The Death Magnetic controvery

[LA_MERC_Cowboy_From_Hell]

Ok, now that the album is "officially" released some things have been pointed in ALOT of diffrent places.




****IF YOU HAVE THE CD AND ARE COMPLETELY HAPPY WITH IT DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER!!!*****




If you listened to the leaked version you may or may not have heard some distortion and clipping in some of the songs. The big violators being The Day That Never Comes and The Judas Kiss.

When I first heard the leak CD I loved the songs! I was so happy to have new GOOD Metallica. After several listens I started hearing things that didn't seem right to me. Couldn't put my finger on it but something was amiss.

Reading the Metallica boards ( http://www.metallicabb.com/index.php ), other people heard the same things I did and discussions popped up. There was the group that said it's just a crappy rip of the CD and that was the problem. Others said no, it was a production issue and detailed how using any wave form tool you could see the songs were bricks instead of whatyou would expect to see.

Now that the "real" CD is out people are going apenutz about the production. The engineer who mastered it is distancing himself (alledgedly) from the CD saying the masters he got CAME to him brickwalled and he wasn't happy.

There are petitions flying around the internet ( http://www.gopetition.co.uk/petitions/re-mix-or-remaster-death-magnetic.html ) and legitimate professional sound engineers are speaking up and posting about it ( http://mastering-media.blogspot.com/2008/09/metallica-death-magnetic-clipping.html ). This thing is really gathering steam. I didn't realize it but reading about this issue with Dbs pegged it not new. I guess its been going on for years and has gotten progressively worse as time has passed. Death Magnetic aparently is one of the worst offenders to date.

Me personally, the CD gives me a headache when I listen to it too long. That's a HORRIBLE shame because it's AWESOME musically. If you guys want to sign the petition, great. If not thats cool too but this "sound war" that is going on is ruining ALL music, not just metal. I guess Rick Rubin produced a Neil Diamond album recently that had this problem and the album was recalled. Interestingly enough, Rick Rubin produced this CD as well. His name has repeatedly popped up as being involved with several albums that have this issue.

just thought I'd share and see if any of you noticed this with the retail release.

[LA_MERC_Onji]

wow i had no idea this controversy was going on. if i'm reading this right, they are saying the 'rip' sounded better than the retail cd due to poor mastering? (does brickwalled mean that he got 'flat' tracks, and wasnt able to adjust instruments individually?)
if so thats just insane.

[LA_MERC_Cowboy_From_Hell]

The WORST part is, they are saying the GHIII download content is near crystal clear so the masters they send to Neversoft were clean since they need it MONTHS in adavance to make the game around it. They screwed it up AFTER they sent the songs to Neversoft.

People are now ripping the GHIII songs with a PS3 to computer to get a clean version. Here is a STUNNING example of the loudness war. Its 10 minutes but you'll be SHOCKED at whats giong on in the music industry. I was.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMNJEC1G-fE

Its done through compression of the individual instrunments taking away any of the dynamc range in the songs. Makes them sound liek a brick wall.

[LA_MERC_Cowboy_From_Hell]

Here is another good video with quotes and an actual demo in the last2 minutes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkkqsN69Jac&feature=related

[LA_MERC_Cowboy_From_Hell]

Here is the rip from GHIII of "The Day That Never Comes."

http://rapidshare.com/files/145577841/Meta...ero_3_.mp3.html

D/L that and load it into a media player and load the album version in there too. Play them back to back. Tell me if there is a diffrence.

Here's a wave form shot I made of the same section of TDTNC.

edit: Meh, the pic kinda blurred when it saved a jpeg but the section is about 1:30 through 2:50. Oh and the CRAZY loud part at the end of the D/L is due to GH3 fading out the song so the guy who made it plugged the end of the CD version to fill it out.

[LA_MERC_th33_r00k]

THat is horrible. Hahahaha. I will have to read through the above posts tomorrow at work.

[LA_MERC_Dirge]

So metallica was rickrolled? er brickwalled er lol wut?

[LA_MERC_Captain_Obvious]

haha someone's probably screwing Lars over. making it so that the ripped versions availible on the internet are better than the official CD causing everyone to download and spread the ripped versions. HHAHAHAHAH

doesn't really matter to me though, I listened to the whole thing (thanks again) and only found 2 songs that I thought were half way decent. (I'm a big fan of older metalica, just don't like metal. all the crap sounds the same to me with the banging on the guitar strings)

so what is the band's stance on the issue? are they raising hell?

[LA_MERC_Cowboy_From_Hell]

No statement as of yet...