Engineer: Metallica mix better in Guitar Hero than on CD

According to one audio engineer, the best listening experience for Metallica's new Death Magnetic album may be the one you create for yourself ... in Guitar Hero III. Engineer Ian Shepherd compared the two on his blog, and said that the version from the game has a lot less clipping and more dynamic range.

What's the culprit? Shepherd blames the "Loudness Wars," which have engineers sacrificing audio quality in favor of a louder-sounding final product. We blame our mad Guitar Hero skills have somehow, through years of digital instrument manipulation, made us better than Metallica. It's a proud day.

[Via Music Radar]

Reader Comments (60)

@z:

"Now that it's in a popular video game, everyone cares."

I don't think that's true. I wouldn't equate the dozen or so people posting here qualify as "everyone." It'd be cool if that were the case, though.

I know that you're all smart and everything, and you've really got some useful information to add to the conversation, but you don't have to make it so obvious when you look down your nose at us plebs. It's hard to hear what you're saying over my douchebag alarm.

Misdirected hostility maybe?

you know, i've wondered about this in the past myself. i'm fairly certain guitar hero/rock band have some compression built in on their respective output stages, but i've definitely noticed it's not the unpleasant, major label cd compression we're all so used to.

i've been meaning to sit down and do this, but has anybody played a song in rock band and then played the same song off of a cd in their xbox to compare the perceived loudness? i'd imagine there's a pretty serious difference between the two.

i should really set this up, as i run a recording studio and have rock band right out in the lounge. hmmm...

Got the GHIII version of Death Magnetic in FLAC. The difference is huge. Cyanide -- one of the worst drum clipping tracks on the CD version -- is insanely better sounding.

The sound meter display thingy in winamp goes about half as high too. It let's my nice speakers do all the work.

Metallica recorded and released "St. Anger". Any talk of Metallica and sound quality is automatically moot at this point, always and forever.

with the exception of Death Magnetic, Metallica haven't been metal since the black album.

Kornkid, your name alone tells me you're not old enough to remember that Metallica "sold out" WITH the self titled album and it certainly wasn't "metal", despite what their awards nominations say.

That's how you can tell an old school Metallica follower from a radio single recruit fan. "Metallica sold out after black!" Welllllllll, piss off, self titled (despite actually being a decent album) was full of radio length pop format softened tunes with music videos to go with them; a far far cry from lengthy speedy heavy opuses with subject matter.

When did i say Metallica sold out? All I was saying is that after the Black album their sound changed, and in my opinion it wasn't a very "metal" sound.

You completely missed the point.

They didn't change sound "after" the self titled album, black WAS the changing point.

I suppose you're right, I didn't mean for it to sound like I was trying to say that after the Black album, Metallica completely changed. The Black album was very different compared to ...And Justice or Master of Puppets, I'm not going to argue that point at all, cause It is very true.. Black Album was the changing point, but I feel there was closer similarities in the sound as opposed to The Black album and Load. Don't get me wrong, I love the Load album and I Love Metallica. anywho... whether I, or anyone else liked it or not.. The Black Album was going to have a different sound to it due to the fact that it was the first metallica album recorded without Cliff Burton (RIP). I can imagine Newsted.. and Bob Rock.. were a partial reason to the different metallica sound. but whatever. Metallica For Life!

You know, Captain Underpants, you really really should fact check things. Aside from the wrong era, Metallica wasn't so much as an anti-statement as it was because the guys were big fans of that era's "New Wave of British Heavy Metal"-go listen to some Diamondhead, Motorhead, Blitzkrieg, Venom or other bands that they've based their sound off of (and in the case of my examples, even covered several of their tunes). They may have spiced the soup differently, but they certainly didn't invent the soup. As for playing songs "fast", well, the punk rock movement kinda beat Metallica to that punch a decade earlier. ;)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Wave_of_British_Heavy_Metal

I like Metallica's first few albums, but to call them anything other than inspired imitations is giving them too much credit....besides, look at their classics and their songwriting credits, Dave and Cliff were the core, they had the talent and broad musical knowledge.

Engineer: Metallica mix better in Guitar Hero than on CD

Reader Comments (60)

Posted: Sep 17th 2008 6:12PM brad77 said

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