Also you can join [www.turnmeup.org]

Good for them, I say. The record is a lot more nuanced and texturally rich.

As for Death Magnetic, while I do enjoy the record, it’s painful to listen to after about 15 minutes and I’m using good quality headphones (Grado SR-60s). The snare is noticeably distorted, and not in a “St. Anger” kind of way. I had a frightening moment last week when I was running for a train…my headphone amp turned itself all the way up and I was carrying two bags (couldn’t yank my headphones off) and “My Apocalypse” was playing so loud I thought my head was going to implode, and not in a good way.

Don’t shoot the messenger – if you want to read about it, my source is a book called U2: At the End of the World, by Bill Flanagan. As I understand it, a big bit of the Rattle & Hum tour was for U2 to get back to the roots of rock & roll and to really “understand America,” etc. They recorded “Angels of Harlem” at Sun Studios, for example. Apparently, hitchhiking around on days off from the tour was part of the exercise. I make no claims as to whether or not the story is apocryphal, I’m just reporting the source.

Why the fuck would U2 be hitchhiking during the Rattle & Hum tour? Come on now.

Um…if this was their FIRST tour I could see that.

Justice is the Metallica album that sounds remarkably bad when you try to crank it on a car stereo.

(Warning: related, but slightly off-topic, but I have a point, so bear with me for a bit.)

I remember reading once about U2 while they were traveling across America during the Rattle & Hum tour. The band was hitchhiking and got picked up by a kid with a bunch of rap cassettes in his car, and they were amazed at how live the sound was. Once the kid figured out that he had U2 in his car, he fumbled to put on the Joshua Tree, the sound of which paled in comparison. The next U2 album, Achtung Baby was specifically mastered to sound phenomenal on a car with giant woofers. I’ve also heard that Aerosmith does something similar in their mastering process.

So, the point of all of this is that I wouldn’t say the iPod generation is responsible for current trends in audio mastering. The loudness wars got started back in the 60s, after all, back in the days of AM radio. Prior to moving to a big East Coast city, I did the majority of my music listening in my truck, and I’d be willing to bet that this is true for a giant population of folks across the country. Cars are terrible environments for audio, so a mix that is apparently louder will sound better, hence, gigantic and nasty compression of dynamic ranges.

Here’s my point – Metallica is a big-label band, so they’re going where all the listeners are – iPods and car stereos. Not many folks can afford/are interested in the type of specialized listening room like the folks at forums like Audiogon slaver over, though. Thus, the mass-market version of Death Magnetic will be mastered to sound good on the majority of speakers.

What really gets my goat, though, is that Metallica offered a 5-LP set mastered at 45RPM for maximum audio fidelity, and still used their brick-walled mix that sounds horrible to do so. If I’m going to shell out almost two bills for that box set, I want to get my dollar’s worth.

(For the record, Ian Shepherd has a great series of posts covering this subject in great depth. Worth a read.)

[www.stylusmagazine.com]

As a musician myself, I cannot understate how important it is to be aware of the issues presented therein, that is if you want to cut records that won’t sound like shit when they get turned up.