Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Metallica Guitar Hero Release Has Higher Quality Than CDs

Posted by Soulskill on from the facepalm dept.

Last week Metallica released a new album, Death Magnetic, on traditional CDs as well as downloadable content for Guitar Hero III. Fans quickly noticed that the sound quality on the CD version was noticeably below-par, thanks to the recording studio's decision to sacrifice range for loudness. However, the tracks released for Guitar Hero III made no such sacrifice, as proved by Mastering Engineer Ian Shepherd. NME found an audio clip comparing the two tracks. This comes alongside statements from Activision claiming that Aerosmith's recent venture into Guitar Hero is generating more success for the band than their actual albums.

29 of 102 comments (clear)

  1. Well... by religious+freak · · Score: 5, Funny

    I wouldn't exactly call any Metallica song made after 1995 "quality"

    --
    If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
    1. Re:Well... by Ethanol-fueled · · Score: 5, Interesting

      "...studio's decision to sacrifice range for loudness."

      That's retarded. Loudness is no good if it sounds like it's coming out of a tinny radio, which is what too much compression and limiting can do. They apparently did such a poor job of it that the Cd signal was clipped! They certainly forgot what good "metal" is supposed to sound like.

      Knowing Metallica, they probably cranked out a half-ass 10-minute session in the studio and had their "mastering" engineeer Pro-Tool the hell out of it, cut-and-paste style. Then they laughed, high-fived each other over beers, coke, and their solid gold Ferraris as they continue to be out of touch with reality.

      And yes, in case you all were wondering, their new album most certainly does SUCK. Listening to Metallica is like having banged the prom queen in high school only to see her become a queen of the 300-pound welfare sort :(

    2. Re:Well... by bledri · · Score: 2, Funny

      I wouldn't call any album after 1991 "quality"...you don't really think Load was all that good, do you?

      I was really disappointed in Load, but it was aptly named...

      --
      Some privacy policy Slashdot.
    3. Re:Well... by sleigher · · Score: 3, Informative

      I agree. The day the black album came is the day I wept (figuratively), as the band I grew up with turned their back on me and so many other. Today is a new day for those who were abandoned. The album is good although it is only good because Load(of shit) and the other later albums actually happened. Compared to the real Metallica it is still low on the chart. It does have some balls though.

      --
      All points of time and space are connected.
    4. Re:Well... by KGIII · · Score: 3, Funny

      I listened, on their website, to Unforgiven 3 and it was awful. I closed the tab in my browser. I cleansed my soul with Thieves from Ministry so life is good again.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    5. Re:Well... by Nimey · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Listening to Metallica is like having banged the prom queen in high school only to see her become a queen of the 300-pound welfare sort :(

      What's wrong with that? You did bang she who was supposedly the hottest girl at the time. You can't help what happens years later.

      --
      Hail Eris, full of mischief...

      E pluribus sanguinem
    6. Re:Well... by sleigher · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Funny, I thought the way to do that was to CLEANSE THE SOUL!

      --
      All points of time and space are connected.
    7. Re:Well... by KGIII · · Score: 2, Insightful

      If you get a chance I'd give some old Ministry a try. 'The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste' is one of the few albums I can listen too all the way through. Thieves, if nothing else, should be on everyone's "Drive Like A Maniac" playlist. It takes a couple of listens before one either loves or hates it.

      I play guitar and one of the things that always amazes people is when I pick up an acoustic and start playing things like Metalica. They are surely still full of talent but I have to wonder if they're burnt out entirely and this album is going to be the last flicker of light before they burn out completely. If I can force myself to do so I'll sit and listen to the entire thing and try it with an attempt to appreciate them. I was, it would appear, spoiled by their earlier work and listening to anything "new" from them comes with much higher expectations and much more picky judgments.

      Maybe they are a victim of their own successes earlier in life, at least with me. I don't think I have extremely picky taste really just high expectations from bands like them. Most of what is being produced currently, hell within the past fifteen years, annoys the hell out of me. Most... Not all.

      As an aside, I have to wonder if it is just my (our) age(s) taking over. My parents did not like my music. My parents parents did not like my parents music. My parents parents parents banged rocks together and music hadn't been invented yet. I think an oddity is that I like much of the music that is older than I.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    8. Re:Well... by unfunk · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Actually, yes. Load and Reload are a pair of excellent albums.. just because they're not balls-out thrash metal doesn't automatically disqualify them from any quality races.

      As I've said many times (just not here..), if any other band had released those two albums, they would have been hailed as musical geniuses.

      St. Anger, on the other hand... no thanks, I burned my CD of that (literally) and purged the hard drive the MP3s were stored on.

      ...and for what it's worth, I think Death Magnetic is a pretty good album (aside from the name), and The Unforgiven III is one of the best songs Metallica has ever written... it's just a shame they decided to give it such an awful name.

    9. Re:Well... by nomadic · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I agree. The day the black album came is the day I wept (figuratively), as the band I grew up with turned their back on me and so many other.

      I like the black album; most of the criticisms I've heard about it deal with the fact that it doesn't sound like their earlier stuff. You'll live.

    10. Re:Well... by Lisandro · · Score: 2, Informative

      And yes, in case you all were wondering, their new album most certainly does SUCK. Listening to Metallica is like having banged the prom queen in high school only to see her become a queen of the 300-pound welfare sort :(

      Actually, i downloaded some of the clips that were floating arround the net prior to the release and i thought it wasn't half bad - excellent for the standarts the band set for itself lately, in fact. I DID notice the awful mixing though, and i read the CD sounded much better. Well, it didn't.

      It's a shame. Lately a lot of bands are going with this loudness trend and i just can't help it, it sounds horrible. After 5 minutes i have to switch to something else.

  2. Old News by cryptoluddite · · Score: 2, Informative

    Dance Dance Revolution on PS2 has better sound quality also, using 24 bit samples instead of 16 bit. And that was back in 2000 (or whenever).

  3. Sound the XKCD alarm... by Samantha+Wright · · Score: 4, Funny

    This comic is no longer true. :(

    --
    Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
  4. i can't stand this. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    i can control my own volume thank-you. and because of records like this, i'm forced to hit the volume every time these songs come up on a playlist. i realize there are volume normalizing pluout there, but i don't like the effect on the overall song.

    you'll know what i mean if you jump from a cd made in the 80's to one made in the last 10 years.

    hopefully this gets enough coverage to signal the end of this incredibly annoying trend.

    1. Re:i can't stand this. by sleigher · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I was in a band and engineered many of our records. One of the things we do is compare our recordings to those of other bands on spectrum analyzers and such tools to see how levels and frequency ranges compare. WAY too often we put in other bands records and they are off the top and are clipping all over the place. The problem is that the industry sets a sort of standard for loudness and you kinda have to follow or your record sounds quiet. When it comes to metal you really have to be loud because of the whole in your face obnoxious aspect of the music. It sucks because those who are sensitive and can hear this hate it.

      --
      All points of time and space are connected.
    2. Re:i can't stand this. by Mprx · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Yet people recorded metal in the 80s with high dynamic range and it sounded perfectly "heavy". The loudness war has ruined most modern music for me, and even older music is being destroyed in remastered versions. Untrained listeners might prefer the compressed sound at first, but it's tiring to listen to for more than a few minutes. This is especially true as you get older. If you're concerned with standards, there's a new standard in planning at http://www.turnmeup.org/ . In the case of less mainstream music your fans will likely be more knowledgeable, and understand it sounds better if they turn it up themselves. Higher dynamic range could make you more popular and help you stand out from your overcompressed competitors.

    3. Re:i can't stand this. by Jeff+DeMaagd · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I've seen people explain that the real reason why SACD and DVD-Audio sounded better than CD is not much about the higher sample rate and bit depth, but because they don't use dynamic range compression on the SACD or DVD-Audio.

      I think there have been recording standards all along, the problem is that no one abides by them. I think one standard is to record standard dialogue at -12dB of max.

    4. Re:i can't stand this. by AttillaTheNun · · Score: 2, Informative

      Unfortunately Rick Rubin is a producer, not a mastering engineer. He has little say in what happens to his work downstream of the mixing process.

  5. Recent "loudness war" discussion on /. by Graywolf · · Score: 5, Informative

    FYI, the "loudness war" topic has been discussed on Slashdot lots of times, most recently here: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/23/1219205

    1. Re:Recent "loudness war" discussion on /. by Cow+Jones · · Score: 2, Interesting

      This is such a sad topic. On the one hand, I think that there's nothing wrong at all with raising the average volume of an album when you're remastering. The early CD releases were often lacking in volume, because the mastering engineers were doing the exact opposite of what they're forced do these days. Back then, a single very loud snare hit would automatically lower the maximum volume of the whole album, because the engineers didn't want to introduce artificial compression. That's the reason why old CDs sound a little muted. Thank god, that changed, and they soon started to use moderate compression by default when mastering to CD.

      But what we have today is just bizarre. Nobody can tell me with a straight face that the newest Red Hot Chili Peppers CDs sound good (ignoring the music here). There's more clipping than music on those discs. I really *really* hope they're keeping all those original recordings safe, because there *will* come a time when quality will trump loudness again. Maybe we'll even get lucky soon, and Replay Gain will go mainstream. Here's hoping...

      --

      Ah, arrogance and stupidity, all in the same package. How efficient of you. -- Londo Mollari
    2. Re:Recent "loudness war" discussion on /. by Mprx · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Old recordings sound great if you listen on good equipment and turn up the volume. Dynamic compression destroys information, and while it's necessary for listening in noisy environments it should be a feature of the playback equipment, not forced on everybody.

    3. Re:Recent "loudness war" discussion on /. by Cow+Jones · · Score: 4, Informative

      Ah, here I am, replying to myself. I'm sorry, but just in case there's somebody out there who isn't conviced yet, here are a few prime examples:

      one of the most cited examples
      The Smiths - How Soon Is Now

      The Wikipedia has a great article about it, too, as usual.

      --

      Ah, arrogance and stupidity, all in the same package. How efficient of you. -- Londo Mollari
    4. Re:Recent "loudness war" discussion on /. by Tacvek · · Score: 2, Interesting

      My question is why do we only have one volume knob on most devices?
      We always should have had a volume knob, and a compression knob. The common folk would quickly learn that the volume knob does what you think it does, but the compression knob brings the softest sounds closer in volume to the loudest, when you dial it up. It is not too hard for the average person to figure out.

      --
      Stylish sheet to fix many problems in Slashdot's D3: https://gist.github.com/801524
  6. HDCD by TheSHAD0W · · Score: 2

    Are they still trying to market "high-definition compact discs"? We could be seeing this as deliberate downgrading in order to push more expensive and less rippable versions. I wonder what the iTunes version sounds like?

    (And no, don't tell me to buy it and see. :-P )

  7. Concerts by Jethro · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This is exactly why I stopped going to concerts.

    They're all terribly loud, so much so that the music just turns into white noise. What the heck is the point of that?

    --


    In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
    1. Re:Concerts by EotB · · Score: 2, Interesting

      That is very much dependent on the particular band. A local NZ band, Blindspott, was always incredibly good live, very similar sound to their CDs (which are also very nicely mastered). Most recently I went to an Iron Maiden concert in Brisbane and it was fantastic. Their playing was spot on and sounded perfect. That said I've also been to a bunch that sounded terrible...

  8. Similar effect in Rock Band. Probably most tracks. by NereusRen · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I was chatting with a Harmonix rep at their booth at PAX. He mentioned that the Paramore song is really compressed/limited on the CD (in the sense of lack of dynamic range). No surprise there. I asked him whether that affected their game at all, and he said that since they got access to the master tracks and mixed it themselves, not really. I'd expect the same is true of almost any Rock Band or Guitar Hero track.

    That was great to hear, because the loudness war sucks. There have been a number of albums that I would have liked listening to, but can't stand because of the loudness war. They sound the same all the way through, and the drummer sounds like he's playing in the other room while everyone else is standing too close to the mics. A drum hit, during the brief moment it happens, should be much louder than the rest of the band! Instruments shouldn't get quieter when other instruments start playing! Blech.

    Interestingly, I was listening to the Rock Band 2 setlist to get to know the songs I'd never heard (downloaded mp3s), and one song in particular stood out as being very well mixed with great dynamic range. I don't really like the music of Modest Mouse, but it was definitely a pleasure to listen to Float On just for that. They earned a bit of respect from me that day :).

  9. Well Said. by Grog6 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    These asshats only get my pity...

    1. Fire your main talent. (Dave Mustane)

    2. Use the cheapest transport company, drive insane hours, and kill a popular bassist off.

    3. Alienate your fans by being corporate suits instead of the hard-core guys you image portrays.

    4. Put out a series of albums that confirm how much you've lost it, and can't write music anymore. These albums were only bought by fanboys, afaik.

    Somewhere, there should be a 'Profit' step; I'm not seeing it from here...

    --
    Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
  10. Why Sacrifice Quality for Volume? by darkonc · · Score: 4, Funny

    When fans can just set the volume knob to 11 on the amp?

    --
    Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.