Is music quality moving away from the "audiophile"

Chasmal - not surprised at all. But these things run in cycles. At one time people painted over perfectly good interior wood, a generation later we stripped the paint off. PC's, Ipod's etc have wowwed the general population in a similar fashion, the onthego culture hasn't helped. But at some point there will be a shift back in the other direction.

The trend toward compressed recordings must be only in certain genre's. I have found considerabel dynamic range in recently recorded classical music CD's. A number of months ago I was talking to folks in the mixing / recording end of the business, albeit working primarily in hip-hop - they claimed that there was simply less compression in classical recordings. However, from my subjective perspective, I don't find it. Indeed, Vanska's recent recording of Beethoven's Eroica for example could not be listened to without having the peaks at 90 dB or better, you simply would not hear the softer sections. I don't think this is my hearing as my last hearing test - a couple years ago, had me within 5 dB of reference from 250 to 8k, the test range. I have listened to some remasters of rock music and was rather surprised to see the needle on the power meter of my amp pretty much sit in one spot.

More disturbing is some of the transfers to CD seem to have changed the music in other ways. For eg. the White Album on CD does not sound like the old vinyl. Even G. Harrison said that he heard sounds on the CD that he did not know were there. Would be curios to hear if anyone else can point to specific transfers of other 60's 70's rock with the similar changes - (that is, other than compression).