Metallica released their latest album, “Hardwired… To Self-Destruct”, last week. It’s their 11th studio album, a two disc-er with nearly 80 minutes of tunes. I decided to sit down, take some measurements and find out if Metallica still hates dynamics.
But first…
Jimmy Fallon, Metallica & The Roots Sing “Enter Sandman”
Moving along… I used Audio Hijack, a nifty app that allows you to capture audio from other applications and route it through a series of plugins. In this case, I used our LCAST Loudness Meter to take loudness measurements and Dynameter to get a read on the dynamics profile.
I chose two songs: “Hardwired”, the first song on the album, and “When a Blind Man Cries”, the one that seemed to have the most potential for being dynamic, after a quick listen. I tested the levels of both songs in iTunes and Spotify, with loudness normalization enabled (e.g., SoundCheck in iTunes). “Hardwired” has a music video, so I tested the YouTube version as well. Here are the cold, hard facts…
LCAST and Dynameter measure “Hardwired” in iTunes
First up, “Hardwired” in iTunes. The song has an integrated loudness of -16.3 LUFS, which is expected since -16 LUFS is the approximate SoundCheck normalization level, and a maximum true-peak level of -8.4 dBTP. In other words, “Hardwired” is only using about half of the available headroom above the normalization level.
From the Dynameter screenshot, we can see that the song has a minimum PSR of 5 and a PLR of 7. The low minimum PSR tells us that the song has limited dynamics at some point while the low PLR, and Dynameter’s PSR history, confirm that dynamics are limited throughout.
The story in Spotify and YouTube is similar, with “Hardwired” having a minimum PSR of 5 and, somewhat curiously, a slightly higher PLR of 8. The playback levels vary due to each platform having a different normalization level.
LCAST and Dynameter measure “When a Blind Man Cries” in iTunes
Now let’s take a look at “When a Blind Man Cries”, starting with the iTunes version. Looking at Dynameter’s PSR history, you can see that the song starts with very healthy dynamics, hovering around PSR 10 - 12. Nice! Maybe a little too nice, because the dynamics then fall off a cliff and return to true Metallica levels, around PSR 5 - 6. The song leaves plenty of headroom on the table, measuring PLR 10 and having a maximum true-peak level of -5 dBTP.
The dynamics of “When a Blind Man Cries” are the same in Spotify and the song plays back with little headroom to spare, with a maximum true-peak level of -0.2 dBTP.
So, is Metallica hardwired for loudness? Yes and no. The first track, “Hardwired”, has limited dynamics throughout while “When a Blind Man Cries” contains a mix of dynamic and crushed sections. Would “Hardwired” sound better with more dynamics? I’d prefer a more dynamic version, but it comes down to taste, and I’m interested to hear your thoughts.
Have you listened to the album? Do you dig the sound?
