Even though Born to run was pre-CD, they still had compressors and limiters. And if they had them , they could use them or abuse them.

The engineers doing much of the mastering and final production in the 70's simply chose to make the music sound good..... not so much loud.... but good. Nice dynamic range, which I recalled reading, was the holy grail in the day. Listeners had volume knobs to make it loud if they wanted.

Now days, everyone seems to want to have the loudest stuff.... because we do know that loud sounds better than "not loud". In a radio line up, if you want your song to stand out a bit... crank up the loudness levels with compression and use a limiter to really squash it into a brick.

The problem is, when everything is the same volume, your ears quickly become fatigued as David pointed out.

To the folks who use Ozone.... you have to be very careful with the compression. As you crank it up, yep, it sounds fatter and better...... but, dynamics are quickly going out the window.

Here's a few waves from my studio and from a few different projects.

This first one was seriously jacked on the compression. I intentionally cranked the levels to get this brick.



So much better..... still a consistent level but not slammed and not down in the valley.



I couldn't find the other wave photo I wanted to post... but the entire point is this.

It is totally possible to get a loud mix and NOT end up with a brick.

I always look at the wave I export in my wave editor and if I think it's got too many overs or flat tops, I will go back to the project and turn down the overall compression level. It needs to have dynamics. The can be lots of mountain peaks but there also needs to be as many valleys and middle ground.

You can find my music at:
www.herbhartley.com
Add nothing that adds nothing to the music.
You can make excuses or you can make progress but not both.

The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding.