Older vs modern production, which do you prefer?
 

We all know there's the whole loudness war thing, with older albums being softer and more dynamic than newer ones. Thing is, often I still seem to prefer the production of newer albums as it sounds more impactful to me. However, I also seem to find newer albums to be more grating to listen to for a longer time, and to generally have less of the rawness I like.

What do you prefer?

It just so happens to be that I'm listening to an album I got in the mail today: Rickie Lee Jones - Pirates. It's from 1981 and unbelievably dynamic, volume wise. It sounds just beautiful in all sorts of ways. I feel like that degree of dynamism is very uncommon today, but lots of modern records sound great in all sorts of ways despite that. There's much more to album production than just a dynamic range score.

My thoughts on this whole issue are so many that I'm going to have to just make bulletpoints instead of trying to weave a cohesive, single thought.

1) I get that it's hard to listen to very dynamic records with **** headphones on the subway, but I'm a CD + stereo person, so I don't need albums to be compressed.

2) Metal is not the most dynamic thing in the world, but older metal albums still often sounded a lot more lively than what the standard is today.

3) The real problem with loud records is that they tend to sound bad in more ways than one.
Not only are wispered vocals often as loud as screamed vocals - completely killing the dramatic effect - but overzealous compression, equalizing and clipping tends to make hihats/cymbals sound bad and make the music sound bad on headphones and when you turn up the volume on your stereo.
Take some old album that doesn't even have great production - like Iron Maiden's Killers, turn up the volume... and it will sound great. I listened to Mastodon's Blood Mountain very loud on my stereo once, and it sounded like crap.

4) However, in my opinion, a much bigger problem in modern metal production is how ****ing loud the vocal tracks, kick drums and snare drums are made to be on a lot of metal records these days. Quiet guitars, quiet bass, loud snare, loud kick drum + a dude growling on top of it all so the guitars are practically entirely neutered. I could make a very long list of albums that, to my ears, bring the absolute worst of irritating modern metal production trends. (As an example, here are songs from two albums that would have been vastly better with less gimmicky production: Chthonic - Bú-Tik) and Kobra and the Lotus - High Priestess.)

5) Metal again: I rarely enjoy the bass on modern metal albums. I do enjoy the bass on plenty of old metal albums. I don't know why that is.

6) Since you specifically seem to ask about compression, I'll stop rambling and just answer that one straight: When it comes to metal, then modern metal production can go shove itself where the sun don't shine (of course there are nice exceptions to the rule, but I find myself having to just accept that bands I like get bad production).
When talking about all sorts of other stuff like jazz, singer/songwriter and various kinds of latin music, folk music and whatever else I like, then good production is fortunately alive and well. Even downright common!

7) I'm adding #7 just because I want to stress how ****ed up I think this is: I've heard several extreme metal songs where there's a moment with acoustic guitar or something leading into blast beats. The "quiet" part is really actually quite loud, and then when the wall of noise of tremolo riffing and blast beats kicks in, so does the compression, making it sound limp and lame and downright quiet next to the not-actually-quiet-at-all acoustic guitars/violins/whatever. WHAT IS THE FRIGGIN POINT!? It completely and totally kills the impact of the songwriting. The "heavy" part is supposed to be overwhelming and the "quieter" is supposed to actually make you feel calmer and make you pay close attention before the big change happens.
It's just so... non-musical. Like writing a novel in all-caps to get the drama across clearer.

I don't like compression. I have a volume knob and I don't listen to music around heavy machinery. If the music is performed with gusto and vitality, it does not need to be 'roided up after the fact.

The loudness war was goddamned necessary after so many albums got released that were too quiet to blast.

I really hope that's a joke. Sounds great to me.

Not a joke at all. That album's too quiet. Don't give me no bull**** about dynamicism either, the peaks on the album are crazy low too.

I've owned that since the week it came out and have never once thought it was too quiet.

My stereo goes up way higher than any album I own needs, so that's no problem for me. It can be slightly annoying in playlists that new songs are louder while older songs are quieter.
The actual problem with the whole loudness wars thing is all the side effects of pushing loudness past the maximum levels, plus all the annoying production trends that stem from the same mindset that produces peaky albums to begin with.
There's no harm in an album going up against the maximum volume of a CD, as long as it doesn't peak and as long as it isn't compressed to hell and back.
70's and 80's CDs especially tended to leave way more headroom, volume wise, than necessary for the medium.

Then you are no music blaster my friend.

It's always been noticeably quiet imo.

I've got one of those, but I do most of my music listening on my phone and laptop, headphones for the former and speakers for the latter (headphone jack is broken).

I take it one album at a time. So much great stuff throughout the years.

First modern digital production that blew my socks off. Still hasn't been surpassed IMO.

Semi related to the op

It seems like digital remasters are always worse

Like I think the guitar is louder on the ramones remasters

I can't remember what it was but I was listening to another remaster and the guitar was softer and the vocals louder - some metal - it may have been Sabbath

Remember that thread the rolling stone top 50 metal yeah that was it

I started going through the Sabbath and it doesn't sound "cleaned up" compared to my vinyl it sounds remixed

Like why would they think the original mix was wrong?

Am I right or just making **** up?