@anosou:
Using distortion and clipping for 'artistic purpose' is an entirely different thing and not something that falls in the category of 'loudness war' (I'm shortening this to LW), where the DRC is
abused to artificially increase the overall loudness of the track beyond the technical limits imposed by the media (audio CD, redbook standard).
The main problem probably is that we don't have any 'medium' for music with infinite dynamic range. Even analogue media like vinyl has it's limitation and I remember some badly mastered vinyl records that had too much bass which resulted in the needle changing the groove (which is worse than clipping). The normal audio CD (redbook standard) only offers a range of 96dB (16bit samples), mastering (before transfer to disc) probably still happens with 24bit resolution (144dB) though. So we always have implicit DRC due to the change in bitdepth. (You probably know this things already)
And yes, I know that these dynamic ranges vary with the amount of tricks (oversampling, noise shaping, etc.) applied.
So DRC isn't bad at all in principle. It becomes bad when it's used for things that it wasn't designed for (e.g. to annul the technical limits imposed by the redbook standard).
I have nothing against DRC and clipping in general,
if the artist intended this sound. But in the context of LW the artist isn't aware of that, probably because it's the record company / mastering company that makes this decision. Here the credo is 'louder
is better', regardless of the sound the artist originally intended. Take again a look at the waveform examples from the Wiki (
Link). Sound gets compressed beyond recognition and I
really doubt that this change over time was intended by any of The Beatles.
EDIT: Nice FAQ about vinyl at HydrogenAudio:
http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index....le=Vinyl_Myths
Also discusses the dynamic range that one can get out of the media.