New Metallica Album One-Upped by Guitar Hero DLC

Concerns over the quality of product coming out of the music industry and its place in society’s eyes being topped by music-genre video games has just turned a new corner, as it seems the recent DLC of Metallica’s “Death Magnetic” album is outdoing the iTunes version.

Strange as it may sound, this suggestion actually has some credibility – in order to have versions of new releases available at the same time as the album release, Guitar Hero developers have very early access to the music, and additionally have a certain degree of control over the individual tracks to ensure it works in a game environment. Fans are now discussing “ripping” the versions contained in the PS3 version, and creating their own, less distorted version of the album.

(Edit to add: I have now been able to compare samples of both versions, and have made a new post with my conclusions here. There is a detailed comparison of the differences in sound here.) — Mastering Media Blog

There’s plenty more to read about the issue where that came from, including some responses from sound engineer Ted Jensen, whose studio mastered the album.