More of the Music of The Pretenders
Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of The Pretenders
Take it from us, it is the rare pressing that manages to get rid of the harshness and congestion that plague so many copies.
Look for a copy that opens up the soundstage — the wider, deeper and taller the presentation, the better the sound, as long as the tonal balance stays right.
- More records that are good for testing midrange congestion
- More records that are good for testing harshness and shrillness
When you hear a copy sound relatively rich and sweet, the minor shortcomings of the recording no longer seem to interfere with your enjoyment of the music. Like a properly tweaked stereo, a good record lets you forget all that audio stuff and just listen to the music as music. Here at Better Records, we — like our customers — think that’s what it’s all about.
And we know that only the top copies will let you do that, something that not everyone in the audiophile community fully appreciates to this day. We’re doing what we can to change that way of thinking, but progress is, as you may well imagine, slow.
What To Listen For
The best copies have superb extension up top, which allows the grit and edge on the vocals to almost entirely disappear.
Some of it is there on the tape for a reason. That’s partly the sound they were going for. This is, after all, a Bob Clearmountain mix and a Jimmy Iovine production.
Heavy handed processing is what you hire them to do. You want a hit album, don’t you?
But bad mastering and pressing add plenty of extra grit to the average copy, enough to ruin it in fact.
You can test for that edgy quality on side one very easily using the jangly guitar harmonics and breathy vocals of “My Baby.”
If the harmonic information is clear and extending naturally, in a big space, you are very likely hearing a high quality copy.
Further Reading
- More records with specific advice on what to listen for
- More of our favorite records that are good for all kinds of testing
- More of our favorite “difficult to reproduce” rock and pop records
