In Part I, I ranted on about the evils of compression. How it has been used to make records louder and louder to the point that they are not only far less musical but also almost painful to listen to.

The flip side to this has been that music is itself changing in response to the technology. As I pointed out, this started out as a subtle enhancement to the pulse of music… aka ‘disco’, but now the effects are far more dramatic.

In fact, I’d suggest that things went so far afield that the music that so thrived during the heyday of CDs… culminating in rap, with the thundering 808 kick drum, has now been superseded by music that can have no bottom or top because, frankly, we’re all listening on ear buds while doing other things.

In other words, the music itself is changing to reflect the fact that music is a background activity; listened to (if one can call it that) even in a crowded place. So, what kinds of […]