A few days ago we posted that Aerosmith made more money off of their own Guitar Hero game than any album they’ve ever made. Today Wired had a fantastic article regarding the quality of the sound of the new downloadable tracks from Metallica compared to their actual CD.

The audio on their ninth studio album Death Magnetic, has some serious compression issues. The album according to sound engineer Ian Shepherd, has problems with the dynamic range. When is comes to the design of CD‘s, it’s to get the music as loud as possible but not sacrifice the the quality of the music. Something ‘Death Magnetic‘ does poorly, while the Guitar Hero game does it better.

Top: Guitar Hero, Bottom: Compact Disc

Shepherd went on to say the album was in fact loud, but when compared to the download for the same songs on Guitar Hero, it didn’t sound as clear. He wrote on his blog, “Listening with the levels roughly matched, the Guitar Hero version is much cleaner, as we already know,” and added, “It’s still not pristine, though – there is a mild, gritty distortion in the mix overall and the snare still “crunches” to a degree, but it’s nothing like the beleaguered CD release.”

Apparently the quality of both suck when listened to a masterful ear like Ian Shepherd. But at least the Guitar Hero version sounds noticeably better.