I suspect for some engineers and producers, compressing and brickwalling go somewhat hand in hand. After all, if you’ve reduced or removed
the dynamic range, why not just bump
the volume so that's not a problem either?
My personal opinion is that Intrada is already doing
the right thing. Please don't change. You release albums from a variety of decades, and
the older material (especially
the wonderful sounding stereo material from
the '60s we've gotten in recent years) deserves – after so long without an upgrade or any CD release at all – to be heard with their original dynamics intact. Some might even consider compression an unjustified alteration to
the intentions of
the original artists, which history indicates is never a popular choice in
the long term. Likewise I suppose if '80s or '90s albums were originally compressed,
the authentic thing to do is retain or recreate that. Is that what Intrada elected to do with
The Rocketeer? (EDIT: I see it is.)
If you don't mind, I’m going to mention this on
the FSM board to generate more discussion as not everyone there may see this. I'll put it in
the Rocketeer thread.