What a shame. The 60th Grammy Awards show sound quality has made progress, but unfortunately in the wrong direction. It's a bit worse than 2017 and a lot worse than 2016. Loud music passages were pinched off by over-aggressive limiters to the point of cringing.
The Grammy awards are a chance for the recording industry to shine. Strutt its stuff. Demonstrate exemplary performance and sound quality. Instead, music sounds like it was hammered through multiple compressors and limiters ensuring few dynamics and even fewer bass notes get through.
The best sound of the show was the Target commercials. And that's a sad statement.
I still have a copy of the 2016 58th Grammy awards just for reference and they are so much better. Powerful bass notes, surround sound, decent dynamics, excellent rendition of music. Certainly there were some faux pas of missing instruments and microphones not turned on at the right time, but I'll take those mistakes over constricted sound quality on par with over-limited FM stations (but thankfully not as bad as Sirus XM).
I doubt anyone from the Grammys will read this post. But, if you do, I'll volunteer to help next year.
The best of modern music deserves sound quality on par with their artistry.
