Sometime in 1999, I remember grabbing the new Red Hot Chili Peppers album, Californication from some local music store. I loved the album, and it stayed in my cd player for quite a long time. Nostalgia sometimes overtaking my musical choices, I find myself these days listening to Blood Sugar Sex Magic quite a bit more. Owning many albums on vinyl, cassette and older cd's that contain original mixes of albums, I've noticed a trend for music to become louder and sharper to the ear over my lifetime. I began to notice that the latest releases from some of my favourite bands were missing the emotion that past efforts brought forth during a good sit-down and listen session.

For a while I attributed this to musical creativeness reaching a peak especially for many bands that developed or even defined their respective genres. Then I began noticing that the "loudness" of some albums distracted me when I was listening to them. Putting two and two together, I realized that I enjoyed a lot of pre-1998 albums for the warm representation of the original recording they offered.

Back to the Californication album, It was the first album I noticed was constantly loud and had no memorable leads or hooks because it was just too loud. Still I didn’t know why, had never heard about brickwalling or what happens to music when it is subjected to it. I just ignored it and figured it had to be better because advancing technology constantly improves fidelity and quality of music, right? I equated loud with better.

Fast forward to 2008. Metallica is about to launch a new album. A very highly anticipated album, with hype created through one of their many official websites, Mission Metallica. Clips of the band making the album sounded very promising. A great new Metallica record was upon us. The album is released only to go right to #1 on many music charts. It commands a lot of praise from fans old and new. I enjoy the album so much I'm almost still having a hard time believing they could write this album. But now there's this ugly little problem that is trying to detract from the glory of Metallica making a rock solid metal album. The old noise problem I shrugged off in 1999.

I've long known that a quality analogue recording played back through quality analogue gear will reproduce a very natural feeling sound. Relaxing, and very enjoyable. I've also known for a long time that cd audio has a very clear, bright playback that is enjoyable for many reasons, while it lacks the natural sound inherent to vinyl recordings. That's variety, which was not at all a bad thing. The problem facing us now is the loss of variety. We have many ways to listen to music these days, from high-end audio gear and speakers, turntables, cd players of all kinds, mp3's and their many uses, and various other digital formats.

We have more ways to listen to music than ever before in history, and yet the ability to enjoy the quality of one medium over another has diminished to a few transient indie albums that are recorded and mastered on old equipment on purpose. Current album releases are plagued with a mix that is over-driven to be loud and stand out. To sound good on small earbuds connected to an iPod. To be louder than the rest.

Many people haven't noticed this, many people knew and didn't know what it was, and many knew exactly what was happening. Either way, it's been allowed to go on mostly unnoticed until September of 2008. The release of Metallica's new album has sparked a wild fire of comments on its audio quality. The album to date is the most heavily compressed and clipped recording released. The album crosses over the line from acceptable volume to unacceptable, to the point that many parts of the album are distorted enough that whole guitar lines disappear.

The camel's back has been broken. This problem was dwelling, and growing, like a cancer. It continues to invade more and more space, unnoticed. Eventually it compromises a vital system in your body and destroys your health, can even possibly kill you. "The loudness war" as it has been called, has hit a vital component of recorded music: its quality. As long as it has gone unnoticed, it has finally overtaken its host. Is Death Magnetic the future of recording quality? It is not the first album to suffer the fate of the brickwall, but by far is the first to expose to the masses the terrible direction audio compression has taken our music into. It needs to end, lessons need to be learned here. Before this cancer completely kills the emotion of music and the love for it many of us have.

Posted 7th December 2008 by Scorpio
Updated Friday, 14 January, 2011 9:25 PM