Ahh, perfect, thanks, I genuinely appreciate it. I should have done that myself, shouldn’t I?

Not something I follow, but I recall reading that SACD is favored as being the highest-fidelity format generally available today (well, physical format...if you get something online, could be at whatever resolution you want).

I also recall reading -- probably a more-meaningful factor than the actual physical constraints -- that because the people who were buying them were rabid about audio quality and were annoyed by dynamic range compression, that the people mastering didn't make hot recordings, so the media format avoided the "loudness war".

googles

Hmm. Apparently not any more, at least not always:

https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/why-have-the-loudness-wars-creeped-into-high-res-releases.865982/

At least for a little while SACD/DSD/24bit 96k releases were immune to loudness wars. However over the last 5 years or so I'm noticing a lot of high res releases, either remasters, remixes or new releases in high res have become victims of the loudness wars. The latest release of Electric Lady land is a prime example, horrible clipping and single digit DR ratings.

Why? These releases are not meant for portable headphone consumption why are they doing this? Why are supposedly trained audio engineers going along with this? Clipping and low DR ranges is a quantifineable error. People that buy high res releases will want full DR to play on their home audio system.

Why has this horrible practice infected what should be audiophile class recordings?

Honestly, digital music vendors should just include a dynamic range metric. Hell, let artists sell different versions of a song if they want. MP3 and I think all other popular formats have ReplayGain or equivalent, so one should be able to optimize the recording for reproduction accuracy rather than to just achieve a desired volume.

Hm, digital downloads count as physical media? I might? be able to see the merit in that classification but I’m not entirely convinced.