Dude, paragraphs.
Songs like "Ring My Bell (7" Version)" by Anita Baker, "Nowadays" on the Chicago Movie Soundtrack and "Simple" by Collective Soul are songs that has a great ammount of compression used on every single track, but the overall dynamics (Macro dynamically and Micro dynamically) are sublime.
Ring My Bell as almost 10 dBFS of headroom in wich the drum as space to punch and keep the mix going on without any horrible compression artefacts such as dragging everything in the mix backwards on every hit. Oh by the way! the rms level on Ring My Bell doesn't really move, but the microdynamics and clarity of that the song is where it's at.
"Nowadays" gives me chills for it's wonderful use of compression. It's punchy, loud enough so you can hear it in your car (testifying) and still has a great amount of feel during quiet passages.
"Simple" is simply (no pun intended) one of the best exemples of a compressed pop rock song that still has a nice amout of punch even tought I prefer older albums that wasn't compressed to fit the "Loudness War".
I could say the same about bands like Rage Against The Machine and Korn.
Your ears need to have a downtime after a loud passage or a drum hit to identify the next hit or passage as loud or louder or it will simply feel like the drums aren't punching anymore or you won't get surprised by anything and you'll get fatigued and will end up lowering the volume instead. It's all about contrast, but sadly music doesn't feel like it benefits from rms contrasts these days. Flat pancakes are what most of the population listens, wich I find fatiguing and I don't bother listening to anymore.
At least, if you guys hate rms contrasts why not mixing songs that has at least a certain amout of microdynamics? Making sure everything sounds large, clear and punchy, but still as it's general rms level always around the same spot? I must admit I sometimes let some of my metal mixes have less than 4 dbs of rms contrast, but I still have 4 dBs of dynamics right there between quiet and loud passages.
And I know numbers won't say anything since you should trust your ears, but have you listened to "Have a Cigar" by Pink Floyd? Sometimes when I crank it up in my house I feel every hits in this song gives me that nice punch to the face. Still, I sense the rms level isn't going up and down all time. Why? because there is no real quiet passage in that song, but dynamics and clarity are still there, not compromised by some compression bullshit such as killing dynamics for stupid volume purposes.
You guys should know what's a volume knob and learn to use it. Crying like babies because you rage about ambient noises overwhelming what you are listening isn't brilliant at all. Music should be listened in a quiet, comfortable room where you can actually listen to it. If you don't have that type of room or you actually live on a train station, I simply pity you and remind you of an old button generally called "Loudness" that was stupidly removed off of listening devices wich used to cure every need of smashing the shit out of published songs.
Compression is and will still be overused. Funny that you guys say compression gets every subtlety of each performances upfront. They are not called subtleties anymore... The contrary is fine too, when nothing is really smashed you can still hear every subtlety as in many old bands recordings where each time I listen to some I can still hear something I didn't heard before.
I apologize for my bad english, I just hope my opinion will be understood correctly. Finally, could you imagine yourself in a world where everything was written in caps? It's all about contrast.
Better?
