The Death Magnetic CD is compressed so it sounds louder and more forceful - at the expense of sound quality. But don't worry, it'll sound better if you buy Guitar Hero...

Audiophile fans of Metallica shouldn't bother buying copies of their new album, Death Magnetic. According to one analyst, the record sounds better in the Guitar Hero video game.

"On purchasing our CD ... we gave the disc a spin and couldn't help wondering if our office headphones were faulty as the kick and snare drum seemed to be audibly clipping, along with some of the palm-muted guitar parts," wrote Chris Vinnecombe, guitar editor of music-making website MusicRadar.

The sound issues are a result of the "loudness war" - an ongoing industry effort to make recordings as loud as possible, so that on cursory listens tracks leap forcefully from the speakers. While any album can just have its volume turned up on your stereo, records like Death Magnetic have their audio compressed, making them inherently louder at the expense of dynamic range and sound quality.

The CD version of Death Magnetic takes this to an extreme, pushing the compression past the point of distortion. The version used on the Guitar Hero videogame, where players can solo along with James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett, has been mixed differently - with far better dynamic range. The videogame version of the record was made available last week, as an $18 (£9) download.

Mastering engineer Ian Shepherd's analysis of the two versions - shown as graphical waveforms - makes the CD version's hyper-compression acutely visible.

While there is no official response from the famously cantankerous Metallica camp, the engineer who mastered Death Magnetic is apparently as frustrated as the fans.

"I'm certainly sympathetic to your reaction," said Ted Jensen, head engineer at Sterling Sound, quoted on the Metallica forum. "I get to slam my head against that brick wall every day. In this case, 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."