

Older millennials and audiophiles of all ages remember the loudness wars of the 1990s and mid-oughts, a time when records seemed to compete with each other almost exclusively by how loud they could thump your car speakers.
But what sounded great on car radios wasn’t so good for serious listeners.
Impressing with volume is one thing, but squeezing a song so that it is at its maximum volume at all times — a process known as limiting or compression in audio engineering circles — removes dynamics and generally makes things feel less vibrant.
That’s part of the reason why Apple developed the Mastered for iTunes initiative, which it has now been renamed Apple Digital Masters following the death of iTunes, according to Billboard.
It wasn’t just average listeners who were annoyed with the differences in loudness between older, analog pop records and their newer digital counterparts: Companies like Apple had serious problems with it when it came to playback.
The company wanted to make sure it was offering the best possible sound to its iTunes buyers.





