Records that Are Good for Testing Sibilance

Gary Wright – A Good Test Record for Gritty, Grainy Sound

More Records that Are Good for Testing Grit and Grain

More Records that Are Good for Testing Harshness and Shrillness

Most pressings of this album tend to err in one of two ways: either they’re a little bright and get hard and gritty in the upper mids, or they’re wrong in the oppostie direction, and tend to sound smeary and dull.

Our best copies get the balance right — plenty of texture on the keyboards and drums, with vocals that still have presence and breathiness — and not too much grit.

An all-keyboard pop record like this was a rarity at the time. The only other instruments besides drums (and one track with guitar) are keyboards. Every song is layered with multi-tracked clavinets, organs, and Moogs — it was a remarkable feat in 1975 to create an album with nothing but keys.

Listen to the title track, the most dynamic song on the record, and you will hear just how well all of those stacked keyboards and synths work together. (Steve Winwood’s Back in the High Life borrowed a page or two from Gary’s solo debut here.)

  • If you’re a Gary Wright fan, or perhaps a fan of mid-’70s synth-pop, this title, a personal favorite of mine from 1975, is surely a Must Own.
  • In our opinion, Dream Weaver is his best sounding album, and probably the only Gary Wright record you’ll ever need. Click on this link to see more titles we like to call one and done.
  • The sound may be too heavily processed for some, making it fairly difficult to reproduce, but the best sounding pressings, played at good, loud levels on big dynamic speakers in a large, heavily-treated room, are a fun listen. They sound just fine to us.
  • 1975 was a good year for music on vinyl — here are some excellent pressings of well-recorded albums available for purchase now.

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What to Listen For on Child Is Father to the Man

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More of the Music of Blood, Sweat and Tears

Reviews and Commentaries for Blood, Sweat and Tears

At the end of a long day of listening at loud levels to multiple copies of this album you may want to run yourself a nice hot bath and light some candles. If you have an isolation tank so much the better.

You could of course turn down the volume, but what fun is that?

This music wasn’t meant to be heard at moderate levels. Playing it that way is an insult to the musicians who worked so hard to make it.

The Right Balance

Every once in a while you hear a pressing in which the right balance has been struck, and this one clearly belongs to that group. It’s not perfect; you have to put up with a few rough patches to get the sound that serves most of the music properly. No copy will do it all; with this album the goal is to do the best you can.
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Listening in Depth to Country Life

More of the Music of Bryan Ferry

More of the Music of Roxy Music

The domestic, German, Japanese and Dutch pressings are not remotely competitive with the Brits on this album (which is not true for all Roxy’s albums but clearly true for this one, Siren being the obvious exception to the rule).

Now for those of you who are not big Roxy Music fans and don’t know this music, this album may take a bit of getting used to. We assure you it will be well worth your while. We think it’s brilliant.

And if you do consider yourself a fan of Art Rock, every Roxy album should be on your shelf, right up there with your Bowie, Pink Floyd, Supertramp, Eno, Peter Gabriel, 10cc and too many others to list. (Most are personal favorites of mine, albums I have played hundreds of times over the last 40 years and plan to keep playing until my ears give out.)

TRACK LISTING

Side One

The Thrill of It All
Three and Nine

On the best copies this track is the very definition of Tubey Magical richness and smoothness.

All I Want Is You

A little thinner and brighter than the other tracks on this side as a rule.

Out of the Blue

The best guitar solo ever played on the violin. Go Eddie!

If It Takes All Night

Side Two

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Listening in Depth to Famous Blue Raincoat

More of the Music of Jennifer Warnes

More of the Music of Leonard Cohen

I’m a huge fan of this FBR. It’s the only album Jennifer Warnes ever made that I would consider a Must Own recording or a desert island disc. Without question this is her masterpiece.

Key Test for Side One

Listen to the snare drum on Bird on a Wire. On most copies it sound thin and bright, not very much like a real snare. Let’s face it: most copies of this record are thin and bright, and that’s just not our sound here at Better Records. If the snare on Bird sounds solid and meaty, at the very least you have a copy that is probably not too bright, and on this album that puts it well ahead of the pack.

While you’re listening for the sound of that snare, notice the amazing drum work of Vinnie Colaiuta, session drummer extraordinaire. The guy’s work on this track — especially with the high hat — is genius.

Key Test for Side Two

Listen to the sound of the piano on Song of Bernadette. If it’s rich and full-bodied with the weight of a real piano, you might just have yourself a winner. At the very least you won’t have to suffer through the anemically thin sound of the average copy.

Track Commentary

Side One

First We Take Manhattan

Don’t expect this song to be tonally correct. It runs the gamut from bright to too bright to excrutiatingly bright. Steve Hoffman told me that he took out something like 6 DB at 6K when he mastered it for a compilation he made, and I’m guessing that that’s the minimum that would need to come out. It’s made to be a hit single, and like so many hit single wannabes, it’s mixed brighter than we audiophiles might like.

Bird on a Wire

Those big drum thwacks make this song work — if you don’t have a big system, forget about ever hearing this song do what it’s supposed to.

Famous Blue Raincoat

The saxophone should sound realistic on a properly mastered version of this record: full-bodied, yet lively.

Joan of Arc

This is a good test for transparency — the clarity of the little bells and the amount of ambience surrounding the guitar are a good indication of how resolving your system is. Of course, brighter and thinner pressings will emphasize the clarity of these instruments, so it’s easy to be fooled by this sort of thing as well.

When the voices come in, they should sound tonally correct. Whatever changes you make in your stereo to hear those opening bells more clearly, just make sure that the voices still sound right when you are done.

One of the best songs on the album. It builds to a truly powerful climax.

Side Two

Ain’t No Cure for Love

This song tends to be bright and somewhat spitty.

Coming Back to You

This one too.

Song of Bernadette

One of the most emotionally powerful songs on the record.

A Singer Must Die

The multi-tracked chorus of voices should be amazing sounding if you have a good copy and a big room to play your stereo. I once heard this at a stereo store where the room was about 30 feet square with a 20 foot (!) ceiling, the speakers well out into the middle of the room. Even though the tonality was a bit wrong, each of a half or dozen or more singers clearly was occupying his or her own space. I remember it to this day; it was breathtaking.

But like most audiophile systems, it got some things right and some things ridiculously wrong. Jennifer — the person whose name is on the album — didn’t sound right. She sounded like she had a blanket over head. The owner of the audio store did not seem to be bothered by that fact, or to notice it all for that matter.

Came So Far for Beauty

Another one of the best tracks. The last three songs on this side are as good as it gets for the music of Jennifer Warnes.

Further Reading

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10cc / Deceptive Bends – Sibilance Can Be a Bitch (and a Good Test for Table Set-Up Too)

More of the Music of 10cc

A Great Record for Getting Your Turntable Setup Dialed In

On side two the tonal balance is key. If there is any boost to the top end, the vocals on track two will SPIT LIKE CRAZY.

This is also a good test for how well your cartridge and arm are doing their jobs. Sibilance is a bitch. The best pressings, with the most extension up top and the least amount of aggressive grit and grain mixed into the sound, played using the best front ends, will keep it to a minimum. VTA, tracking weight, azimuth and anti-skate adjustments are critical to reducing the spit in your records.

We discuss the sibilance problems of MoFi records all over the site. Have you ever read Word One about this problem elsewhere? Of course not. Audiophiles and audiophile reviewers just seem to put up with these problems, or ignore them, or — even worse — simply fail to recognize them at all.

Play around with your table setup for a few hours and you will no doubt be able to reduce the sibilance problems on your favorite test and demo discs. All your other records will thank you for it too. 

This record, along with the others linked below, is good for testing the following qualities.

  1. Grit and Grain
  2. Sibilance (It’s a Bitch) 

Playing so many records day in and day out means that we wear out our Dynavector 17DX cartridges often, about every three to four months.

Which requires us to regularly mount a new cartridge in our Triplanar.

Once broken in (50 hours min.), we then proceed to the fine setup work required to get it to sound its best, adjusting the VTA, azimuth and tracking weight for maximum fidelity.

For the last few years our favorite test discs for this purpose have been these three:

For the longest time our favorite test discs for this purpose have been these:

  1. Bob and Ray Throw a Stereo Spectacular,
  2. Tea for the Tillerman, and
  3. Led Zeppelin II.

Further Reading

Off the Wall Vs. Thriller – Which One Has More Tubey Magic?

More of the Music of Michael Jackson

Reviews and Commentaries for Off the Wall

ABSOLUTELY STUNNING SOUND for this White Hot Stamper pressing!

Both sides cannot be beat — both have the BIG M.J. SOUND that jumps out of the speakers and fills the room. We’ve never heard a copy that was so full of ANALOG MAGIC!

The vocals are PERFECTION — breathy, full-bodied, and present. The top end is extended and sweet, with tons of ambience the likes of which I’ve never heard before.

Normally when you have a copy with strong midrange presence it will be somewhat sibilant in places. Not so here. For some reason this copy has all the highs, but it’s cut so clean it practically doesn’t spit at all. Even on the song I Can’t Help It, which normally has a problem in that respect. Since that’s my favorite song on this album, and probably my favorite MJ song of all time, hearing it sound so good was a revelation.

Better Sound than Thriller?

Yes. As consistently brilliant as Thriller may be musically — it is the biggest selling album of all time after all — speaking strictly in terms of sonics the sound of the best copies of Off the Wall is substantially sweeter, tubier, more natural, richer, and more ANALOG than Thriller.

Thriller is clearly more aggressive and processed-sounding than Off the Wall. The Girl Is Mine or Human Nature from Thriller would fit just fine anywhere on Off the Wall, but could the same be said for Beat It or Thriller? Just thinking about them you can hear the artificiality of the sound of both those songs in your head. Think about the snare that opens Beat It. I’ve never heard a snare sound like that in my life. Practically no instrument on Off the Wall has that kind of overly processed EQ’d sound.

Choruses Are Key

The richness, sweetness and freedom from artificiality is most apparent on Off the Wall where you most always hear it on a pop record: in the biggest, loudest, densest, climactic choruses.

We set the playback volume so that the loudest parts of the record are as huge and powerful as they can possibly grow to be without crossing the line into distortion or congestion. On some records, Dark Side of the Moon comes instantly to mind, the guitar solos on Money are the loudest thing on the record. On Breakfast in America the sax toward the end of The Logical Song is the biggest and loudest element in the mix, louder even than Roger Hodgson’s near-hysterical multi-track screaming “Who I am” about three quarters of the way through the track. Those are clearly exceptions though. Usually it’s the final chorus that gets bigger and louder than anything else.

A pop song is usually structured so as to build more and more power as it works its way through its verses and choruses, past the bridge, coming back around to make one final push, releasing all its energy in the final chorus, the climax of the song. On a good recording — one with real dynamics — that part should be very loud and very powerful.

Testing Off the Wall

It’s almost always the toughest test for a pop record, and it’s the main reason we play our records loud. The copies that hold up through the final choruses of their album’s largest scaled productions are the ones that provide the biggest thrills and the most emotionally powerful musical experiences one can have. Our Top 100 is full of the kinds of records that reward that listening at loud levels.

We live for that sound here at Better Records. It’s what vintage analog pressings do so brilliantly. They do it so much better than any other medium that there is really no comparison, and certainly no substitute. If you’re on this site you probably already know that.

To bring this discussion back to the subject at hand, the loudest choruses on Off the Wall are richer, smoother, sweeter and more free of processing artifacts than those on Thriller. (more…)

Bonnie Raitt / Nick Of Time – Sibilance Is a Bitch

More of the Music of Bonnie Raitt

Reviews and Commentaries for Bonnie Raitt’s Albums

Key note for side two — listen for the sibilance on Bonnie’s voice on Too Soon to Tell.

Some copies have really gritty, spitty sibilance, while others keep the spit well under control, allowing much more of the silkiness to come out.

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Bloomfield-Kooper-Stills – Tonally Correct Vocals Are Key

More of the Music of Al Kooper

More of the Music of Michael Bloomfield

Most copies have bright, gritty, spitty, edgy, harsh, upper-midrangy vocals.

The Red Labels tend to have more problems of this kind, but plenty of original 360 pressings are gritty and bright too. Let’s face it, if the vocals are wrong, this album pretty much falls apart.

Most copies are far too bright and phony sounding to turn up loud. At higher volumes the distortion and grit are just too much.

On the better copies, the one with more correct tonality and an overall freedom from distortion, you can turn the volume up and let Super Session rock.

Man’s Temptation, track 3 on side one, has got some seriously bright EQ happening (reminiscent of the first BS&T album), so if that song even sounds tolerable in the midrange, you are doing better than expected.

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Van Halen – What to Listen For

More of the Music of Van Halen

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Van Halen

Most copies just do not have the kind of weight to the bottom and lower mids that this music needs to work. Put simply, if your Van Halen LP doesn’t rock, then what exactly is the point of playing it?

The other qualities to look for on the best pressings are, firstly, space — the best pressings are huge and three-dimensional, with large, lively, exceptionally dynamic choruses.

The copies with the most resolving power are easy to spot — they display plenty of lovely analog reverb trailing the guitars and vocals.

And lastly (although we could go on for days with this kind of stuff), listen for spit on the vocals. Even the best copies have some sibilance, but the bad copies have much too much and make the sibilance gritty to boot.

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Listening in Depth to Songs in the Attic

More of the Music of Billy Joel

More Personal Favorites

You know how you can tell when you have a Hot Stamper? It’s the side you play through to the end.

When the sound is right you want to hear more.

Since the opening track of this record is one of the keys to knowing whether it’s mastered and pressed properly, once you get past the sibilance hurdle on track one, the next step is to find out how the challenges presented by the rest of the tracks are handled.

If you are interested in digging deeper, our listening in depth commentaries have extensive track by track breakdowns for some of the better-known albums we’ve done shootouts for.

Side One

Miami 2017

This is usually the brightest cut on the first side, commonly found with some sibilance problems. On the high-res copies the sibilance is lessened, and the sound of the sibilance itself is much less transistory and spitty, with more of a silky quality, which is simply another way of saying it’s less distorted.

Of course one wouldn’t want the sibilance to be lessened by having a dull top end, but few of these pressings are dull. Most of them suffer from a brightness problem. The best copies keep the sibilance under control and balance the upper mids with extended highs. Without extension on the highs the sound will tend to be aggressive.

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