[mrspeaker]

I think the reason it's not on by default is that so much music is already compressed to insane levels that sounds terrible - double-y compressing things doubles the terribleness.

I love music, but I wouldn't call myself an audiophile (heck, I'm listening out of my lappy's default sound card with cheap headphones) but in this case I totally agree with the audiophile's term "fatigue". Music that is over-compressed doesn't sound bad to my untrained ear, but it's just fatiguing after a while. The silence that finally comes is a pleasure!

But having it double-compress by default is like hearing those people who want to play there car stereo louder than their system can handle and it distorts like crazy: they are obviously still enjoying it - but it's not the song the artists recorded. (Ok, maybe an exaggeration... but I still don't think we should encourage it!)

[hammock]

Actually if the music those crazy people were listening to was overcompressed, they'd be able to turn it up louder without distortion :)