A complaint I hear quite often among audiophiles is that cd's are mastered with too much dynamic compression these days. I would have to agree. A prime example of this would be the Googoo Dolls cd Gutter Flower. I like the music, but never listen because it has so much compression on it I just find it fatiguing and sounds kinda boring. I may have a good solution though! I recently got a Behringer DEQ2496 to help with some minor room modes which were still there after treating the room. Great it helped that. But, one thing I had wanted to try out with it is the dynamics section. As it is designed as a mastering processor for studios it has a compressor and expander. I had often thought why don't people ever build an expander (an expander is the opposite of a compressor, proportionally reducing the level of a signal depending on how far past the threshold it is essentially 'stretching' the dynamic range) into Hi-Fi to counteract over compression? and that's just what the DEQ2496 can do! Put the expander on with a gentle slope ratio of say 1:1.2 and a 0db threshold, tweak the attack and the release and there you go! The un-listenable ultra-compressed Googoo Dolls CD is now listenable and far more dynamic. It doesn't bring back that small missing detail or anything but it does stop it from feeling all up in your face and sounds like the music can breath again. So basically anyone who feels music is too compressed, why not get an expander and put it in your system? You don't have to get the DEQ2496 as there are other compressor/expanders (they usually come together) around half the price, but the DEQ2496 is nice because you can use it in pure digital mode between transport and DAC so as not to degrade the signal at all. Just thought I would share my rather good experience!