Jack White's album released earlier this year, Blunderbuss, has good dynamics for a newly released album. At the mastering stage Jack White's request to Bob Ludwig was that he wouldn’t use any dynamics processing in the mastering process.

Here's an interesting article on the making of the album: Jack White - Blunderbuss

Foobar2k returns a DR11 on two tracks, and DRTWELVE!!! on the title track. There is hope! By the way, which rock legend does Jack's vocal on "Blunderbuss" remind you of? Gives me the chills.

Seven Nation Army from 10 years ago also yielded an 11, while I Fell In Love With A Girl barely craked DR6. I think context plays a stronger role in Jack White's(White Stripes') work than just being loud, an exception in modern pop/rock. Those two songs are about different topics.

The last few Alan Jackson albums are all mastered with little or no compression/limiting. They harken back to the early 90's levels.

Good evidence that needing to be highly compressed to be "competitive" is bollox. I have a very limited taste for country music but I can genuinely enjoy listening to his albums.

Got the Jack white album blunderbuss too that has been mentioned here. Sounds great due to no bull**** production and uncompromised mastering!

All of Kate Bush's albums new and old are uncompromised in the mastering too.

There's plenty more I'm sure.

Best,

Owen

PS happy boxing day!

Happy boxing, Christmas, kwanzaa, postage stamp day, whatever y'all observe!

You bring up a good point in your second paragraph Owen:

There's a lot of music out today(of many different genres) that I wouldn't grant a second listen primarily because of how it was engineered/mastered!

It's that last step that can make or break how good or awful an otherwise well-produced group of session tracks will sound once it ends up on a CD or on Amazon/iTunes as a digital file.