I brought this up in a conversation a few weeks ago, and got a bunch of blank stares, so here’s a link to an article about how modern music companies can take even a recording which is solid musically and squeeze every last bit of life out of it by compressing the living daylights out of it. It talks about Rush, but the first album that sprang to mind for me was U2′s All That You Can’t Leave Behind.
It gets a bit technical near the end, but it’s definitely worth reading at least down to the part with the huge, all-caps text. It’s a very nice illustration.