I’m trying to get a handle on this Loudness Wars thing. I have good hearing and decent headphones. I can’t hear the difference between V0 and FLAC, though. (“Though?” More like—duh. There’s no difference.) I thought the LW stuff was basically old white people griping about young black people and also young white people with fucked up hair and piercings. I mean, that’s a pretty easy, solid surmise. Reinspired this morning, I’m listening to this an “unmastered” version of Californication from OiNK versus a V0 of the retail CD. What should I be hearing?

• The V0 is definitely louder, in a somewhat unpleasant way.
• When I turn it down, I notice that it loses a little of its expanse.
• OK, there’s definitely something to this.
• What I took previously to be, I guess, bass amp cab rattle and some snare noise is actually this clipping thing, I think, which is fucked up because that’s the opposite of what I thought it was, which was some sort of great studio fidelity that captures even the rattle of giant amp cabinets and like air pushing on a vacant drum kit.
• That said (that said!), it’s not like the end of the world, either, because you know not to play that card, but there are wars other than over loudness and the record industry’s dying anyway.