Death Magnetic

[lasso]

Originally Posted by TheArchitect

Geez.... Lars is now defending that train wreck of an album. This is just getting embarrassing for them and sad for you guys that are going to get pushed to trash more records because of it.

Lars has now been revealed as the no talent puppet with the corporate hand up his ass that has been rumored for years.

http://www.blender.com/BlenderBlogNe...168/42090.aspx

Complety arrogant bastard...he can't be bothered with the 12.000 fans complaining can he - after all, it sounds great in his car stereo. Besides, he's much too busy snorting cocaine and buying art he also doesn't know shit about.

Idiot.

[ianshepherd]

Today I recorded an interview with BBC Radio 4's consumer affairs show, "You and Yours". They are doing a short item discussing the controversy over the distorted sound of Metallica's "Death Magnetic" CD and the Loudness Wars, focusing on the unprecedented reaction of the fans who are unhappy about the way the disc sounds.

I provided technical background and there will also be audio examples and interviews with fans, I believe.

I managed to say most of the things I wanted to (I think, it's a bit of a blur !) and the interviews with the fans were excellent. It's a hell of a lot of information to pack into 10 minutes of radio, but I think it really gets the message across, I hope everyone agrees.

I was told it would air at 12:40 UK time, anyone not in the UK can stream Radio 4 live here:

BBC - Radio - The home of BBC Radio on the internet

Rollover the "Radio 4" symbol and click "Listen Live".

It'll also be available for a week on the "You and Yours" website here:

BBC - Radio 4 You and Yours - Home

Look for the "Listen Again" section on the right-hand side and choose Friday's programme.

Cheers,

Ian

[jonnymags]

just listening live right now! good interview - clear and concise!
[edit] playing the game version and the cd version was genius - blimey, how crud is the cd, even on an old Bush bakerlite

[NoisyNarrowBand]

well lars has other things to take care of - he is selling one of his basquiats for approx. $12 million at christys later this month. so hell, why bother about 12ooo fans who think they have better ears than his majesty...

[Rokus666]

I have to admit I never liked the guys from Metallica band after they shut down Napster. After I've seen the film on making of St Anger, that totally made me vomit and dislike their personalities more. I am just glad they made this flaw. Time is over for them. Black Album was their prime. I dont care, you can say anything you want and defend them/insult me.
What bothers me the most is that they are old reptiles in their mid-life crisis constantly trying to re-invent the sound and do something new. You can't just rehab yourself from drugs and alcohol and expect to make a great records like back in the days.

[fooman]

not that I disagree,
but they have the #1 record in Canada right now.

Wtf.
Ppl probably just wanna hear what all the fuss is about.

[ianshepherd]

Originally Posted by NoisyNarrowBand

why bother about 12ooo fans who think they have better ears

Actually it's closer to 16000, now. Going up at about 1000 per day. And since only a very small proportion of unhappy customers actually complain, I wouldn't be surprised if that translated to more like 160,000 or more in the real world.

If I'm right, that would be more like 10% of the people who bought the CD rather than the 2% the band's management quoted.

Playing around with some different numbers:

Out of 225,000 views of the YouTube video, 75 or so indviduals have left positive or even neutral comments.

I've had 50,000 extra unique hits on my blog since I started writing about this issue. Roughly 200 comments have been left, of which 4 or 5 have defended the sound of the CD.

There is a poll on the Metallicabb forums - last time I looked there were 1500 views, 175 votes and 93% said they favoured a remix or remaster.

Sure - in all these situations there will be a much larger proportion of people who are unhappy than in the general population, but those statistics are still overwhelmingly suggestive - a significant number of people aren't happy about the way it sounds.

Fans discussing the (allegedly) unnecessarilly loud new Ben Folds CD were using Death Magnetic as a reference point, last week - that's a pretty wide spread of awareness in a short space of time, given the different audiences for those artists.

And in the long run all this has to be a good thing, I hope...

Ian

[Jaymz]

ian, did you end up recording that interview? A week has passed and I really want to give it a listen!

[cichy]

Originally Posted by jordanstoner

This looks promising...

Justice For Audio

blocked !
why ? - death magnetic troops did it ?

[Mantik]

they need to stick with their plan.
if they would remaster the album, a million people would get upset about it because it shows them that "something was wrong with their first album" and want their money back. second, the mass-media would grap the story and telling that the old "napster-killers" now managed to do well with a marketing-concept on selling on albums for 2 times, or that metallica is a victim of a thing called loudness war and failed to it.
from a marketing point of view things like exchanging the CDs would not possible - for sure this would turn the whole business-model around the album to nothing. and offcourse THIS is business only.

so metallica is trapped within their album release and there will be nothing they can do about. its out and the business is allready finished with this album, selling them is what counts. no one gets money because some fans are loving the CD - the buy in the store is what counts.

to everyone big musician out there, take this for an example on how to act not if your best times are allready over.

[rectifier]

Originally Posted by fooman

not that I disagree,
but they have the #1 record in Canada right now.

Wtf.
Ppl probably just wanna hear what all the fuss is about.

Most people I have spoken to in real life love the record and look at me funny when I ask if they think it sounds badly recorded/mastered. I still think it's a good record too.

[Transistor]

Originally Posted by rectifier

Most people I have spoken to in real life love the record and look at me funny when I ask if they think it sounds badly recorded/mastered.

True, unfortunately. One of my best friends, who's been in the media production business for over ten years, didn't notice anything wrong with it - even when listening on headphones.

I even thought I had a similar experience: The kitchen radio (a small Tivoli Pal) was on, and the single was playing. To me, in the other room, everything was just a blur of sound, until suddenly I distinctly felt some musical action, "What", I thought, "this isn't so bad after all?" Well, it took me about five seconds to realise that it was the dishwasher that was starting the rinsing cycle. Now that's "jumping out of the speakers"...

r,
j,

[mhadean]

In all honesty, mastering aside - this album is good. I only defend that one fact as it seems a majority of responses are backlashes simply against the quality which make them seem as though a good portion of posters do not like the new material either.

However, there are some surprisingly genius moments on this album. Tempo and key changes, scale usage, powerful lyrics.... My only real complaint is that each song is a bit too long and though a couple songs hit hard, other do not mainly because they carry on repetitively.

I believe if Metallica took a deeper look, shortened some songs, remastered and released a new version, they could have their best album since justice.

[Lysandwich]

I -was- going to post this just as a funny aside but the more I think about it the more it upsets me.

So a friend of a friend of a friend of my second cousin Jed who's friend's friend delivered pizza once for this guy I don't really know very well who uploaded the GH version to a certain torrent site (I am being subtle) and it got deleted. The stated reason was that only CD, SACD, DVDA, or web-rips were allowed. They have similar rules disallowing bootleggs sourced from IEM feeds and FM broadcasts because they aren't "lossless", and also ban pre-FM tapes/CDs because... I guess just because most people mislabel FMs PFMs and the mods can't be arsed to take two seconds to view a scan of the waveform. My main problem with this really (and yes, this will get back on topic soon) is that they're deliberately tossing out good sources in favor of bad ones because they are somehow more "official".

I have listened to a... friend...'s PFM and a few soundboards of a certain very famous prog group who you've all heard and I concluded that they all sounded considerably better than every official concert album released throughout this band's quite long and prestigious career, except for one album which only sounded a little worse. Mostly this is due to overcompression or limmetting.

A rip of DM from GH3 exists that was done digitally, through S/PDIF on the xbox 360. I'm assuming that the DVD is using an LPCM track for the two-channel, 'cause to do anything else on a game that is so much about the sound quality (and, really, does not have *that much* to it) would be kinda dumb. I'm also assuming that going through s/PDIF this way would not encode to AC3 on the fly as it's not a surround feed. Every lossless screenshot I've seen posted has transients going all the way up to 24KHZ, which is consistent with a lossless file with a samplerate of 48KHZ. The overwhelming concensus everywhere around the internet from everyone who's done an ABX comparison is that the GH version sounds better.

Yet, people are saying it's not high enough quality, but that the storebought CD somehow is? WHY? I've been told of, for example, a 24-bit, 96 KHZ vinyl rip of Marilyn Manson's Antichrist Superstar. Where is the sonic difference between a CD and a 24/96 vinyl rip (done with playback gear that goes up to 18KHZ at most onto a Sound Blaster, incidentally) of an album recorded in a session where the coke was the most expensive thing in the room? My point is this: there's an aweful lot of talk about preserving the audio quality with mic pre shootouts, balanced gold-plated connections, 24/192KHZ masters, etc. etc. But *one* weak link in the chain, anywhere, and all the rest of it might as well be tossed out. Meanwhile, you could make a small home studio that costs say 5,000 dollars, and--if you really know what you're doing--be making albums that sound "better" than the vast majority of major label releases throughout the last decade.

I haven't gone to school for sound production or even set foot in a recording studio, and I'm already confident that I could make a better mix out of the DM multitracks to then send to someone far better at this than I am, for mastering. I know my limitations well but i do think my ears are good enough to find a sound that's better than the one that's on there now.

[fooman]

Reading that hurt my head.... edit with paragraphs

[Lysandwich]

Yeah I *wrote it* with paragraph breaks, for some reason they didn't take... whatever, they're there now. Sorry.

[tribeofenki]

Bands are divided in 2 types: Artists and businessmen. If these four horsemen ended up with ...and Justice, they should be recognized as the band that wrote heavy metal history. Sadly, they did other releases and there will be some other worst ones in the future.

distortion imprisoning me

all that I see is absolute horror

[ianshepherd]

Originally Posted by Jaymz

ian, did you end up recording that interview? A week has passed and I really want to give it a listen!

Yes - there's an mp3 embedded into this post on my blog:

Radio 4 discussing Death Magnetic and the Loudness War

Originally Posted by Lysandwich

A rip of DM from GH3 exists that was done digitally, through S/PDIF on the xbox 360. I'm assuming that the DVD is using an LPCM track for the two-channel

I haven't looked into this myself but I have it on good authority that the files are stored on the PS3 as ogg files, ie. they are lossy encodes. There are three stereo stems which are mixed in realtime.

HOWEVER the overcompression, distortion and finally digital clipping of the CD release make it sound far worse than the PS3 files, albeit they are unfinished mixes, and really need mixing and mastering properly.

Ian

[Lysandwich]

Haha, so much for atrack!

So that's the PS3. Xbox might still be different.

And yeah, I was meaning to talk about the stems--there's *also* a torrent that has 48KHZ FLACS of the stems. That was also done through spdif, but the recording method was something like "listen to it in practice mode, mess with the volume, play this part here and not this part here" etc. So it's not the actual files off the disc yet, but it's pretty close. I imagine that highly illegal tools for that exist... somewhere.

Anyway, they're not "true" multitrack, 'cause they have the vocals, drums and some guitar all on one track, and from what I've heard there's still bleed from the rest of the tracks on the solo stems. But still, I would think that anyone who's interested in doing a remaster should be starting with those, rather than the mix, 'cause at least that way you can turn up Trujillo.

[chk027]

Originally Posted by TheArchitect

Geez.... Lars is now defending that train wreck of an album. This is just getting embarrassing for them and sad for you guys that are going to get pushed to trash more records because of it.

Lars has now been revealed as the no talent puppet with the corporate hand up his ass that has been rumored for years.

http://www.blender.com/BlenderBlogNe...168/42090.aspx

+1 what a fuk up he is!!!

[Osse_87]

I ****ing love this new album. Thank you Metallica And Rick Rubin.

[David-Morpheus]

Well finally heard the CD. it's unlistenable thin, harsh and digital clipping all over. The kick drum sound's to me if somebody would push needles in my ears. and the songs .... oh and the songs 8 minutes of boooooring riff-o-mania. The worst thing is that some songs would be really good if they were half as long. Even if there is a good riff after zillion repeats it's annoying. If I had bad kid's I would be playing them this album as punishment.

[3lbMike]

Crush it to unbearable levels, release it (it will sell millions by Metallica default), let the controversy brew to epic proportions (generating more sales to rubbernecks), wait a bit more, then a bit more festering, then ultimately re-release the newly mastered version selling millions of copies all over again…genius…muuuuuhahaha.

[doorknocker]

Originally Posted by ianshepherd

Radio 4 discussing Death Magnetic and the Loudness War

Great. Thanks for that. Hearing the very short snippets comparing the 'Guitar Hero' and CD versions of the same material really speaks (or rather distorts) for itself.

[chk027]

Metallica's song are just old song pieced together

For every new Metallika song there are 2 or 3 songs from the past mixed together..

This band has nothing new to offer, riffs/same Vocals/ same leads/same drums/same

Metallika is boring!!!! I rather listen to bad 80's chessy hair metal

[lucey]

I still haven't heard it in the studio ...

On the laptop speakers is sounds like a hardcore record circa 1980, which is maybe cool for those too young to have lived through that era.

It's like a new ACDC record ... good music we've heard before.

[lespaul666]

This album is one of the worst sounding things I've ever heard. Mastering it through 2 cranked Marshall Plexi's would've sounded better.

[cdog]

Well I am going to step up and lay the blame at the feet of Ted Jesnen.

Ted is an extremely talented individual, but he totally blew this one, and he knows it.

The job of the mastering engineer is to ensure sound quality.

Thats it. Thats what they get paid to do.

And Ted did not do that with this record.

If he had done his job properly, he would have sent the mix back as unusable. tutt

Case closed.

[TheArchitect]

Originally Posted by cdog

Well I am going to step up and lay the blame at the feet of Ted Jesnen.

Ted is an extremely talented individual, but he totally blew this one, and he knows it.

The job of the mastering engineer is to ensure sound quality.

Thats it. Thats what they get paid to do.

And Ted did not do that with this record.

If he had done his job properly, he would have sent the mix back as unusable. tutt

Case closed.

In this case though, he has said the mixes came to him smashed to death. Given that his track record seems to be much better in this regard than the other principles involved I'm inclined to believe him. Its not just a simple case of blaming the the credited with mastering anymore.

[Osse_87]

This is very interesting.

I've listened, and I can hear some kind of Digital distortion which sucks, but it's barely that you hear it in a high quality speaker system, just in my extremly revealing headphones.

Otherwise I love the sound of the record, really forward and just kicking out of the speakers.

But i'm used to listen to a lot of extreme metal, and I guess this is rather close in mix to those albums.

This album is a winner, both musically and soundwise, except for the distortion, I wonder in which stage it were added.

But I guess it won't please the old fasioned.