Controversy about the last Metallica
An incredible story surround the last Metallica record, Death Magnetic: its sound quality is better in Guitar Hero than on the official CD! Let's take a look!
On september, the 12th, the CD is available on store and Activision put on PS3 & X360 online stores the same record for Guitar Hero. The fans notice then that the sound quality is better in Guitar Hero than on the CD. The CD version is even inferior to the P2P version available a few weeks ago. What happened?
In fact, le last mix for the game has been made by the game sound designers, when the CD mix has been made by the band or the record company (The Metallica's sound engineer said that he is not responsible of the final mix that has been made without him). All this story is well sum up on the blog of Ian Shepherd, a professional Mastering Engineer, who was interesting by this case.
So, the two versions (Guitar Hero & CD) has been analyzed to see what is all about:
The Guitar Hero version
The CD version
You can even listen to the difference on YouTube. The "YouTube compression" is heavy but you can imagine the difference on good devices.
In fact, this story takes credit for talking about the "Loudness War". The loudness war (or loudness race) is the music industry's tendency to record, produce, and broadcast music at progressively increasing levels of loudness to attempt to create a sound that stands out from others.(cf Wikipedia)
But the consequence of the Loudness War is to create music without amplitude, and even worse, with a damaged sound if the level is too loud. The Times has made a good article about that last year.
Records becomes more and more "unlistenable", and fans creates online petitions to ask massacred records (Red Hot' Californication, or Oasis' Morning Glory) to be remastered without its compressed sound.
The last words are for Bod Dylan :
In fact, le last mix for the game has been made by the game sound designers, when the CD mix has been made by the band or the record company (The Metallica's sound engineer said that he is not responsible of the final mix that has been made without him). All this story is well sum up on the blog of Ian Shepherd, a professional Mastering Engineer, who was interesting by this case.
So, the two versions (Guitar Hero & CD) has been analyzed to see what is all about:
The Guitar Hero version
The CD version
You can even listen to the difference on YouTube. The "YouTube compression" is heavy but you can imagine the difference on good devices.
In fact, this story takes credit for talking about the "Loudness War". The loudness war (or loudness race) is the music industry's tendency to record, produce, and broadcast music at progressively increasing levels of loudness to attempt to create a sound that stands out from others.(cf Wikipedia)
But the consequence of the Loudness War is to create music without amplitude, and even worse, with a damaged sound if the level is too loud. The Times has made a good article about that last year.
Records becomes more and more "unlistenable", and fans creates online petitions to ask massacred records (Red Hot' Californication, or Oasis' Morning Glory) to be remastered without its compressed sound.
The last words are for Bod Dylan :
You listen to these modern records, they are atrocious, they have sound all over them. There's no definition of nothing, no vocal, no nothing, just like ... static.