I agree. The loudness is not what I dislike the least. Most 1st gen CDs were the work of love of sound engineers and producers, given near miraculous equipment, to produce records with unheard of quality. I own several. Dire straits Brothers in arms is one of these, a truly brilliant recording (The album itself is brilliant) The sound quality is truly astounding.

The whole thing took a downturn when they started compressing the recordings to fit FM frequencies. Why they didn’t do the compression at the FM station, and leave the uncompressed stream for us, is always been a mystery to me.

As for the range, it is generally pointless. Most people, even when young, can’t hear above 20 Khz.