hey people. im a music producer and in fact, the only place i've read about loudness war was in wikipedia so far. But it doesn't take a rocket scientist to notice how records all sound so fat and loud nowadays. limiters and maximizers contribute to this at the mastering stage but the mixing stage and even the recording have their share on this. its all about how good and loud you set your pre-amps when putting a microphone in front of a guitar cabinet. This loudness applies mostly on pop music. listen to modern jazz records and classical and they're not as loud, mainly because they usually don't use too much compression if any (classical music is known for not using any compression as well as classical radio stations) in order to keep the dynamics. listen to a beatles album, it could be a later one like abbey road. now compare it to macca's latest record or compare it to bounce. its all very in your face, due to compression, the pre amps, mics, mixing consoles etc. the audio spectrum is more well covered than in the early days of music recording. Also, there's a lot more headroom in records today. there's even more headroom in a 24 bit recording than when it's put to 16bit on cd.

i do agree that records sound too fat and loud these days. its a drag cause when i'm recording or mixing something i always go for that, cause it's sort of the industry's standard and you alwas want to match it or people will think it sounds too thin.

i don't think HAND sounds shit, though i highly prefer keep the faith of these days. they're way more organic and less compressed. But you gotta keep up with the times i guess

Hope this helps. cheers