MOTM

You've nailed it right on the head-- long durations of highly clipped and compressed music is very taxing.  The worst part is that you can't just turn it down to eliminate the effect; it's still terribly taxing.  My understanding is that this isn't typically the fault or the band, but more often the record label ordering the mastering engineers to make it LOUDER becasuse LOUDER IS BETTER!!!!  <ahem>  This is a fairly recent trend, which is why your records don't hurt, and live shows don't have evil mastering engineers.

(And no, not all mastering engineers are evil.)

I've read that Rush's latest CD (whatsitcalled-- afterburn something or other?) falls prey to this unfortunate trend.  From my own collection, I've noticed that Madonna's "Music" is somewhat taxing.  I can't recall others off the top of my head.

When it comes to this nasty habit, I'd rather listen to grinding, head-splitting, noise puke, ala Merzbow or Aube... at least then I know what I'm getting into.  ;)

--PBr

-----Original Message-----
From: gooboworks [mailto:andy@...]
Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2003 2:43 PM
To: motm@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [motm] Re: w

Maybe this is causing my aural fatigue.   I will put on a CD, and 
after a bit, I will just stop it much to my relief.   Now, I am not 
talking any kind of grinding, head-splitting, noise puke.   It is any 
number of regular CD's.   It is weird, and the best way to describe 
it is "my ears get tired".  Does not happen on all CD's, does not 
happen with live music, does not happen with TV (lo-fi) music.   
There seems to be a level of subtle boringness I cannot clearly 
identify.   When I stop the CD it goes away, and I am glad stopped 
the music.

This did not happen with old analog vinyl records.   This could also 
be natural aging going on, however if that was the case all music 
would sound like this.   

Well for now, I am going with the smoothing theory.  I guess it is 
like removing all the bright colors from a painting, or the sparkly 
spices from food.   The end result is bland and dull.