Good one again. I would say that there is lots of good points in what Grant talks about clipping noise CD's. Intersample clipping.
Listening is of course gear related too. What I have been told, older CD players generally were requiring more headroom.
Also, very much mastering & studio engineering focused friend concluded that that distortion is also easy to detect on lower listening volumes. When there is in many players thin layer or digital clipping on top, but music is not loud enough to hide it.
It would be good to observe, how does it affect listener set up, that master is so loud, that you can't really crank up volume - I got the feeling that the volume coming from loudest possible master with lower amp volume is a bit different, than slightly more quiet CD with ability to crank up volume in amp? Of course depending on set-up one has.
https://www.productionmusiclive.com/blogs/news/mastering-tip-what-are-inter-sample-peaks-why-they-matterOne can find plenty of articles where it is explained how your perfect 0dB maximum volume WAV file may sound shitty after compression, that it would have been sounding perfect it it was just notch more quiet...
Anyways, it is nice if there is affordable mastering guy who understands noise, trying to fix the.. hehe problem what many others would not probably "get". I also smiled in moment when Oskar wonders how the hell Grant manages to do so much, and he has good explanation: No games, no movies.
I am quite often surprised when people say they have been so busy, that nothing has gotten done, and then it comes clear that all their free time been spent on playing x-box and watching seemingly endless tv-series. Yep.. well, it's often choices we make. Some have work, families, all sorts of commitments what leave less so called free time, yet getting things done barely needs magic tricks..