Until I went browsing around to hear some of the tracks besides the first single from the newest Metallica album, I had never heard of the loudness war. I ended up finding a couple articles, including this one on the Wired blog, describing how the quality of sound was being sacrificed for the sake of a 'louder' sound. Boosting the levels of the tracks would make sense to me if people all over were suddenly turning all their stereos, personal players, computers or whatever to full volume and not finding it loud enough, but I really don't think that's the case.
Of course what the music industry has effectively done now is create a ton of garbage quality releases for which 'high quality' releases can later be marketed as they see fit.
At least in the case of Death Magnetic, it was also released as a Guitar Hero version, against which the album version was compared to see the remarkable effect of the loudness boosting. I've now downloaded, in the face of Metallica and their Napster kerfuffle, the GH3 version of the album and listened to it a couple times through. Does Metallica deserve my money for their efforts? Absolutely, its a great return to some of their earlier ways and energy, and miles better than St. Anger and its dropped D monotony. I don't however feel that their label and management are entitled to my money for an inferior quality release, and won't be buying the album until a re-mixed version is readily available, at a non marked up price.
If more people follow this philosophy, and record sales tank on this disc, it would seem to be obvious that the record labels would pretty much have to rethink their ways. Here's hoping.
-A petition directly for the re-mixing of 'Death Magnetic' is online here
-A presently smaller, broader ranging petition against the loudness war in general can be found here