So I've spent three years doing a degree in just this? Right. So, having been doing audio work since I was fourteen means I have no experience? Fine. So I master my own work? Ok - the fact that I spend every day working with just this means nothing? Ok. So you work as an attorney? Fine, but that doesn't give you the right to be this rude with anyone, especially somebody who has a track record on this forum of knowing what they're talking about.
If you have a problem with my opinion that this album is too loud, that's fine. But I suggest that you buy a decent pair of headphones and use your ears. This album is too loud. It clips - a lot. I have an issue with that. If you want to praise the Foo's for everything they do, that's fine - but when I've seen you speak with any of your own experience of the subject and suggest your own reasons as to why this is too loud (as you yourself have said) then I might be willing to discuss this with you in greater detail.
I use outboard compressors regularly - I know what outboard compression sounds like. Sure, tape compression won't get you all the way here, but the album has been through an A/D process that has negatively affected the sound. I said that this album may have been digitally mastered - it sure as Hell sounds like it - if it hasn't, that's fine, but I was offering possibilities to why the original poster thought it might be the way he is hearing. The stream I listen to (which isn't available in the US, by the way) is a high-quality .ogg format. That gives me enough to know that it's too loud - whether or not it's been mastered digitally or in analogue. At some point, this has been through an A/D conversion and it doesn't matter how good it sounds in analogue, if the analogue mix is too loud, then it'll be too loud for digital and the fact that it was mixed in the analogue realm doesn't change that. You know full well that vinyl and digital formats have to be mastered separately because of issues with logarithmic bass changes in vinyl. There are at least two different masters of this album. The vinyl master probably is fine, but it's not the same master we're hearing here.