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Some Metallica fans are bitterly disappointed: not by the Metallica songs or the performance of the band, but the volume of the new album Death Magnetic. It’s so loud that you can’t hear the details of the music, writes The Wall Street Journal.
Metallica’s Death Magnetic is a flashpoint in a long-running music-industry fight. Over the years, rock and pop artists have increasingly sought to make their recordings sound louder to stand out on the radio, jukeboxes and, especially, iPods. The digital technology made it possible to squeeze all of the sound into a narrow, high-volume range.
The loudness war began heating up around the time CDs gained popularity, in the early 1980s. Guns N’ Roses’ “Appetite for Destruction” upped the ante in 1987, as did Metallica’s 1991 “Black Album” and then the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Californication” in 1999.
Music released today typically has a dynamic range only a fourth to an eighth as wide as that of the 1990s. That means if you play a newly released CD right after one that’s 15 years old, leaving the volume knob untouched, the new one is likely to sound four to eight times as loud. Many who’ve followed the controversy say Metallica’s Death Magnetic has one of the narrowest dynamic ranges ever on an album.
Audiophiles, recording professionals and some ordinary fans say the extra sonic wallop comes at a steep price. To make recorded music seem louder, engineers must reduce the “dynamic range,” minimizing the difference between the soft and loud parts and creating a tidal wave of aural blandness.
Sound engineers say artists who insist on loudness paradoxically give people less to hear, because they end up wiping away nuances and details. Everything from a gently strummed guitar to a pounding snare drum is equally loud, leading to what some call “ear fatigue.” If the listener turns down the volume knob, the music loses even more of its punch.
Ted Jensen, Metallica Death Magnetic album’s “mastering engineer,” the person responsible for the sonic tweaks that translate music made in a studio into a product for mass duplication and playback by consumers. Responding to a Metallica fan’s email about loudness, Mr. Jensen sent a sympathetic reply that concluded: “Believe me, I’m not proud to be associated with this one.”
Mr. Jensen regrets his choice of words but not the sentiment. “I’m not sure I would have said quite the same thing if I was posting it to the bulletin board,” he says. But “it’s certainly the way I feel about it.”
But many musicians, producers and record-company executives “think that having a louder record is going to translate into greater sales,” says Chris Athens, Mr. Jensen’s business partner and a fellow engineer. “Nobody really wants to have a record that’s not as loud as everybody else’s” in an iTunes playlist, he adds.
Metallica and the Death Magnetic producer, Rick Rubin, declined to comment. Cliff Burnstein, Metallica’s co-manager, says the complainers are a tiny minority. He says 98% of listeners are “overwhelmingly positive. There’s something exciting about the sound of this record that people are responding to.”
As for the deafening Metallica’s Death Magnetic, it struck one fan as fitting for these tumultuous times, thanks to songs like “Broken, Beat and Scarred” and “All Nightmare Long,” says Metallica’s co-manager, Mr. Burnstein. He says an investment banker emailed to say that Death Magnetic “the album and its song titles have just become the soundtrack of Wall Street for fall 2008.”
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