just a short introduction: dynamic range in music refers to the range between the quietest and the loudest parts in a music recording. apparently there has been a tendency in music mastering for at least 20 years to master music recordings in a way that makes them as loud as possible rather than preserving the "natural" range between quiet and loud parts. this has been constantly criticized by music enthusiasts.
if you have a look at http://dr.loudness-war.info/ you will find a database that includes 60.000+ entries from a variety of different musical genres including detailed analysis of the dynamic range of each track. just enter "Rory Gallagher" in the search field and you get a number of the most common CD editions of Rory since the mid-eighties.
if you, for example, have a look at the various entries under "Irish Tour", you will immediately see that the dynamic range of the different CD editions of the IT'74 album has changed over the last years. take the 1988 Demon Records edition with an average dynamic range of 12 and compare it to the recent US reissue of the album which has an average dynamic range of 9 (disc one) and 11 (disc two). the people at http://dr.loudness-war.info/ regard any value below 8 as "bad" and only recordings with a value above 13 as "good". so in regard to dynamic range all the featured editions of IT'74 (only CDs so far) are pretty much in the "transitional area between good and bad".
I have noticed that if you look at the comment sections for Rory's live albums at amazon occasionally comments turn up with people insisting that the more recent editions of the CDs (the remasters) sound not as good (as crunchy, as whatever) as the original CD releases.
my question is: what do you think about the whole dynamic range/loudness war/mastering issue?
btw has anybody compared the old (and rare) 2CD edition of IT'74 (Intercord 1989) with the box set version? I have read that this version is the best one so far but I could not check it as yet.