@whoololon:
It's that the thing has its own thing going on.
To give an example, I have on vinyl the discography of Queen and several of JM Jarre, and yes it is noticeable and a lot when you listen to them on CD (I bought them in their day because they said the sound was cleaner, that they were remastered and such).
As Sylver says (that bastard is into everything ;D) it's a matter of record companies and I would add part of the blame of the artist who "lets them do it". However, as protests against this practice grow, it could be that a more balanced format is returned to. After all, it would be cheaper for them.
I assure you very little!
I learned almost all of this from a producer friend who told me about his problems when trying to get the maximum sound quality, and he was always fighting the temptation to put a compressor at the end of the mix to the whole thing to gain more "presence", which was nothing more than a crude sound inflation, and he knew it xD
In fact, when I started producing, (and I'm still at beta level) I also used the resource of inflating the sound at the end and, indeed, it ended up distorting when it came out beyond my equipment :mudo:
Regards