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Chart news: Metallica hold on at #1, sound better on Guitar Hero
Metal behemoths Metallica look set to stay at number #1 in this weekend's album charts with their new LP Death Magnetic (presumably their O2 show earlier in the week didn't do sales any harm) - but the real news is that the album's mastering engineer has confirmed what many fans on the band's messageboards have been saying since its release: namely that the record has been compressed to within an inch of its life, and sounds too loud as a result.
A post by a user claiming to be said engineer, Ted Jansen of Sterling Sound, on this thread says:
"The mixes were already brick-walled before they arrived at my place. Suffice to say I would never be pushed to overdrive things as far as they are here. Believe me I'm not proud to be associated with this one, and we can only hope that some good will come from this in some form of backlash against volume above all else"
Real or not, fellow engineer Ian Shepherd - who had no part in the album - has compared the volume of the CD release of Death Magnetic with the version that is due to appear as a downloadable add-on for popular videogame Guitar Hero (DiSclaimer: we're not taking bribes from Activision to mention the game in every news story!). His findings? The CD version is a whopping 10dB louder - twice the volume in real terms - and the Guitar Hero version lacks the distortion present on the 'proper' release. Read his full conclusions here.
At the time of writing, almost 4,000 incensed Metallica fans have signed an online petition to get the album remixed or remastered.
DiScuss: have you bought Death Magnetic? Did you notice the loudness? Or are you confused by all this talk about compression? If so, read Nick Southall's seminal article on the subject.
From the archive
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haha
"At the time of writing, almost 4,000 incensed Metallica fans have signed an online petition to get the album remixed or remastered."
so they can buy it again?
the band would be fools to *not* do this...
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I don't get it
People are complaining because a Metallica album is TOO loud?
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That quote is from someone who he 'e-mailed'
hardly a reliable source. But yes, the Metallica boards are full of it. Music fans love being unhappy about stuff these days eh?
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I was talking to a guy the other night
Who had mixed and mastered stuff for Sony (Pearl jam, Alice in Chains, Michael jackson!) and he went bananas when i mentioned the 'loudness wars'. "It's ruining music" he said.
He's right.
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I've never really bought into the Loudness Wars" thing
most of the time I can't notice it, but the sound on Death Magnetic is terrible.
I think this is a separate issue though - the problem here is that there's distortion added into everything, and it sounds like it's gone in before the mastering phase. (mastering the record "too hot" results in either a lack of dynamic range or inharmonic digital distortion - this is clearly harmonic analog distortion)
My guess is that they decided after recording that they'd ended up with too clean a sound and tried to fix it in the mix by overdriving everything - it's got a similar sound to the Iggy-remixed CD release of Raw Power, where he did exactly this.
First time I listened to the album was on a brand new pair of headphones. I was convinced I'd bought rubbish headphones until I tried listening to something else, then realised it was the album.
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My mate at work just lent me the cd
Im listening to it now. What the fucks going on with the drums? The snare sounds like it's clipping!
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My god the kick
man this is really bad.
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The problem is that when Iggy pushed everything ino the red for Raw Power, it sounded good.
Problem is, that genuinely is the exception that proves the rule - that kind of loud, distorted production works wonders with The Stooges, but (unsurprisingly) sounds horrific when applied to everything else. I do honestly think that Death Magentic is the loudest album I've ever bought, it's just insane what they've done to it (especially given that, once again, the bass is way too low in the mix). It's still a good album, but it's absurd that the stuff they recorded before having vast amounts of money to throw around sounds so, so much better production wise.
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I don't think it sounds that great
on the Stooges, although it's more suited to their sound than Metallica's. And it's definitely an improvement over the original mix of Raw Power.
But yeah, the mixing on this sounds like it was done by someone working on their first record - I can't believe it wasn't caught and fixed before release.
Despite the carping, I'd still take it over the sh*tty, tinny sound on Justice for All. That album really needs to be remixed.
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I'm glad
this is getting coverage. Anything that raises awareness of the loudness issue is a good thing, because it's getting out of hand. I'm not into Metallica but am going to have to check out this CD vs. Guitar Hero comparison.
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I just thought it there was something wrong with my stereo
to start with, then I thought it was mixed strangely/badly. I should have realised what was going on.
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When mastering
It's a case of volume vs compression. I.e. the louder the mastering then the more compressed the audio becomes, which can affect the quality of the sound.
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ggggggggggrind
Well - Kill Em All, Ride The Lightening, And Justice For All, were too tinny and way too much treble.
There is waaaaay too much bass on Master of Puppets, Black is not far from being perfect, and I hate to say it but Load had the best production quality of the lot, then again the guitars on some tracks were layered up to 41 times.
I thought that the sound quality on the video and stream single they put out before had been massively compressed for the web, until I got the album and realised that the whole thing sounds like that.
It is pretty poor, but I swear engineers don't know their arses from their elbows any more.
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yeah!
adolph
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if were talking remixing/remastering
cant they do AJFA instead?
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You know
which Pearl Jam album(s)?
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Ian Shepherd's blog
makes for good reading.
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Sounds
Good to me.
I don't know what the fuss is about.
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Read Nick Southall's Article
then you will.
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Not really any point
it sounds fine. I don't want to hear any tedious critique of the mastering and mixing processes of an album, especially one that sounds good.
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X-Spector
Great marketing excuse for the record label to release a 'Hero Edition' of the cd, in the near future ;)
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