I used to assume that vinyl would have to be more compressed than CD. I seem to remember reading an article on vinyl mastering that made the process sound quite horrific; reducing bass transients to stop the player’s needle from jumping out of the groove, and having to reduce treble content to prevent the cutter’s head from overheating, that sort of thing. Dynamic range had to be compressed to prevent quiet passages being buried in hiss and crackle – arbitrary mutilation of the recording in order to cater for the quirks of the medium, in other words.

The “over-compressed” sound of CD that you refer to is more a case of the expectation of the digital version being listened to by iPod-wearing youngsters on the bus, rather than a defect in CD itself. As you mention in another of your posts on audio quality, CDs from the 80s often sound better than more recent ‘re-mastered’ ones. This is how it feels to me, I have to say, where older versions have more ‘space’ in them. I am also convinced that the “loudness wars” are not only resulting in dynamic compression, but real distortion of the signal. The ‘loudness’ of Radio 1 (during the day in particular?) is utterly, utterly ridiculous; I sometimes wonder if the DJs have any view on the amount of multilation of the music that goes on ‘in their name’, or if they are oblivious to it.