Metallica and the iPod are dumbing down music

By Ty Pendlebury on 18 September 2008

opinion Metallica's ninth studio album, Death Magnetic, hasn't even been in the shops for a week and it's already raising critics' ire. The band is no stranger to controversy, from Napster-baiting to Some Kind of Monster's hippie psychologist, Metallica seemingly revel in defying not just its fans' expectations but the fans themselves.

(Credit: Warner Music Group)

But this time it's a little different: while the record itself is one of the band's strongest in years, it appears to have fallen victim to an insidious trend: audio "dumbing down". In short, it sounds crap.

As pointed out by mastering engineer Ian Shepherd, the album's been compressed to within an inch of its life — so badly that it's become distorted. But what is interesting, is that he points out that the version the band simultaneously released on Guitar Hero III doesn't have this problem.

It's ironic that a band originally so opposed to MP3 formats (and the associated piracy) would release a higher quality version of its new album in a computer game.

Unfortunately, it seems that Metallica has self-sacrificed its album to appeal to the very listeners they railed so hard against years ago: iPod users. Oh, the delicious irony.

There was an excellent article in the Wall Street Journal recently about how engineers are now tailoring albums to be heard on iPods. Of course, this isn't the fault of Apple — who also invented the Apple Lossless format to appeal to audiophiles — but instead the users who are happy with their poor quality MP3 rips.

As an audio enthusiast I find trying to appeal to the "lowest common denominator" to make more money disheartening. But it's not a new trend, and something that has happened for as long as commercial radio has been around. Yet, I would have thought such heavy-handed compression would only apply to bland pop. I was wrong. But you would think that a producer of Rick Rubin's stature would know what he's doing.

Compression, no matter how bland it makes a recording, shouldn't end in distortion — as it has in the case of Death Magnetic. This is a mistake. It's not deliberate. Why the parties involved spent so much time on the album to compress it so poorly is mystifying.

The people who mastered the album have denied responsibility and say it's entirely the fault of the band: "They are not rookies… Both parties are 800-pound gorillas in the music industry. These guys are smart and in control… [But] only Metallica and Rick know why it sounds like it does."

Spikey equals good (top), while straight line equals crud (bottom).
(Image courtesy of Music Radar via Gizmodo)

How could this have happened? Why is Guitar Hero III's version so different? As the Sex Pistols found out when they had to re-record Anarchy in The UK because they had lost the tapes, the game needs the original recordings. So, somehow the problem has occurred somewhere in between giving the recordings to the makers of Guitar Hero (who would have mastered it themselves) and in the subsequent handover to the CD mastering engineers.

Years ago, an audio engineer friend of mine told me about a special device he used in the studio &mdash as a joke &mdash to please indecisive musicians. He called it a "hit meter". It was essentially a red light with "Hit" written underneath it, and it would get triggered when the music reached a certain level. He would turn it on, then point to it excitedly and say, "look, this song's a hit!". I suspect Rick Rubin used a hit meter.

Metallica fans are naturally unhappy about the CD's audio problems and have formed a petition to have the problems corrected, which, at the time of writing, was up to 4,613 names.

I initially heard a 320Kbps rip of the Metallica album and thought that this distortion was due to either a poor encode or the new pair of Sennheiser PX100s. I am somehow more disappointed to learn that it's the source itself that is to blame. I'm not going to make any dramatic stand here, but I'll wait till they re-release the album before I consider buying it.

Compression is the enemy of good music. Audiophiles like producer Steve Albini (Nirvana, Songs: Ohia) openly despise compressed formats — compact disks included — and despite experimenting with digital downloads will tell you that vinyl is the only way to go.

Of course, audio quality is not the be-all-and-end-all, two of my favourite bands — Sebadoh and Guided By Voices — used to record their albums on cassette (!), but this was initially out of necessity. At no point were commercial concerns the determining factor — in fact, it was quite the opposite.

Choosing to compress your music so it sounds great on iPods may not be killing music per se, but it does dull people's taste for dynamics and sound quality, and perhaps, ultimately, the thirst for the rawness of a live performance.

Death magnetic indeed.

Topics: ipod, metallica, distortion, compression, mp3, napster, death magnetic, guitar hero, magnetic, death

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Comments (24)

  • Rory commented on 05/06/2009 21:48 Report abuse

    I think metallica is awesome, its a whole lot better than these songs such as under my umbrella ella ella!

  • dankilian commented on 15/11/2008 15:11 Report abuse

    i believe the distortion adds to the feeling of the music

  • audiochron commented on 16/10/2008 15:22 Report abuse

    Seriously Ty - the Loudness Wars have been raging for years and we're all the victims. I agree completely with dan.goudie though, all decisions as to the audio quality are the responsibility of the producer until the audio goes to manufacturing. What I hear is Rick Rubin and the band's decisions. If a snare is distorted, it's because it sounded cool like that in their opinion. Most likely it's a distorted snare track mixed with the original - a very common technique - for the purpose of both evening and thickening the snare's tone. For the record - I love the sound of the album.

  • color_is_pink commented on 14/10/2008 04:39 Report abuse

    i think metallica is flippin the bomb and i lisen to it all the time! its better than most of the music out there!!!! IF YOU DONT LIKE IT STOP COMPLAINING!!!!!!

  • WHO93 commented on 14/10/2008 04:39 Report abuse

    I THINK METALLICA IS FANTASTIC. I DON'T CARE WHAT ANY BODY SAYS. IT'S MUSIC NOT THE END OF THE WORLD. AMERICA IS DUMB ENOUGH WITH OUT METALLICAS HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  • man.dovvn commented on 21/09/2008 23:56 Report abuse

    Normalisation has been the enemy of the audiophile for years now. This is nothing new.

  • narvey commented on 21/09/2008 21:36 Report abuse

    wow i can't believe the responses here. you guys should give NASA a break! He and dan.goudie are the only ones who've got it right! The author clearly doesn't understand what kind of compression he's talking about (audio vs file).

  • bobster commented on 21/09/2008 13:58 Report abuse

    i bet NASA isn't even a sound engineer, i hate people like that who post replies on threads/articles thinking they can relate to the topic and be arrogant at the same time

  • dan.goudie commented on 20/09/2008 08:53 Report abuse

    The author has misunderstood the term compression in the different contexts. Audio compression is a reduction in dynamic range, whereas file compression is getting rid of parts of the information to reduce file size. As far as I have heard it is only the snare that particularly 'distorts' and whilst I agree this is not the norm, so what? Infinite drivel is spouted about the stagnation of music and yet here we have someone trying something different and they are still being damned for it. Secondly, a producer is responsible for the project so his responsibility does not end until post-mastering. Therefore, the sounds on this album are clearly artistically motivated. Like it or lump it, a great producer has made some decisions that people may not agree with but at least he's stepping outside the comfort zone. Personally I think it works fantastically because the band have spoken about feeling more together now than for the last couple of albums so surely this relatively 'lo-fi' or 'old-school' sound is reminiscent of their beginnings. Different does not mean bad.

  • vinyljay69 commented on 20/09/2008 08:20 Report abuse

    Oh and by the way, Ty & 'leadmagnet'...couldn't agree more about GbV, the underrated, undisputed kings of indie rock. Although their last few albums fell victim to lousy mastering as well. :( To 'NASA' - If you're a mastering engineer and you know the difference between compression and limiting (albeit slight) and presumably know what sounds good and what doesn't, do you make any strides to eliminate the practice and be proud of your art? Would you actually put your name on something as atrocious sounding as the new Metallica record? Listen to the SpinArt version of Michael Penn's "Mr. Hollywood Jr." and you'll see it is possible in this day and age to display your stones by bucking the loudness practice and being damn proud of it.

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