*Key Tracks

Records with Key Tracks for Critical Listening

Listening in Depth to Abbey Road

More of the Music of The Beatles

Reviews and Commentaries for Abbey Road

Presenting another entry in our extensive listening in depth series with advice on what to listen for as you critically evaluate your copy of Abbey Road.

Here are some albums currently on our site with similar track by track breakdowns.

For all you record collectors out there, please note that no pressing from 1969 has ever won a shootout. If you have an Apple UK first pressing, we would love to send you one that sounds better than yours, if you can justify the kind of bread we charge for the privilege of owning a masterpiece of music such as this.

This is the final statement from The Beatles. To take away the power of their magnum opus by playing it through inadequate equipment makes a mockery of the monumental effort that went into it. Remember, the original title for the album was Everest. That should tell you something about the size and scope of the music and sound that the Beatles had in mind.

Obsessed? You Better Believe It

Abbey Road is yet another record we admit to being obsessed with.

Currently we have identified about 150 that fit that description, so if you have some spare time, check them out.

Side One

Come Together

This track and I Want You are both good tests for side one. They tend to be smooth, but what separates the best copies is deep, punchy bass. Without a good solid bottom end, these songs simply don’t work.

Something

When the choruses get loud on this song, most copies will be aggressive. You’ll want to turn down the volume. With Hot Stampers, the louder the better. The sound stays smooth and sweet.

Maxwell’s Silver Hammer

Probably the toughest test on side one. The loud banging on the anvil can be pretty unpleasant if you don’t have a well-mastered pressing.

Also, this track has a tendency to be a bit lean and upper midrangey on even the best copies.

Oh! Darling
Octopus’s Garden
I Want You (She’s So Heavy)

Listen to Paul’s bass on this track. When you have a good copy and the bass notes are clearly defined, you can hear him doing all kinds of interesting things throughout the song. I remember playing the MoFi not long ago and noticing how that pressing’s lack of bass definition robbed Paul of his contribution to so many of these songs. When the bass is blubbery, it’s difficult to follow his parts.

Side Two

Here Comes the Sun
Because

The best pressings are full of TUBEY MAGIC here — sweet and smooth, but still present and clear. There should be no trace of grain or spi on their voices if you have a good copy. This is DEMO DISC MATERIAL. If you have the system for it, you can show people the sound of the Beatles in a way few have ever heard.

You Never Give Me Your Money
Sun King
Mean Mr. Mustard

One of the toughest tests for side two, along the lines of Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.

Polythene Pam
She Came in Through the Bathroom Window
Golden Slumbers

I’ve come to realize that this is a Key Track for side two, because what it shows you is whether the midrange of your pressing — or your system — is correct.

At the beginning Paul’s voice is naked, front and center, before the strings come in. Most Mobile Fidelity pressings, as good as they may be in other areas, are not tonally correct in the middle of the midrange.

The middle of the voice is a little sucked out and the top of the voice is a little boosted.

It’s really hard to notice this fact unless one plays a good British pressing side by side with the MoFi.

Then the typical MoFi EQ anomaly becomes obvious. It may add some texture to the strings, but the song is not about the strings.

Having heard a number of audiophile systems (especially recently) that have trouble getting this part of the spectrum right, it would not be surprising that many of you do not find the typical MoFi objectionable, and may even prefer it to the good British copies. The point I’m belaboring here is that when it’s right, it’s RIGHT and everything else becomes more obviously wrong, even if only slightly wrong.

The Heart of the Midrange

For a while in my record reviewing system many years ago I had a relatively cheap Grado moving magnet cartridge. The midrange of that cartridge is still some of the best midrange reproduction I have ever heard. It was completely free of any “audiophile” sound. It was real in a way that took me by surprise. I played Abbey Road with that cartridge in the system and heard The Beatles sound EXACTLY the way I wanted them to sound.

Exactly the way I think they SHOULD sound, in my mind’s ear. Playing the very same record on much more expensive front ends, with much more expensive moving coils, was disappointing at that time. It’s easy to lose sight of the heart of the music when the equipment dazzles us by doing so many other things well.

Good moving coils are amazingly spacious, refined, sweet, extended, three-dimensional and all that other good stuff.

But they don’t always get the heart of the music right. And it’s good to hear something that may be more crude but at the same time more correct in order to bring our listening journey back to a truer course.

Alternative Sound

I think that people who listen to CDs exclusively — One Format listeners as I like to call them — suffer greatly from a lack of an alternative or comparison sound. It’s easy to get used to the “CD sound” and forget that all that digital garbage doesn’t really belong in music. Records have their own problems, but their problems don’t give me a headache the way the problems of CDs do.

Carry That Weight
The End
Her Majesty

Listening in Depth to Off The Wall

More of the Music of Michael Jackson

Reviews and Commentaries for Off the Wall

On the better copies the multi-tracked chorus and background vocals are as breathy, rich, sweet and Tubey Magical as any pop recording we know of.

An extended top end opens up the space for the huge, dense production to occupy.

There is Midrange Magic To Die For, exceeding anything to be found on Thriller.

Side One

Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough

The first single from the album was designed to go to Number One and it certainly met all expectations in that regard.

On the properly mastered and pressed copies the vocals and percussion will be a bit brighter than those on most of the tracks that follow. The percussion is often somewhat brittle on even the best copies; it’s surely on the tape that way.

It should be big, clear and lively right out of the gate.

 Rock With You

The balancing act to the first track, Rock With You has some of the richest, smoothest, sweetest, most ANALOG sound on the entire album. There is no track on Thriller that sounds as Tubey Magical, assuming you have a top quality pressing.

As is always the case with rich and smooth sound, transparency is key. The sound should not be thick and dark, it should be both rich and clear.

Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough gets hot in the higher frequencies with the volume cranked. Rock With You is just the opposite; the louder you play it the better — the more right — it sounds from top to bottom.

Working Day and Night
Get on the Floor

Side Two

Off the Wall

On the better copies the multi-tracked chorus and background vocals are as breathy, rich, sweet and Tubey Magical as any pop recording we know of. An extended top end opens up the space for the huge, dense production to occupy. There is Midrange Magic To Die For exceeding anything to be found on Thriller.

The top end at the start of a side is sometimes lacking so pay attention to see if more top end can be heard later on in the song.

Watch for smear on the horns. They are rich and smooth and on some copies their transient bite will get blurry.

Girlfriend

Girlfriend can achieve the status of a top Demo track on the better copies, no question about it. Turn it up to hear some of the biggest, tightest, most note-like bass on the album. The best copies pull off that monstrous bottom end without bloat, while maintaining some of the loveliest, most tubey rich mids on the album.

On the better copies the stage is wide and the vocals as breathy as on any track on the album. Potentially the Demo Disc track of side two.

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Led Zeppelin IV – The First Two Tracks on Side One Are Key

More of the Music of Led Zeppelin

Letters and Commentaries for Led Zeppelin IV

We always have a great time doing Zep IV shootouts. It’s one of those all-too-rare cases where amazing music and amazing sonics potentially coexist on the same slab of vinyl. You just need to find the right slab and be able to clean it right, a proposition that turns out to be much harder than it might at first sound.

You probably know by now just how tough it is to find audiophile quality sonics on this album. Far too many copies just leave us cold. However, the best pressings, whether British or domestic, are so good, and so much fun at the loud volumes we play them at, that in the end it turns out to be worth all the time, trouble and expense it has taken to find them.

For the simple reason that the best copies ROCK, and it is a positive THRILL to hear this record rock the way it was meant to.

If you have big speakers and the power to drive them, it’s quite possible that your neighbors are going to be very upset with you next time you play the album.

Side One

Black Dog

The key to both of the first two tracks is to find a copy with a solid bottom end. Next look for an extended top end, easily heard on all the splashing cymbals.

Now listen for a tonally correct Robert Plant.

The copies with lots of top will typically have him sounding too bright. The copies with little in the way of high frequency extension will have him sounding veiled and dull.

One out of ten copies (with potentially good stampers) will get all three right: the top, the bottom and his voice. When you hear it you know it immediately, but you sure do have to go through a lot of copies before you have much of a chance of hearing it.

Rock and Roll

“[Rock and Roll] was a little tough to record because with the hi-hat being so open and [Bonham] hitting it that hard it was difficult to control. But I managed somehow or another.”

Andy Johns

“The best copies prove once and for all that these are some of most up-front, lively and above all real sounding rock cymbals ever put on tape.”

Tom Port

Further Reading

Listening in Depth to Stand Up

More of the Music of Jethro Tull

More Reviews and Commentaries for Stand Up

Presenting another entry in our extensive Listening in Depth series with advice on what to listen for as you critically evaluate your copy of Stand Up.

Here are some albums currently on the site with similar track by track breakdowns.

If British Blues Rock is your thing, then Stand Up is definitely a record that belongs in your collection.

Tubey Magical acoustic guitar reproduction is superb on the better copies of this recording. Simply phenomenal amounts of Tubey Magic can be heard on every strum, along with richness, body and harmonic coherency that have all but disappeared from modern recordings (and especially from modern remasterings).

To prove our point, Analogue Productions hired Kevin Gray to cut this dismal version of the album on vinyl. I hope Chad didn’t pay him too much, because he didn’t get a whole lot for his money, although I’m sure he thinks he did. Like many audiophiles, he blindly puts his faith in so-called experts, and can’t recognize shoddy work when he hears it.

And if you think the original Pink Label Island pressing is going to be the way to go for top quality sound, good luck with that approach. That kind of thinking guarantees you’ll fail before you’ve even begun.

When it comes to classic albums, plenty of reissues have sound that is superior to the originals, and this is one of them.

Side One

A New Day Yesterday

one of my favorite Jethro Tull songs of all time. (This and To Cry You a Song from Benefit are pretty darn hard to beat.) Clive Bunker’s drumming is incredibly energetic; it drives the song to levels few bands could ever hope to reach. It reminds me of the kind of all-out ASSAULT on the skins you hear in the work of Dave Grohl and John Bonham. Bunker is a highly underrated player; his bandmates Barre and Cornick don’t get the respect they deserve either, for reasons that I’ll never understand. They’re about as good as it gets in my book.

Jeffrey Goes to Leicester Square
Bourée
Back to the Family
Look Into the Sun

Another favorite track.

Side Two

Nothing Is Easy

Watch your volume on this track! It starts out quietly, but it gets VERY loud toward the end. If you’ve set your volume properly for side one, don’t change it for side two.

Fat Man

Amazingly spacious, transparent and open on the best pressings.

We Used to Know

I love the way this song starts out quietly and builds to a tremendous crescendo of sound. Dynamics like these are rarely found on pop records.

Reasons for Waiting

On copies of this record that lack bass, this song will have NO bass.

For a Thousand Mothers

In General

It’s very common for pressings of Stand Up to lack bass or highs, and more often than not both are lacking. The bass-shy ones tend to be more transparent and open sounding — of course, that’s the sound you get when you take out the bass. (90 plus percent of all the audiophile stereos I’ve ever heard were bass shy, no doubt for precisely that very reason: less bass equals more detail, more openness and more transparency. Go to any stereo store or audiophile show and notice how bright the sound is. Another good reason not to go to those shows, and we rarely do.)

Just what good is a British Classic Rock Record that lacks bass? It won’t rock, and if it don’t rock, who needs it? You might as well be playing the CD.

The copies that lack extreme highs are often dull and thick, and usually have a smeary, blurry quality to their sound. When you can’t hear into the music, the music itself quickly becomes boring.

If I had to choose, I would take a copy that’s a little dull on top as long as it still had a meaty, powerful, full-bodied sound over something that’s thin and leaned out. There are many audiophiles who can put up with that sound — I might go so far as to say the majority can — but I am not one of them.

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Listening in Depth to A New World Record – ELO’s Masterpiece

More of the Music of The Electric Light Orchestra

More Albums with Key Tracks for Critical Listening

As a result of Jeff Lynne’s everything-but-the-kitchen-sink production approach, it will be the rare copy that provides enough transparency and resolution to bring out all the elements in these incredibly dense mixes, strings included.

But when you find a copy that does, what a THRILL it is. This is the band’s MASTERPIECE in my humble opinion. For audiophiles ELO on LP doesn’t get any better.

Side One

Tightrope

Both sides start off with a uptempo rocker, and this side’s is Tightrope.

Watch your string tone. If it’s shrill or grainy you are going to find yourself in trouble on practically every song on A New World Record — they all have strings and lots of them.

You need richness in the lower mids, harmonic extension up top, and just plain highly resolving sound if the strings are going to sound right in the mix.

Note that sometimes the highs get better on a record as it plays. Check to see if you don’t have more top end by the second track, or even halfway through this one. Happens to us all the time.

Telephone Line

My single favorite ELO song of all time. Full of emotion and beautifully produced. Lynne is the master of this kind of material.

Allmusic raves: “Telephone Line might be the best Lennon-McCartney collaboration that never was, lyrical and soaring in a way that manages to echo elements of Revolver and the Beatles without ever mimicking them.”

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Listening in Depth to Please Please Me

More of the Music of The Beatles

More Reviews and Commentaries for Please Please Me

The Beatles’ first album is nothing short of amazing. It’s clearly the best recording of their first five releases.

Naturally, it’s a founding member of our Top 100 Rock and Pop List, along with five other Beatles classics: Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt. Pepper, Magical Mystery Tour and Abbey Road.

Please Please Me (in awesome twin-track stereo no less) captures more of the live sound of these four guys playing together as a rock and roll band than any record they ever made again. (Let It Be gets some of that live quality too and makes a great bookend for the group.)

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 that have gone through a number of shootouts.

For most of the major titles by The Beatles, scores of shootouts have been done, with our earliest efforts stretching all the way back to 2005.

Side One

I Saw Her Standing There

Like any of the boys’ most radio ready singles, this song tends to be a bit bright. If this track sounds at all dull, there’s probably no hope for the rest of this side.

Misery

This track should sound lively and punchy. The best copies have excellent bass definition and superb clarity, allowing you to appreciate how the wonderful bounce of the rhythm section really energizes the song.

Anna (Go to Him)

Does it get any better? This is the real Beatles magic baby!

Chains

Note that the vocals on this track are not as well recorded as they are on the track above. As a rule they’re a bit edgier and not as transparent.

Go back and forth between the two songs a number of times and we think you will hear exactly what we mean. Although this difference is more audible on the better copies, it should still be noticeable on any Hot Stamper pressing.

Side Two

P.S. I Love You

Another track with a bit of that “mixed for radio” sound. On most pressings this song tends to be bright, thin, and grainy.

Baby It’s You

Listen carefully to the middle eight section — you can hear the rhythm track levels turned down at the first bar and then back up at the last.

Some of the most Tubey Magical sound on the album — we love this song!

This is the real Beatles All-Tube-Recording-Chain Magic, Parts Three through Seven. Every track from here on out is killer.

Do You Want to Know a Secret

Even richer and more Tubey Magical. How can it be this good!?

If you know someone who doesn’t understand why anyone in his right mind would still bother with a turntable and old records in this day and age, play these songs for him. No CD can begin to do what a good pressing of this album can do.

A Taste of Honey
There’s a Place
Twist and Shout

Further Reading

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Listening in Depth to Aja

More of the Music of Steely Dan

Reviews and Commentaries for Aja

More Albums with Key Tracks for Critical Listening

Generally, what you try to get on side one is a copy with ambience, because most copies are flat, lifeless and dry as a bone.

You want a copy with good punchy bass — many are lean, and the first two tracks simply don’t work at all without good bass. And then you want a copy that has a natural top end, where the cymbals ring sweetly and Wayne Shorter’s saxophone isn’t hard or honky or dull, which it often is on the bad domestic copies.

The truly amazing side twos — and they are pretty darn rare — have an extended top end and breathy vocals on the first track, Peg, a track that is dull on nine out of ten copies. (The ridiculously bright MoFi actually kind of works on Peg because of the fact that the mix is somewhat lacking in top end. This is faint praise though: MoFi managed to fix that problem and ruin practically everything else on the album.) If you play Peg against the tracks that follow it on side two most of the time the highs come back. On the best of the best, the highs are there all the way through.

Side One

Black Cow

Fagen’s voice on the first line will always sound grainy – it’s that way on the CD and every LP I have ever played, which means it’s on the tape that way. It will quickly pass, and the rest of the vocals will sound amazing if you have a Hot Stamper Copy.

This song is as BIG and BOLD sounding as any pop song I know. This is Demo Disc material if you have the system to do it justice.

And don’t you just love the way it starts on the upbeat? Now that’s the way to kick off an album!

Aja

Got a big speaker? Lots of power? You will need both to play this song right. Note how the percussion comes through the dense mix, without being abrasive in any way. That’s a sure sign that you have a copy with the transparency and resolution you need to bring out the track’s best qualities. The mix needs that percussion; it’s there for a reason. You, dear audiophile, need an LP that lets that percussion be heard. Many are called; few are chosen.

Deacon Blues

It’s the rare copy that gets the top end for the first two tracks right and still has enough presence and top end for this song, which will tend to sound dull even if the first two tracks don’t. The truly killer pressings get all three tracks to sound amazing, no mean feat.

Side Two

Hey, Watch Your Levels

For some mysterious reason, side two is almost always cut at a lower level than side one. Pump up the volume a db or two in order to get the full Aja effect for the songs on this side.

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Cat Stevens – These Two Tracks Are Key

More of the Music of Cat Stevens

More Reviews and Commentaries for Teaser and the Firecat

Just ran across the following in an old listing. We’re nothing if not consistent here at Better Records!

“And if you are ever tempted to pick up one of those recently remastered versions on heavy vinyl, don’t do it. There is simply no one alive today making records that sound like these good originals. Not to these ears anyway. We may choose to indulge ourselves in the audacity of hope, but reality has to set in sooner or later. After thirty years of trying, the modern mastering engineers of the world have nothing to show for their efforts but a ever-growing pile of failures. The time to call it quits has come and gone. Let’s face facts: when it comes to Teaser and the Firecat, it’s the Real Thing or nothing.”

If you’re looking for an amazing Demo Quality Rock Recording, you’ve come to the right place.

If you want a timeless Classic Rock Record, it’s here too.

They just don’t know how to make them like this anymore. Those of you waiting for audiophile vinyl reissues with the kind of magic found on these originals will be in your graves long before it ever comes to pass.

Analogue Productions tried and failed — more than once — to produce a good sounding Heavy Vinyl pressing of Tea for the Tillerman.

You can be sure of one thing: there is little chance they would have better luck with Teaser and the Firecat.

Changes IV 

On this song there is a tremendous amount of energy in the grooves. On a copy I had a while back it sounded good to start with, but an intense cleaning regimen made it sound so alive I could hardly believe my ears. Listen to it VERY LOUD (as it was meant to be played) and then notice how quiet the next solo guitar intro is, with lots of space between the notes. Never heard it like that before. That’s when audio is FUN.

It’s always a roller coaster ride around here, as one day the system is cooking, and the next it ain’t, and nobody knows why. But the night that Teaser sounded great is one I will remember for a long time. Those big bass drum thwacks and that high hat being slapped to the point of abuse way out in front of the mix just blew my mind.

Tuesday’s Dead

There is a good-sized group of singers behind Cat Stevens that back him up when he says “whoa” right before the line “Where do you go?”. What often separates the best copies from the also-rans is how clearly those singers can be heard, assuming the tonal balance is correct and there’s plenty of energy in the performances.

The most transparent copies make it easy to appreciate the enthusiasm of the individual singers; they’re practically shouting.

For twenty years Tuesday’s Dead has been one of my favorite tracks for demonstrating what The Big Speaker Sound is all about. Now I think I better understand why. Big speakers are the only way to reproduce the physical size and tremendous energy of the congas (and other drums of course) that play such a big part in driving the rhythmic energy of the song.

In my experience no six inch woofer — or seven, or eight, or ten even — gets the sound of the conga right, from bottom to top, drum to skin. No screen can do it either. It’s simply a sound that large dynamic drivers reproduce well and other speaker designs do not reproduce so well.

Since this is one of my favorite records of all time, a true Desert Island Disc, I would never want to be without a pair of big speakers to play it, because those are the kinds of speakers that play it well.

Further Reading

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The Insufficiently Dedicated Will Struggle Mightily with The Fantasy Film World of Bernard Herrmann

TAS List Records Available Now

Reviews and Commentaries for TAS Super Disc Recordings

An orchestral dreadnought such as this requires mastering and pressing of the highest quality.

Herrmann’s music taxes the limits of LP playback itself, with deep organ notes (listen for the famous Decca rumble accompanying the organ if you have the deep bass reproduction to hear it); incredible dynamics from every area of the stage; masses of strings playing at the top of their registers with abandon; huge drums; powerful brass effects everywhere — every sound an orchestra can produce is found on this record, and then some.

You will hear plenty of sounds that defy description, that’s for sure. Some of the time I can’t even imagine what instrument could possibly make such a sound!

TRACK LISTING

Side One

Journey to the Center of the Earth

All those lovely harps! You can practically feel the cool air of the cave as you descend into the blackness.

The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad

Side one boasts some wonderful material from Jason and the Argonauts, including the fight with the skeletons that we all remember from our Saturday matinee movie days. Who else could have orchestrated such a film?

Side Two

The Day the Earth Stood Still

Astonishingly powerful deep bass and drum sounds!

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Listening in Depth to The Best of Earth Wind & Fire

More of the Music of Earth, Wind and Fire

More Recordings Engineered by George Massenburg

Not many compilation albums offer top quality sound, but this one does, and here are some of the others we’ve discovered.

The best pressings sound amazing, with big-as-life Demo Disc Quality sound. Lucky for us, EWF was always an audiophile-oriented band. They produced some of the best ’70s multi-track recordings around. With a big speaker system turned up good and loud, the first track is simply mind-boggling. It’s some of the best sound we have heard around here in weeks, and we play a lot of good sounding records.

When the vocals are thin and pinched, as they often are, the edge and overall harshness take all the fun out of the music. Every track has group vocals and choruses, and the best copies make all the singers sound like they are standing in a big room, shoulder to shoulder, belting it out live and in living color.

The good copies capture that energy and bring it into the mix with the full-bodied sound it no doubt had live in the studio. When the EQ or the vinyl goes awry and their voices (and brass) start to take on a lean or gritty quality, the party’s over.

But the richness and fullness must be balanced with TRANSPARENCY. Of course this has to be a multi-miked, multi-tracked, overdubbed pop record — they don’t make them any other way — but it doesn’t have to FEEL like one.

When you get a good copy it feels like all these guys are live in the studio. You see them clearly. They may have their own mics, and are certainly being placed artificially in the soundfield to suit the needs of the track (kick drum here, hand-claps over there), but the transparency of the killer pressings makes them sound like they are all in the same big room playing together.

TRACK LISTING

Side One

Got to Get You into My Life 

On the best pressings of this album, the groove is so heavy and lively in this song that the typical copy sounds just plain cheap. It may be an original but the sound is pure bargain-bin reissue.

Fantasy
Can’t Hide Love 

This is our favorite EW&F song here at Better Records, a beautiful ballad that is truly a perfect representation of the band’s capability to change pace from blowing doors down to tugging heart-strings. They do both as well as any soul band ever could. This song is a MASTERPIECE.

Love Music
Getaway

Side Two

That’s the Way of the World
September 

EW&F’s biggest hit, but only the best pressings brought out the magic in the powerful horns and layered vocals without being smeary or spitty. Our best copies soared higher than we had ever heard for this song; the sound just leapt out of the speakers. What a great track.

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