EXTREME EFFECTS
Contemporary music production is the culmination of decades of techniques and technological advancements, and much of what we now do in our DAWs exploits techniques that were developed long ago using very different equipment. That said, much of what we now view as standard practice was once seen as cutting edge.
Listen to any number of Motown tracks from the 1960s, and it's often the sound of the compressor audibly kicking in or the sound of the analog tape saturating that adds the energy and flavor. Whether this was intentional or not is unclear, and the engineers at the time would also have been trying to achieve the best signal to noise ratio on the available tape. Either way, it certainly contributed to their signature sound and today using and abusing compression in audible ways is commonplace. At a similar time, engineers started sticking mics inside kick drums (initially quite frowned upon) or
