Metallica’s new Album “Death Magnetic” has been so utterly compressed to achieve a super high decibel level, that it sounds like complete shit. The good news is though that the version of the album that was released on Guitar Hero III’s download service has a much more dynamic range and as such, doesn’t sound as bad. According to Ian Shepherd, the new album’s “CD release is roughly 10dB louder than the ‘Guitar Hero’ version – almost twice as loud, on average.”  That’s bad, it means that to hear all the sounds in the music, one would have to turn up the player to an unbearable level, in which it is uncomfortable to listen to and/or damaging to the ears.

Waveform comparison between Guitar Hero (top) and album (bottom) versions.

There’s been a “war” between audio mastering technicians to basically see who can make the loudest track. The reason behind the increasing loudness is simple: loud tracks stand out in noisy situations, mono speakers (iPhone, YouTube, internet radio, etc), and on the radio.  Rolling Stone covered this topic last year in an article titled, “The Death of High Fidelity,”  calling out U2, the Artic Monkeys and Nirvana for having overly compressed tracks.

Tags: compression war, death magnetic, guitar hero III, loudness war, metallica

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