal. In the words of Bob Katz, “things need to get quiet before they can get loud, you need a decrescendo after every crescendo”. But if the source is always loud, always hovering near it’s peak, and there are no “quiet” moments, our ears adapt with their own kind of sound normalization, they literally tighten up their anvils and stirrups and shut off to the constantly high amplitude in the signal. The nuances of the track become hidden, it becomes hard for the brain to pick out details, so what do we do? Turn up the volume! Then our ears adapt again. What do we do next? Turn up the volume again! The dog keeps chasing its own tail until we eventually need to sit in a quiet room with a Tylenol.
So, with that in mind, this is an example of some rock'n'roll. The infamously compressed Red Hot Chili Peppers Californication and below it Eagle's Hotel California vinyl, and below that Eagles' Hotel California modern CD release. I didn't really think about it, but just realized Californication and Hotel California are extremely similar in their lyrical themes, both being about moral decrepitude in California. So I guess some things never change... (but loudness and dynamics sure do!)
When people were joking about sausage waveforms, well... it's true, it's not even a joke anymore, that's actually what certain songs look like :sigh: As you can see, Californication has no dynamics through a vast amount of it. There is no headroom left, there is no quietness, there is no change. Does it clip? It clips like a madman, all throughout the track, but that's a separate issue from the dynamics. With "music" like that, it's impossible to really enjoy it or sense changes of energy.
Now looking at the Eagle's stuff, you can see a loudness change from vinyl to CD, but the dynamics are still there in both versions! The Eagles CD release does in fact clip at one point in the song (when the bongos come in after the line "they stab it with their steely knives, but they just can't kill the beast"). But other than that, it actually looks pretty dang good. It makes good use of CD's dynamic range, and it sounds excellent to my ears. Probably the best if not close to the best you could probably hope for in a rock'n'roll CD master (it's an old CD though, and I personally admit to liking the quietness in the vinyl more but that is purely subjective at this point... both, for the most part, are quality masters).
Hope that helps. I will have more info in the op soon, including tools for measuring dynamic range in a track. This website, the mean time, has a list of albums with their dynamic range measured: http://dr.loudness-war.info/
