Vinyl - the "New" Hi-Def Audio?

Over the last year I've been reading how vinyl is making a big comeback (more proof than you can shake a stick at here, here, here, and here). Some bands are taking a large amount of time to make sure these releases sound darn good. They say, "Hey, if you care about how your music sounds, buy vinyl rather than a crummy CD!"

This is inherently stupid. For the moment, let's forget some technical details, such as the fact that CDs have a higher dynamic range than vinyl, and its frequency range is going to more than good enough for most people. And yes, I'm aware that the "feel" of vinyl can be more pleasurable since the analog nature of it gives off more warmth. But the fact is that in most cases, not enough care has gone into making a good CD. If engineers spent half as much time with the CD as they did with these new vinyl releases, a lot of us would be pretty happy.

And what if you wanted that extra bit of technical data on your side? Then the SACD and DVD-A formats are just great. They can store numbers with higher precision (to better approximate the sound samples), they have high frequency response, the decks play your old CDs, the medium is more portable, they're inexpensive, and they support lossless surround formats. Yes, they have copy protection, but if you're fumbling around in the hi-def arena, as long as the copy protection doesn't severely affect your listening experience, who cares? But unless your band's name is Porcupine Tree, releasing in one of these hi-def formats just isn't on your radar screen in 2008.

So exactly why are people gushing over vinyl? Large album art, nostalgia, and "the experience" of unwrapping this huge product and sliding large discs out of sleeves? That's all well and good, but the price of vinyl these days has been bordering on the absurd. It's a bit of a scam, actually. I mean hell, Metallica is going to be releasing Death Magnetic on five pieces of vinyl for around $120. Never mind the absurdity of the price; I'd have to get up off my ass nine times to hear the whole album. And for what increase in quality? Even though Mobile Fidelity is doing the transfer, chances are the original mix isn't that good to begin with, so any advantage spent by someone putting this thing to 180 grahams and at speed of 45 RPM is wasted.

But hey, someone gets a lot of money from the fanboys. And that's what counts.

Your Metallica Sound Quality Questions Answered

I've been busy reading the Metallica forums regarding the whole sound quality issue with the Death Magnetic sound clips and full song releases. There's so much misinformation out there that I feel it's necessary to take the most common questions regarding this topic, Metallica's producer Rick Rubin, record production, mixing and mastering, plus the Loudness War, and answer them here.

The new Metallica songs rock! I don't hear any problems at all!
Until one knows what to listen for, issues of this sort often aren't recognizable. Listen with a good set of headphones to the loudest part of the song. You'll often notice how the instruments aren't very well defined (they tend to mush together), the drums tend to slip in volume, and in worst cases, fuzzy noise and pops occur.

St. Anger sounded terrible! How can you say these new songs are worse than that?!?!
The majority of St. Anger's problems are due to production choices. For that record, a conscious decision was made by producer Bob Rock and Metallica for the music to sound like it was made by a garage band, which is why the drums are clanky and the guitars are tinny. Granted this album also suffers from being too loud, but the main sound "problem" with St. Anger is a deliberate one. I assure you that the issues heard on the Death Magnetic tracks are not something the band chose to occur.

Production? Mixing? Mastering? What's the difference and who cares?
As implied above, production work is done by someone hired by the band, and his job is to point the musicians in a certain direction with regards to songwriting. It's also the producer's job to make suggestions with regards to recording technique and soundscaping. For example, he might recommend effects such as reverb or echo be placed on a singer's voice or certain guitar passages.

Mixing engineers are responsible for taking the separate tracks (at its simplest there are four: vocals, guitar, bass, and drums), and putting them together to deliver a (nearly) final song. The mastering engineer takes this output and performs certain processing to enhance the sound quality. It is at this point that certain tools, such as compression, are added (compression delivers punch to rock oriented music) to accomplish this task. Misuse of the tools at the mixing and mastering stages has led to what is known as the Loudness War.

WTF is the Loudness War? Is this bad? Hell, I want my heavy metal loud!
The Loudness War took off in the early 90s as a way for record companies to get their bands' albums noticed rather than relying on the listener to turn his own volume knob. Psychologically, a louder piece of music is often determined to be "better" by the average listener when compared to a quieter piece of music. So engineers started making the final mixes of the records they were working on louder and louder, and this is what was transferred to CD. Unfortunately, this process, if applied improperly, can lead to a loss in sound fidelity, which makes the music grating to the ears. At first the effects of this could only be heard by people who knew what they were listening for, but the problem has gotten so bad lately that many "normal" people can hear problems with certain current releases. For more information see this Wikipedia article and this YouTube video.

Rick Rubin is a well respected member of the music community and highly sought after by big-name bands. His stuff can't possibly be affected by this!
Sadly, this is not the case. While his older records, such as The Cult's Electric, Danzig's self-titled debut, and Slayer's South of Heaven and Seasons In the Abyss are landmarks in album sound quality, his recent releases are notorious for being too loud. The problem cropped up with Red Hot Chili Peppers One Hot Minute, and reached peak awfulness for their Californication. The production of Rubin's albums still appear to be quite good, but the final result on CD has gotten worse with time.

Well, even if Rubin doesn't care, Metallica must. Those guys are musicians; they won't let this happen!
Alas, Metallica's track record is not so good when it comes to sound quality. Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets are not exactly hallmarks of great recording due to limited dynamics. Justice suffers from very tinny sounding drums, and we already discussed the issues with St. Anger. So when it comes to an issue like engineering of the final product, which even famed music nerds Rush messed up on Vapor Trails, it's quite likely Metallica will be ignorant of the matter.

I still don't buy it! Those clips must be demos. After all, they're not polished. There's not even any reverb anywhere! Either that or they're purposefully bad because they're free!
It's unlikely the songs are demos or the outcome is deliberate since iTunes is selling them and they're not listed as demos. The "dry" sound quality is most definitely a decision the band and Rick Rubin made, since Rubin is lauded for his "stripped down" approach to recording. Also note that Justice sounded pretty similar, so Metallica is undoubtedly trying to recreate the feel of that record to some extent. We won't know until release date, but if it really was simply an issue with the ripping and encoding of the mp3 files, why does "My Apocalypse" still have issues? Metallica's staff said that any single released after "The Day That Never Comes" would be free from sound problems, but clearly this has not yet come to pass.

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Any other questions or concerns? H-Man will be happy to answer, so comment away.

Quick Takes - "My Apocalypse"

It looks like Metallica has finally taken the lid off the Death Magnetic box. The last song on the album, "My Apocalypse", was released to their web site, Mission: Metallica, and iTunes this morning.

The tune rocks. The only song Metallica's written in the last fifteen years that's come close to thrashing like this is "The Struggle Within", and that's pushing it. "My Apocalypse" is much closer to "Damage, Inc." and "Dyers Eve" in tempo. James is actually yelling on this one, and it isn't touchy feely stuff about about his alcoholism. Corpses and mangled flesh ahoy! The riffage is fast and tight, and Kirk even pulls out a bit of "Whiplash" flavor for part of the solo.

So far Metallica has a really nice album on their hands, but I fear, regardless of what their "people" say, that the album will be a milestone in the Loudness War. Once again the 256 kbps version of the song is way too loud and hideously distorts. This is a cryin' shame because their efforts deserve better presentation. Let's hope the right people are reading the forums, they stop putting lousy mp3 files out to paying customers (note to those responsible: lowering the volume after the song has been clipped doesn't solve the problem!), and the album itself doesn't suffer from these issues.

Mastering Problems Plague Metallica's "Day" Release

Although the writing and musicianship on Metallica's "The Day That Never Comes" is very good, the quality of the recording itself is not. The version I originally listened to was from their MySpace page, which ended up being about 96 kbps, so I accepted the poor quality. Since then I've acquired the 256 kbps versions from iTunes and the pay section of Mission: Metallica, and even though the bitrate is higher, the distortion and clipping due to excessive volume is still present.

Present? Wait, let me rephrase that. I meant to say, "The compression is a Godzilla beastie that has hunkered down within Metallica's homeland, and is now busy sonically destroying anything on the landscape within a 500 mile radius." Just listen!

The tune is so wrecked that even people unaware of the Loudness War can tell it's awful, and are loudly complaining on Metallica's forums. Rick Rubin's last decade of albums under his command are notorious for being some of the worst casualties of the Loudness War, but not even those discs are this bad. Since their cover of Maiden's "Remember Tomorrow" survived intact, here's to hoping the actual Death Magnetic CD isn't fried like this. It would be awfully amusing if the Guitar Hero version, which by design features a remix and remaster of the original tracks, ends up sounding better.

Edit 1: The song has been removed from Met's MySpace page, but still remains at their other two sites.

Edit 2: Metallica's "people" have addressed the issue. Read about it at Blabbermouth.

Edit 3: A new version has been released on Mission: Metallica, but people claim it's simply the same clip at lower volume. Unintentional distortion still rules!

The Day Finally Came

Metallica's hotly anticipated new single, "The Day That Never Comes", hit the airwaves today. Go to any of their three websites (main site, their MySpace page, and Mission: Metallica) to listen to the stream. The quality, as expected from a stream, is less than perfect, but it gets the job done.

I'll skip to the chase by saying this is one of the best things they've done since The Black Album. In fact, there's a lot about this song that's better than the stuff on that record, especially once it starts really movin' in the middle.

But let's start at the beginning of this eight minute monster. I was turned off at first by the slow picked opening because it reminds me of Korn's "Falling Away From Me". Fortunately that goes away pretty fast, and we're left with a pattern that's very similar to what we've come to expect from the fourth song on an album from their good days. This pattern ends up sounding very "One"-like due to the song's production, which is very dry. There's no hint of 80s reverb here.

I personally wish James would stop "singing". Metallica's songs always seem better when he yells in key. So whenever he croons a slower number, I end up thinking of "The Unforgiven", which isn't a high point for me.

At the four minute mark James starts riffin' out. It's a bit on the slow/slinky side, and has a cool feel to it.

At five minutes Lars ups the ante with a "Whiplash" type beat, and James speeds up the riffs with some "One" endgame style fast picking. Next we we get some lead bits, in harmony, then some cool pull-off type riffage, and similar pull-off high notes.

Right about 6:30 Kirk shows up and does some soloing reminiscent of Kill 'Em All and Ride the Lightning. He isn't quite as smooth, and it doesn't scream or wail as much as we were accustomed to, but he tried really hard, so I suspect he's just getting a bit old.

Verdict: win. At this point in their long career I really couldn't ask for any more from them. They're back to playing heavy metal with their own unique combination of acoustic bits, tightly pieced together riffs, and rapid-fire soloing. Welcome back to the fold guys.