It’s not just songwriting that’s subpar: MusicRadar guitar editor Chris Vinnecombe used Audacity to analyze Death Magnetic‘s audio, says it’s over compressed, that “the kick and snare drum seemed to be audibly clipping, along with some of the palm-muted guitar parts,” and concludes that you’re better off purchasing the Guitar Hero version because it has way more dynamic range. Read the story at Wired and imagine the dynamic range of Lars weeping.
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I’m no metallica fan, but using audacity to “analyze” an audio track? Seriously?
honestly, wouldn’t it be easier, and more productive, to just have a nice meal with friends instead of analyzing the new metallica disc for audio problems?
if you play Death Magnetic backwards on Rock Band 3 – you will hear 3 easy recipes for mac n’ cheese that will knock your taste buds off.
What?
I don’t really get it… I checked it out and the snare isn’t as loud as it’s been on every album from the Black Album on, and in fact sounds better and rounder.
The mastering makes the guitar distort at some points, but nowhere near as bad as so many commercially released CDs (especially in the metal genre… and thankfully this CD is the first one from them in awhile that actually does qualify as being in the metal genre). The (post) production boo-hoo about this album (it’s not technically even a production issue) is so overblown.
But it’s going to happen, so I’ll start blaming Rick Rubin for the sound on an album he didn’t touch a knob on (that said he needs a new mixing team). I don’t like Rick Rubin’s production, but please, know what you’re talking about before you analyze the crap out of it and blame people accordingly.
Half the people who bothered with this album are kids who listen to Disturbed anyway, who has the most ridiculous and clippy mastering in the universe.
Probably sucks either way… This is Metallica we’re talking about.
Apparently Stereogum readers are posting out of the stone age. “Have a nice dinner” instead of taking two seconds to analyze the thing, huh? The logic must be too great for this mind to comprehend. And a big middle finger to the toolbag who claims the problem is “so overblown”: the guy who mastered the frickin’ album (Ted Jansen) has gone on record as saying the following: “Believe me I?m not proud to be associated with this one.” No big deal, right?
This video explains this trend, which is ruining the sound of modern music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ
Death Magnetic of Metallica sounds compressed, no doubt.
When I played a copy in my sound system it sounded louder than the most recente albuns of Madball, Soulfly, In Flames, Slayer, just to name a few.
Louder and lacking bass. My wife even asked me: «Do you have the subwoofer switched on?».
Besides that, the vocals and guitar solo are too much in your face (middle frequencies). It is tiring and unpleasant.
Metallica should re-record it. Re-remastering will not be enough.
I am glad I cancelled my vinil pre-order of Death Magnetic in time.
i listened to guitar hero 3 version and the retail cd version
the retail cd version is lacking in dynamic range, i am sensitive to this type of thing, so the whole album sounds bad to my ear
listening to the guitar hero 3 version for now and hoping they rerelease the retail cd properly
I bought the CD the day it came out. Then last night I bootlegged the version off of Guitar Hero. So now that version is the one in my ipod, burned on CD, & copied on my computer. I always hated Guitar Hero until now. I’m glad it exists.