EyeShotFirst said:
The loudness war has pissed me off for a for years,
+1 to that.
I'm a full-on Genesis nerd since the 70s. Over the last few years I've purchased their entire catalog in three very nice box sets, plus two additional boxes of all their live albums and concert DVDs. They are one of the only bands I'm a completionist of, so I knew I would buy them when it was announced they'd gone back in the studio to start the years-long process of going through each album themselves.
That said, the first box was a victim of the loudness trend and the second two were only somewhat better. The boxes are not my go-tos the way I'd hoped. Some songs are much improved, such as the albums engineered by Hugh Padgham. With the others, I've gone back to my original CDs. For the most part, the live albums are all improved. Since I always choose live Genesis over studio Genesis when I have a choice, I'm glad the live box didn't suffer the loudness trend.
For some of the other songs, which are always better & deeper live, I ripped the audio tracks off the DVD box. Truthfully, I'm really only keeping the boxes for the bonus material which is hours of interviews, all done very well. The loudness and the compression are most certainly not improvements.