Resonant Alien

Unless I am traveling, I typically still listen to most of my music on CD in my car, and I am like many of you in that I can hardly stand to listen to many recent CDs because they are so over-compressed in mastering that they simply suck.

Then, today, I am listening to my iPod while doing some email and I decided to listen to My Chemical Romance's The Black Parade. I tried many times to listen to this CD in my car and always had to turn it off after 2 or 3 songs because the mastering just sucks so bad that it sounds horrible. I had never listened to it on the iPod until today. What I found (heard) was interesting.

It still doesn't sound awesome - it still sounds pinched and full of artifacts from the mastering, but it sounds much better than the CD and is actually listenable.

So, what does this mean? Have we come to the point that we are now having to mix songs so that they sound lousy on CD, but good (or at least passable) on an iPod? I hope not 'cuz that would just be sad.

RA