Even Heavy-Metal Fans Complain That Today's Music Is Too Loud!!!

They Can’t Hear the Details, Say Devotees of Metallica; Laying Blame on iPods

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By ETHAN SMITH

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\r\nCan a Metallica album be too loud?\r\n

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\r\nThe very thought might seem heretical to fans of the legendary metal \r\nband, which has been splitting eardrums with unrivaled power since the \r\nearly 1980s.\r\n

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\r\nBut even though Metallica’s ninth studio release, "Death Magnetic," \r\nis No. 1 on the album chart, with 827,000 copies sold in two weeks, some\r\nfans are bitterly disappointed: not by the songs or the performance, \r\nbut the volume. It’s so loud, they say, you can’t hear the details of \r\nthe music.\r\n

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\r\n"Death Magnetic" is a flashpoint in a long-running music-industry \r\nfight. Over the years, rock and pop artists have increasingly sought to \r\nmake their recordings sound louder to stand out on the radio, jukeboxes \r\nand, especially, iPods.\r\n

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\r\nBut audiophiles, recording professionals and some \r\nordinary fans say the extra sonic wallop comes at a steep price. To make\r\nrecorded music seem louder, engineers must reduce the "dynamic range," \r\nminimizing the difference between the soft and loud parts and creating a\r\ntidal wave of aural blandness.\r\n

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\r\n"When there’s no quiet, there can be no loud," said Matt Mayfield, a \r\nMinnesota electronic-music teacher, in a YouTube video that sketched out\r\nthe battle lines of the loudness war. A recording’s dynamic range can \r\nbe measured by calculating the variation between its average sound level\r\nand its maximum, and can be visually expressed through wave forms. \r\nLouder recordings, with higher average sound levels, leave less room for\r\nsuch variation than quieter ones.\r\n

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\r\nSome fans are complaining that "Death Magnetic" has a thin, brittle \r\nsound that’s the result of the band’s attempts in the studio to make it \r\nas loud as possible. "Sonically it is barely listenable," reads one \r\nfan’s online critique. Thousands have signed an online petition urging \r\nthe band to re-mix the album and release it again.\r\n

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\r\nRick Rubin\r\n

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\r\nMetallica \r\nand the album’s producer, Rick Rubin, declined to comment. Cliff \r\nBurnstein, Metallica’s co-manager, says the complainers are a tiny \r\nminority. He says 98% of listeners are "overwhelmingly positive," \r\nadding: "There’s something exciting about the sound of this record that \r\npeople are responding to."\r\n

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Key Witness

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\r\nBut the critics have inadvertently recruited a \r\nkey witness: Ted Jensen, the album’s "mastering engineer," the person \r\nresponsible for the sonic tweaks that translate music made in a studio \r\ninto a product for mass duplication and playback by consumers. \r\nResponding to a Metallica fan’s email about loudness, Mr. Jensen sent a \r\nsympathetic reply that concluded: "Believe me, I’m not proud to be \r\nassociated with this one." The fan posted the message on a Metallica \r\nbulletin board and it quickly drew attention.\r\n

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\r\nMr. Jensen regrets his choice of words but not the sentiment. "I’m \r\nnot sure I would have said quite the same thing if I was posting it to \r\nthe bulletin board," he says. But "it’s certainly the way I feel about \r\nit."\r\n

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\r\nThe battle has roots in the era before compact discs. With vinyl \r\nrecords, "it was impossible to make loud past a certain point," says Bob\r\nLudwig, a veteran mastering engineer. But digital technology made it \r\npossible to squeeze all of the sound into a narrow, high-volume range. \r\nIn addition, music now is often optimized for play on the relatively \r\nlow-fidelity earbuds for iPods, reducing incentives to offer a broad \r\ndynamic range.\r\n

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\r\nThe loudness war began heating up around the time CDs gained \r\npopularity, in the early 1980s. Guns N’ Roses’ "Appetite for \r\nDestruction" upped the ante in 1987, as did Metallica’s 1991 "Black \r\nAlbum" and then the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ "Californication" in 1999.\r\n

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Less to Hear

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\r\nMusic released today typically has a dynamic \r\nrange only a fourth to an eighth as wide as that of the 1990s. That \r\nmeans if you play a newly released CD right after one that’s 15 years \r\nold, leaving the volume knob untouched, the new one is likely to sound \r\nfour to eight times as loud. Many who’ve followed the controversy say \r\n"Death Magnetic" has one of the narrowest dynamic ranges ever on an \r\nalbum.\r\n

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\r\nSound engineers say artists who insist on loudness paradoxically give\r\npeople less to hear, because they end up wiping away nuances and \r\ndetails. Everything from a gently strummed guitar to a pounding snare \r\ndrum is equally loud, leading to what some call "ear fatigue." If the \r\nlistener turns down the volume knob, the music loses even more of its \r\npunch.\r\n

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\r\n\r\nAssociated Press\r\n

\r\nJames Hetfield of \r\nMetallica performs with the band as they present their latest album, \r\n’Death Magnetic,’ in Berlin earlier this month.\r\n

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\r\nBut\r\nmany musicians, producers and record-company executives "think that \r\nhaving a louder record is going to translate into greater sales," says \r\nChris Athens, Mr. Jensen’s business partner and a fellow engineer. \r\n"Nobody really wants to have a record that’s not as loud as everybody \r\nelse’s" in an iTunes playlist, he adds.\r\n

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\r\nMastering engineers are caught in the crossfire. "I’ve had lots of \r\npeople -- I mean lots and lots of people -- try and push a record to a \r\nplace I thought it didn’t belong," Mr. Athens says. "We try to deliver \r\nsomething that mitigates the damage the client wants. I drag my feet and\r\ngive them something a little louder and a little louder."\r\n

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\r\nAlbums by some of the biggest names in rock, including the most \r\nrecent by U2, Bruce Springsteen and Paul McCartney, have drawn flak. \r\nBloggers last year singled out Mr. Ludwig, the veteran engineer, for the\r\nsound on Mr. Springsteen’s "Magic," which some thought was tinny and \r\nloud.\r\n

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\r\nMr. Ludwig wouldn’t discuss the instructions he was given, but said, \r\n"Bruce doesn’t let anything out unless it’s exactly the way he wants it \r\nto be." Mr. Springsteen and his manager, Jon Landau, declined through a \r\nspokeswoman to comment.\r\n

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\r\nAs for the deafening "Death Magnetic," it struck one fan as fitting \r\nfor these tumultuous times, thanks to songs like "Broken, Beat and \r\nScarred" and "All Nightmare Long," says Metallica’s co-manager, Mr. \r\nBurnstein. He says an investment banker emailed to say that "the album \r\nand its song titles have just become the soundtrack of Wall Street for \r\nfall 2008."\r\n

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\r\nWrite to Ethan Smith at [email protected]\r\n

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