Metallica’s New Album Disappoints Fans
Metallica’s new album ‘Death Magnetic’ debuted at the top spot of the Billboard charts. It seems though that many fans were disappointed about the quality of the music. Dozens of fans said that the sound quality of the whole album is distorted and makes it sound as if the legendary band does not know what they are doing. Are they finally showing their true colors or have they technically ’spiced’ up their new CD to make it more appealing to their fans?
Mastering Engineer Ian Shepherd decided to do a test in response to the cry of the people. He compared the music on the retail CD to that of the version that will be featured on Activision’s ‘Guitar Hero III’. After a few tests he relented and said that the game’s version was far better.
“As you can see, the CD version on the bottom has been heavily compressed, limited and/or clipped, and sounds massively distorted as a result,” he said, referencing a chart depicting waveforms of both versions. The problem is caused from extreme compression - which is used to make the music sound louder then normal.
This boost is very obvious and puts a damper on the CD. According to Shepherd‘s analysis the CD is a total of 10 decibels louder than that of the Guitar Hero version. Obviously a change like this is noticeable.