Dan, you hit the nail right on the head. Recent "albums of the year" winners like "Oh Brother Where Art Thou" and now Norah Jones, speak well of the future in music. I believe one of the reasons people loved those CDs so much (including myself), was because they had little or no dynamic compression. The music was great, especially on Oh Brother, but it was the purity, and noise free presentation that attracted so many music lovers.
I have a lot of non-audiophile friends, and even they appreciate great recordings. They also hate badly recorded CDs, if not quite as much as us. Even before I came into this hobby, the CDs that sounded the best were the ones that got the most playing time.
Now, the average Joe has Polk, Energy, PSB, or Paradigm speakers, and for the money they are fantastic. They also bring out the ugliness of bad recordings. So more and more people will stop buying crappy CDs, as their systems become more highrez, as these speaker companies keep pushing what a budget speaker can do.
