BECOME A FAN 
SUBSCRIBE
RUFKMMetallica Releases Defective Death Magnetic: Are You F—ing Kidding Me???
September 20, 2008 by Loose Cannon
Filed under Concerts, Clubs, Chaos, Music
The following article is cut and pasted from www.blog.wired.com and defines the phrase “Are You F—ing Kidding Me?.”
To summarize, one of the world’s biggest selling bands has released a defective CD of epic proportions. If you have purchased this album, please sign this petition.
It says that 2700 people have already done so but that number has increased to almost 8,000 in a few days since this article was released. The album is great but in efforts to make it “louder” it distorts, actually hurts your ears at any volume wearing headphones, and makes clipping sounds. If you have purchased this album you know how frustrating this is as the music is really solid but this is a technical defect and must be fixed. Metallica needs to step up to the plate and offer a free, corrected download based on serial numbers on the CD or some code that proves the original defective product was purchased. It is almost fraud as the only way this product was
released at this abysmal level of quality was due to the millions of CDs already produced at the pressing plant and the cost of a recall. This is proven as the same master tapes were given to Activision for the Guitar Hero III version and they sound great. We are angrier than James Hetfield in the above picture. In addition, Lars, stop pointing at us.
Read on, and sign the petition.
Analysis: Metallica’s Death Magnetic Sounds Better in Guitar Hero By Eliot Van Buskirk September 16, 2008 | 11:17:32 AMCategories: Music News
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).
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, audiophiles would be better off recording the songs from the videogame than buying the album because the Guitar Hero version has far more dynamic range than the hyper-compressed CD version.
Shepherd spotted a comment by oneway23 on a Metallica forum that appears to contain a note from head engineer Ted Jensen of Sterling Sound, the company that mastered the album.
“I’m certainly sympathetic to your reaction,” read the note, “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.”
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 it while we’re away in Europe. Yeah, and that will be… well,we haven’t done that 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 real credit lies with the fans on the Metallica forums who spotted this and pointed it out.”
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, audiophiles would be better off recording the songs from the videogame than buying the album because the Guitar Hero version has far more dynamic range than the hyper-compressed CD version.
Shepherd spotted a comment by oneway23 on a Metallica forum that appears to contain a note from head engineer Ted Jensen of Sterling Sound, the company that mastered the album.
“I’m certainly sympathetic to your reaction,” read the note, “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.”
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 it while we’re away in Europe. Yeah, and that will be… well,we haven’t done that 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 real credit lies with the fans on the Metallica forums who spotted this and pointed it out.”
Seriously….. Are You F—ing Kidding Me?
