Everyone knows that audio quality has gone down the tubes since people stopped listening to vinyl records. Fans are hating the metal band's new album, reports the WSJ. They're "complaining that 'Death Magnetic' has a thin, brittle sound that's the result of the band's attempts in the studio to make it as loud as possible." See, everyone's trying to make their music sound louder so that it sounds better on iPods. The result is that details get erased and it all sounds like crap.

"To make recorded music seem louder, engineers must reduce the "dynamic range," minimizing the difference between the soft and loud parts and creating a tidal wave of aural blandness...Ted Jensen, the album's "mastering engineer," the person responsible for the sonic tweaks that translate music made in a studio into a product for mass duplication and playback by consumers. Responding to a Metallica fan's email about loudness, Mr. Jensen sent a sympathetic reply that concluded: 'Believe me, I'm not proud to be associated with this one.'

Whatever. These whiny fans are forgetting that everything Metallica has sucked since the Black album anyway.