Metallica’s brand new album, ‘Death Magnetic’, sounds better in Guitar Hero, according to mastering engineer Ian Sheperd. He feels its main problem is that it’s audio has been compressed as much as possible due to the ‘Loudness Wars’.

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). This is why television ads often sound so much louder than programs.

Sheperd also says some parts are distorted from digital clipping. He adds: “As you can easily see, the CD version on the bottom has been heavily compressed, limited and/or clipped, and sounds massively distorted as a result.” Analysis showed that the CD is 10dB louder than the Guitar Hero version, which is around twice as loud to the ear.

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.

Head engineer Ted Jensen of Sterling sound left a note on a Metallica forum stating: “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.”

Sheperd also came across a Metallica forum claim 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.

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Tags | audio, cd, compression, death magnetic, forum, Guitar Hero, loudness wars, metallica, petition