The LOUDNESS Wars (again)

Fair enough, most people who originally bought the album are deaf by now.

This is disturbing to me. I know the trend has been to increase level but many have fought very hard to halt this trend. Its not because these are old geezers and have nothing better to and want to spoil the fun of the young but rather an innate respect for music. 
 
What happens when we record music?  First keep in mind that though we can do far better in recording music then ever before with even modest gear however we can never record the true sound that the ear hears in a live performance. The recording can't handle the full dynamic range that the ear can hear. What happens is the act of recording will squeeze the dynamics before we even start recording to disk or tape. The mic itself is limited in the range it can handle. One reason we need to set levels each time we record. Pre-amps are also limited in their dynamics range and so on. This means we are already distorting the sound by the simple act of recording it. Add to this that all playback systems have their own limitations in their ability to handle the full range of dynamics. Then we add further reductions in dynamics with compressors and limiters.
 
What the people behind stopping the loudness wars are doing is trying to stop further degradation of the sound and thus music reproduction by pointing out the need to preserve as much of the dynamic range as is possible. Some of it will be gone due to the recording process but we have a choice to not add to this problem by being scrupulous in the minimum use of compression. 
 
The first things that goes with compression are transients one of the most important psychoacoustic elements in music. Transients give all sorts of information to the ear. One of the most prominent things is direction. It helps pinpoint the spot where the sound is coming from. Getting rid of transients produces an amorphous wall of sound with no source. Some may say that that point is unimportant in close miced multi-track recording. I maintain its crucial. It gives the mixing engineer a clear tool to help him locate in the stereo field where he wants things to be placed.  And it sounds "right" to the listener. Other types of recording in stereo rely on transients for spatial sound location. But there are tons of other things that transients do that contribute to the realistic reproduction of music.  
 
Making it "loud" is a a way for untalented mixers to impress the uninformed and ignorant but also annoy those that care about the beauty of music.