"Listen, there's nothing up with the audio quality," Ulrich said in an interview. "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 sound loud, to get it to sound exciting, to get it to jump out of the speakers. Of course, I've heard that there are a few people complaining. But I've been listening to it the last couple of days in my car, and it sounds f**kin' smokin'." Fans that disagree with this assessment have suspect some smokin' had been going on in the recording studio and it has nothing to do with the sound.

Some fans claim that the Guitar Hero versions of the songs have a superior and less distorted sound than the CD version. Blabbermouth has a story where Ted Jensen, the engineer who mastered the album at Sterling Sound in New York addressed fan complaints that the CD is too loud and the audio is pushed to distortion levels, "The mixes were already brick-walled before they arrived at my place. Suffice to say I would never be pushed to overdrive things as far as they are here. Believe me, I'm not proud to be associated with this one, and we can only hope that some good will come from this in some form of backlash against volume above all else." - more on this story

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