tech is talking about the use of audio compressors and limiters. These effectively squeeze all of the dynamics out of the audio passed through it (for example, the kickdrum track, or a bassline). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range_compression for a full description. You can definitely notice an over compressed track on even stock iPod earbuds.

Damn it, I was just trying to get him to come get rid of this old thing. Thanks for ruining it :/

When I was a teen (not too long ago, I'm only 22 as of writing this), I couldn't afford every game I wanted. You know what I did? Went down to Blockbuster and paid a couple bucks to hire it. Sometimes I was lucky, and one of my friends owned a game I wanted, and would let me borrow it. A few times, we would even plan so we each got different games, so we could trade them when done. Now, I have a younger brother (13yo) who burns every PS2 and XBox game he can. I'd bet the farm the majority of these haven't seen more than a couple of hours of playtime. They have absolutely no value to him. I asked him how many games he's beaten, start to finish, and the closest he could think of was 'unlocked all the characters in arcade mode on Tekken'.