Tag Archives: Compression

Economics of the Great Compression

After getting a lot of generous and smart comments on my initial post about compression and mid scooping I decided to take another crack at it. The basic fact, described here, is that modern commercial music is heavily heavily compressed and has its midrange scooped out. The question I’m looking at is why. The late […]

Midrange, compression and the history of technology

If you do any music production, even at the tyro level like me, you realize that there’s a characteristic “sound” to most pop music: mid scooped and compressed. It’s a very odd sound, highly un-natural, and it’s completely ubiquitous. But it was  not the characteristic sound of other eras. In the 20s, music sounded the […]