Even Metallica fans think the music's too loud

Has the ritualistic cranking up of the volume of music tracks finally reached a tipping point? Now many of the fans of heavy metal outfit Metallica are complaining that the band's latest effort, Death Magnetic, is too simply loud. And yes, that's a bad thing.

I last wrote about the loudness issue in June 2007, where I outlined the common complaints about audio tracks that have been bothering audiophiles for decades. To recap: The problem stems from pushing the overall audio levels on a track as high as possible. While volume is increased, variation is diminished. This means that while a track is nice and loud, its details are lost. After all, in a digital track, there's only so much room for data in the finite number of bits available on a CD, so something has to go. But no one wants to have a song that's less loud than the next band on the rack... and so the cycle continues.

Now the disappointment has spread into the once-unassailable world of heavy metal, a genre where there's historically been no such thing as too loud. Metallica fans across the web are complaining, loudly, about the levels on Death Magnetic, saying the new album is so loud you "can't hear the details of the music" with one critique saying it is "barely listenable." An online petition has even turned up asking the band to remix the album at a lower overall volume.

In a recent interview with Blender magazine, Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich addressed Web critics by saying that, "... there's nothing up with the sound quality. It's 2008, and that's how we make records. [Producer] Rick Rubin's whole thing is to try and get it to sound lively, to get it to sound loud, to get it to sound exciting, to get it to jump out of the speakers."

He also adds that on the Web, people become more vocal, especially when it comes to negative viewpoints. "The Internet gives everybody a voice, and the Internet has a tendency to give the complainers a louder voice," says Ulrich. "Part of being in Metallica is that there's always somebody who's got a problem with something that you're doing."

The Wall Street Journal has helpfully offered an interactive system where you can see and (more importantly) hear, head to head, what the fuss is all about. Twenty years ago, the music thrashed as furiously as anything and it's so loud I turned down my PC's audio to get it to a comfortable level. Today's track is absurdly loud right from the start, and you can easily hear how mushy the bass and drums sound. They may as well be static.

Despite all of the complaints, Metallica's Death Magnetic currently reigns at the top of The Billboard Charts. But who's to blame for all of the noise? Guns N' Roses, if the Journal is to be believed, was the first to start cranking up the audio, back in 1987. Bands have been on a quest to one-up each other ever since.

Now it seems like we're reaching the limits of big audio, lest every song devolve into a buzzing puddle of gruel. But bands keep trying, mixers push back the best they can... and consumers get caught in the crossfire.

Read the full tale here.