I am starting this post by saying that i dont like compressed sound. By compression, i did not mean file compression that we achieve by compressing a CD format to an mp3 format. What i meant by compression is in context to how audio is recorded in a media.
By definition compression tend to make soft sound loud and loud sound soft. This is useful to get all the sound a similar level during recording. But it looses in its sense the realism of what is been played / recorded. Some amount of compression is nice , good. But over compression is very bad.
Whenever i listen to the bollywood recordings of the 50s, 60s,70s and 80s i can find that the recording sound very real as there was "No" compression of audio signals those days and everything was recorded live as-is. So the instrument size and scale were easy to recognize with them. For instance violin sounded like violin in sound, size and scale and so did a base guitar or a saxaphone. These recordings can be seen from those of Naushad, Bappi Lahari or RD Burman types of music.
Coming to the compressed era or what i call ARRehman type of music, there is a case of lots of over compression. Everything sound too flat and detailed that you loose sense of the instrument size. Though it would be pleasing to listen them in literal sense but there is no sense of realism in the music as everything sounds same level. Agreed the instrument sizing is not a big deal for a casual listner or a background listner but for critical listner they do matter. For those who listen to music when parallel preparing an office presentation on their laptop on a Sunday evening for an early Monday morning meeting they wont even care for the compressed sound where more than 95% of the music listener currently are. So the industry cater to those ccustomers and dont even care of the rest of 5% of the listeners. To top it these over compressed recorded audio are boosted in level double or tiple time to win on the loudness war (most punjabi type rap songs of the current era)
I have also observed that some audio gear tend to compress the sound. It can be amplifier, source or even speakers. They tend to sound very flat to any type of music and there can be many reasons for that which is out of scope of this discussion.
I have listened to the AV Receiver designed by hfv FM Ravindra Desai who i believe use some kind of compression in his design by choice to make it flat sounding to all level of music. (though i am not sure).
Disclaimer: The above is entirely my own opinion and others may choose to differ.
By definition compression tend to make soft sound loud and loud sound soft. This is useful to get all the sound a similar level during recording. But it looses in its sense the realism of what is been played / recorded. Some amount of compression is nice , good. But over compression is very bad.
Whenever i listen to the bollywood recordings of the 50s, 60s,70s and 80s i can find that the recording sound very real as there was "No" compression of audio signals those days and everything was recorded live as-is. So the instrument size and scale were easy to recognize with them. For instance violin sounded like violin in sound, size and scale and so did a base guitar or a saxaphone. These recordings can be seen from those of Naushad, Bappi Lahari or RD Burman types of music.
Coming to the compressed era or what i call ARRehman type of music, there is a case of lots of over compression. Everything sound too flat and detailed that you loose sense of the instrument size. Though it would be pleasing to listen them in literal sense but there is no sense of realism in the music as everything sounds same level. Agreed the instrument sizing is not a big deal for a casual listner or a background listner but for critical listner they do matter. For those who listen to music when parallel preparing an office presentation on their laptop on a Sunday evening for an early Monday morning meeting they wont even care for the compressed sound where more than 95% of the music listener currently are. So the industry cater to those ccustomers and dont even care of the rest of 5% of the listeners. To top it these over compressed recorded audio are boosted in level double or tiple time to win on the loudness war (most punjabi type rap songs of the current era)
I have also observed that some audio gear tend to compress the sound. It can be amplifier, source or even speakers. They tend to sound very flat to any type of music and there can be many reasons for that which is out of scope of this discussion.
I have listened to the AV Receiver designed by hfv FM Ravindra Desai who i believe use some kind of compression in his design by choice to make it flat sounding to all level of music. (though i am not sure).
Disclaimer: The above is entirely my own opinion and others may choose to differ.