Hot Stamper Pressings of Bass Demo Discs Available Now
The diamond we are discussing here is your stereo. It has many flaws the eye cannot see and it’s your job to find them and fix them.
Recently we created a game centered on Led Zeppelin II, in which contestants would compare the Robert Ludwig originals to the Jimmy Page-approved remaster (a record we at one time were giving away for free with every vintage pressing we sold).
The bass on those two pressings could not be more different. If you want to compare them for yourself, we would love to know what you think the differences are.
Flaws in the Diamond
Home audio systems tend to have a great many flaws. In our case, we’ve spent decades rooting them out and fixing them by regular tweaking and tuning, often right after a shootout when we notice some album doesn’t sound the way it used to, or the way we think it should.
This work has the added benefit of improving one’s critical listening skills.
Bad Test Discs
There are many test discs audiophiles use that turn out to be bad for testing.
They’re bad because they can sound good on a system with a great many problems.
They don’t expose sonic flaws as much as they hide them.
Port’s Rule states: If it isn’t easy for your test discs to sound wrong, they are not very good test discs.
If you are looking for tough test discs, we have you covered, with more than fifty ballbusters guaranteed to bring any stereo to its knees. If you own some of these records — preferably Hot Stamper pressings because we know those copies have the right sound — and like a challenge, we invite you to critically listen to the difficult passages we have made note of in our commentaries.
There are a great many records we’ve auditioned over the years that are good for testing bass, and these are some of the best we’ve found:
Further Reading