I do hope Bradfordian hasn't overdone the compression as part of the "mastering" process for the CDs. It's easy to read about mastering for pop music being all about hammering it to make it all sound as loud as possible, but that's really not necessary or right for our kind(s) of music.

As for compression by email, I really don't see how that can happen. The only explanation I can think of is then when you receive the email, you play the sound back from your email program via a different sound player from the one you use when the .WAV file is sitting in a folder. Windows is notorious for "enhancing" sound (especially adding reverb) when playing it; this can be turned off by delving into your sound player settings but it's not always obvious.