Rolling Stone picks up the thread of Hard to Be an Audiophile in an iPod World and Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music.

Producers and engineers call this "the loudness war," and it has changed the way almost every new pop and rock album sounds. But volume isn't the only issue. Computer programs like Pro Tools, which let audio engineers manipulate sound the way a word processor edits text, make musicians sound unnaturally perfect. And today's listeners consume an increasing amount of music on MP3, which eliminates much of the data from the original CD file and can leave music sounding tinny or hollow. "With all the technical innovation, music sounds worse," says Steely Dan's Donald Fagen, who has made what are considered some of the best-sounding records of all time. "God is in the details. But there are no details anymore."

From the archives:

"I finally tested positive for Pro Tools," said Steve Earle.

The people in those bands can't write, play, or sing. They make them sound good with pro-tools, because if they sing out of tune, they can just say, "Oh, punch a button. Put it in tune." Which is very frustrating to people like me, who spent, you know, 30, 40 years learning how to sing in tune in the first place. It is partly their own, you know, greed and, and lack of taste, but it's also partly a condition that's endemic in the country.

The current ethos in the United States of America is all to do with surface and nothing to do with substance. It doesn't matter that Britney Spears has nothing to say and is about as deep as a birdbath.

You've seen the Nissan Altima commercial where jungle brothers Ming + FS record the sound of doors slamming and windows going up and down, then run the sounds through ProTools to make a techno song.