

According to mastering engineer Ian Shepherd, Metallica's new Death Magnetic album has a serious sonic problem: it has been compressed (in the audio sense of the word, not the file size sense) just about as much as it's possible to compress audio.

Part of the "loudness war," this type of compression is designed to make music sound as loud as possible at the expense of dynamic range (the difference between loud and softer sounds). Television advertisers use similar technology to get the most bang for their buck volume-wise, which is why ads often sound so much louder than television programs.

However, according to Shepherd, the problem goes beyond compression. He says some parts are actually distorted from digital clipping. "As you can easily see," he writes, "the CD version on the bottom has been heavily compressed, limited and/or clipped, and sounds massively distorted as a result." Later analysis showed that the CD is 10 dB louder than the Guitar Hero version, which sounds about twice as loud to the ear, according to one description. That's some wicked compression.

Shepherd's audio analysis (pictured to the above right courtesy of MusicRadar using the free open-source audio editor Audacity), demonstrates graphically the severe nature of the audio compression applied by Metallica's engineers to the CD version of the album, by comparing it to a recording from the Guitar Hero videogame. This version of Death Magnetic, featuring extended solos from James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett, became available within the game on Friday as an $18 download.

According to this analysis, audiophileswould be better off recording the songs from the videogame than buyingthe album because the Guitar Hero version has far more dynamic rangethan the hyper-compressed CD version.

Shepherd spotted a comment by oneway23 on a Metallicaforum that appears to contain a note from head engineer Ted Jensen of SterlingSound, the company that mastered the album.

"I'm certainly sympatheticto your reaction," read the note, "I getto slam my head against that brick wall every day. In this case, themixes were already brick-walled before they arrived at my place.

Suffice to say I would never be pushed to overdrive things as far asthey are here.

"Believe me I'm not proud to be associated withthis one, and we can only hope that some good will come from this insome form of backlash against volume above all else."

If this is true, and Jensen (whom the Death Magnetic liner notes identify as having mastered the album) received the mix in such a compressed form, it looks like the engineers who mixed the album before it was sent to the mastering facility – identified by Chris Vinnicombe of MusicRadar as Greg Fidelman and Andrew Scheps – are to blame, although ultimately, the fault lies with the arms race to have the loudest sounding albums regardless of what that does to musical nuance.

Shepherd links to a Metallica forum claim (registration required) that the band was not present during the mixing or mastering of Death Magnetic. User Hetfield1963 says James Hetfield told him via telephone, "I think things came out really good. They're going to be mixing itwhile we're away in Europe. Yeah, and that will be... well,we haven't donethat in a while. We've usually been around for the mixes."

So far, 2,730 fans have signed a petition asking that the album be re-mixed (as opposed to remixed) and/or remastered. Failing that, someone will eventually record themselves playing the song perfectly within the game and distribute it via bit torrent, and then Metallica's label will have another thing to get upset about.

Update: Ian Shepherd, a mastering engineer at SRT, appears to have pinpointed and analyzed the problem first. He credits Metallica fans with the idea of checking the compressed CD version with the Guitar Hero version. "There's no analysis needed, you can hear it plain as day," he said via email. "The realcredit lies with the fans on the Metallica forums who spotted this andpointed it out."

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(via MusicRadar; screenshot courtesy of MusicRadar; thanks, Matthew)