Demo Discs – Rock, etc.

Here you will find about 150 rock, pop and soul recordings that sound absolutely amazing on big speakers at loud levels.

On a dynamic, powerful system in a big room, the best pressings of these recordings are Demo Discs guaranteed to beat any other version you’ve heard, or your money back.

The Who – Quadrophenia

More of The Who

  • Quadrophenia is back! These early British pressings boast stunning Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) sound or close to it on all FOUR sides, just shy of our Shootout Winner – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • It’s been over a year since we last had a copy play this quietly, and it didn’t sound as good as this one
  • If you want to hear this music explode out of the speakers and come to life the way The Who wanted you to hear it, these records will do the trick
  • The sound here is so big, rich, and powerful it will surely make you rethink the recording itself
  • The sound here is so big, rich, and powerful it will surely make you rethink the recording itself
  • We know about quite a few records that rock this hard
  • We seek them out, and we know how to get them to sound their best
  • 5 stars: “Some of Townshend’s most direct, heartfelt writing is contained here, and production-wise it’s a tour de force, with some of the most imaginative use of synthesizers on a rock record.”
  • If you’re a fan of The Who, or Classic Rock in general, this title is clearly a Must Own from 1973

We removed this title from our Top 100 list a while back because it has become too difficult to get hold of clean UK copies. Who’s Next is even more difficult, but for some reason we left that one on the list, go figure. (It is the better album, their Masterpiece, in fact.)

The other Who album that still makes the cut and always will is Tommy. That is one amazing sounding record, when you find a good one on the UK Track label. (Nothing else can touch it, of course, but if you don’t want to pay the big bucks we charge, find one of these for cheap.)

On the best copies, the energy factor is OFF THE CHARTS. The highs are silky sweet, the bottom end is meaty, the drums are punchy and the vocals are present and tonally correct. The piano has real weight, the synths float breathily in the air, and there’s wonderful three-dimensional depth to the soundfield.

There’s a POWER to the sound that the average copy only hints at. The crashing guitar chords that are the hallmark of The Who often lack the weight of the real thing; they don’t punch you in the gut the way Townsend no doubt wanted them to.

Moon’s drums need to blast away like cannons. This is the quintessential Who sound. Everybody who’s ever seen them live knows it. I saw them back in the day when Moon was still behind his kit and it’s a sound I’ll never forget.

Most copies don’t have nearly this much Tubey Magic — you aren’t going to believe all the richness, sweetness, and warmth here. The clarity and transparency are superb in their own right, and the impressive dynamic range really allows this copy to communicate the explosive energy of The Who at their peak.

As with any Who album, this is obviously not your typical Audiophile Demo Disc. We don’t imagine you’ll be enjoying this one with wine, cigars, and polite conversation. This one is for turning up loud and rockin’ out — in other words, it’s our kind of record!

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Supertramp – Even In The Quietest Moments (Domestic)

More of the Music of Supertramp

  • Boasting two seriously good Double Plus (A++) sides, we guarantee you’ve never heard Supertramp’s 1977 release sound this good – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • On side two, the recording quality of the solo piano at the start of the second track is nothing short of breathtaking
  • No piano on any Supertramp album sounds more powerful, more real or more present than the one on “From Now On”
  • The bottom end is big and punchy, the top is smooth and sweet, and the vocals are present and breathy
  • On a transparent copy such as this, the drums really punch through the dense mixes clearly, giving the music more life and energy
  • “…it’s a transitional album, bridging the gap between Crime of the Century and the forthcoming Breakfast in America… [it] has plenty of fine moments aside from ‘Give A Little Bit,’ including the music hall shuffle of ‘Loverboy,’ the Euro-artiness of ‘From Now On,’ and the ‘Fool on a Hill’ allusions on ‘Fool’s Overture.'”
  • If you’re a Supertramp fan like me, this art rock classic from 1977 belongs in your collection.

What To Listen For

The piano on “Give A Little Bit” can get buried in the dense mix. Side ones that are rich and tubey and smooth with a clear piano did very well in our shootout.

“Lover Boy” is a Demo Quality Track on the better copies. It can be huge, spacious and lively. Getting the strings to sound harmonically rich without sliding into shrillness may not be easy but some copies manage it. On the biggest, richest copies the breakdown at about 2:20 is a lot of fun.

On side two, the recording quality of the solo piano at the start of the second track is nothing short of breathtaking. No piano on any Supertramp album sounds as good.

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Spirit’s Psych Rock Masterpiece (The First of Two)

More Psychedelic Rock

  • Wall to wall, with layered studio depth like you will not believe, the kind of space you hear on an engineering classic like Dark Side of the Moon
  • 4 1/2 stars on Allmusic, but in our estimation it deserves five – it’s simply one of the All Time Greats from the era
  • We’ve recently compiled a list of records we think every audiophile should get to know better, along the lines of “the 1001 records you need to hear before you die,” with an accent on the joy these amazing audiophile-quality recordings can bring to your life. Spirit’s First Album is a good example of a record many audiophiles may not know well but would be well advised to get to know better.
  • If I were to make a list of my favorite Rock and Pop albums from 1968, this album would definitely be on it, close to the top I should think.

Need a refresher course in Tubey Magic after playing too many modern recordings or remasterings? These Ode pressings are overflowing with it. Rich, smooth, sweet, full of ambience, dead-on correct tonality — everything that we listen for in a great record is here.

No recordings will ever be made that sound like this again, and no CD will ever capture what is in the grooves of this record. There is of course a CD of this album, quite a few I would guess, but those of us with a good turntable could care less. (more…)

Led Zeppelin / Self-Titled

More Led Zeppelin

  • A truly excellent import of Zep’s amazing debut with outstanding sound from first note to last
  • Arguably the biggest, clearest and most Tubey Magical Zeppelin album ever recorded, thanks to the engineering genius of Glyn Johns (and production genius of Jimmy Page, who paid for the whole thing out of his own pocket)
  • Just look at the track list – the lucky owner of this LP will be hearing those songs come to life like never before
  • The band’s first album is a permanent member of our Top 100 and a Big Speaker Demo Disc like you will not believe
  • 5 stars: “Taking the heavy, distorted electric blues of Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, and Cream to an extreme… But the key to the group’s attack was subtlety: it wasn’t just an onslaught of guitar noise, it was shaded and textured, filled with alternating dynamics and tempos.”

For the real Led Zep magic, you just can’t do much better than their debut — and here’s a copy that really shows you why. From the opening chords of “Good Times Bad Times” to the wild ending of “How Many More Times” (“times” start the album and end it, too, it seems) this copy will have you rockin’ out!

Both sides have the BIG ZEP SOUND. Right from the start we noticed how clean the cymbals sounded and how well-defined the bass was, after hearing way too many copies with smeared cymbals and blubbery bass.

When you have a tight, punchy copy like this one, “Good Times Bad Times” does what it is supposed to do — it really rock! With this much life, it’s lightyears ahead of the typically dull, dead, boring copy. The drum sound is perfection.

Drop the needle on “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You” to hear how amazing Robert Plant’s voice sounds. It’s breathy and full-bodied with in-the-room presence. The overall sound is warm, rich, sweet, and very analog, with tons of energy. “Dazed and Confused” sounds just right — you’re gonna flip out over all the ambience!

“Communication Breakdown” sounds superb — the sound of Jimmy Page’s guitar during the solo is shockingly good.

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The Beatles – Abbey Road

More of the Music of The Beatles

  • This vintage UK copy of The Beatles’ last and arguably greatest album boasts two seriously good sides – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Quiet vinyl is rarely in the cards for Abbey Road, but here it is, and on a great sounding copy too
  • The stereo to play The Beatles magnum opus didn’t exist when the record was made, but it does now
  • If you’ve heard the disastrous new Half-Speed mastered remix LP, or the remastered Heavy Vinyl from a few years back, then you surely know that nothing comes close to a real, vintage, analog Abbey Road
  • This pressing might just give you a new appreciation for one of the Greatest Rock Albums of All Time
  • 5 stars, a permanent member of the Top 100, and a true rock and pop Demo Disc
  • If you’re a fan of big drums in a big room, with jump out of the speakers sound, this is the album for you.

Abbey Road Magic

Those of you who follow the site (or do your own shootouts) know that it’s much tougher to find great copies of Abbey Road than it is for MMT or Please Please Me. Most of the copies we’ve played just aren’t good enough to put on the site. For whatever reasons — probably because this recording is so complicated and required so many tracks — Abbey Road is one of the tougher nuts to crack in the Beatles’ catalog.

We’re wild about this album, and here’s a copy that will show you exactly why. Both sides are big, rich, sweet and present with lots of energy, wonderfully breathy vocals, and huge dynamic guitars. You don’t hear too many copies with a massive bottom end like this bad boy. A copy with this kind of transparency really allows you to hear INTO the soundfield and appreciate every last detail — quite a privilege for the lucky person who takes this one home.

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.

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Little Feat – Waiting For Columbus

More Little Feat

  • A vintage copy of Waiting For Columbus with seriously good Double Plus (A++) grades or close to them on all FOUR sides – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Some of the best sounding live rock and roll sound you will ever hear outside of a concert venue (particularly on sides one, two, and four)
  • If you want to understand the unique appeal of the band, there’s no better place to start than right here
  • One of our all-time favorite live recordings and their single best release – a true Masterpiece
  • 4 1/2 stars: “There’s much to savor on Waiting For Columbus, one of the great live albums of its era, thanks to rich performances that prove Little Feat were one of the great live bands of their time.”
  • We’ve recently compiled a list of records we think every audiophile should get to know better, along the lines of “the 1001 records you need to hear before you die,” but with less of an accent on morbidity and more on the joy these amazing audiophile-quality recordings can bring to your life. Waiting for Columbus is a good example of a record many audiophiles may not know well but should.

This is an amazingly well-recorded concert, and what’s more, the versions the band does of their earlier material are much better than the studio album versions of those same songs in every case.

Fat Man In A Bathtub on this album is out of this world, but you could easily say that about a dozen or more of the tracks on this double album. Which simply means that you will have a very hard time listening to any of the studio versions of these songs once you’ve heard them performed with the kind of energy, enthusiasm and technical virtuosity Little Feat brought to this live show. (I saw them twice with Lowell and they were amazing both times.)

This is some of the best sounding live rock and roll sound you will ever hear outside of a concert venue. In fact, on a great copy, it’s just about as good as live rock’n’roll sound gets.

Here is a link to take you to more letters, commentaries and reviews for Waiting for Columbus.

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Emerson, Lake and Palmer – Pictures at an Exhibition

More Emerson, Lake and Palmer

  • An original UK Island pressing of this ELP Classic live album with a STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side two mated to a seriously good Double Plus (A++) side one
  • Both of these sides are amazingly Tubey Magical and exceptionally spacious, with a massive bottom end and plenty of Rock and Roll (and classical) energy
  • Pictures at an Exhibition is yet another in the long list of recordings that really comes alive when you turn up your volume
  • “…it worked on several levels that allowed widely divergent audiences to embrace it — with the added stimulus of certain controlled substances, it teased the brain with its mix of melody and heavy rock, and for anyone with some musical knowledge, serious or casual, it was a sufficiently bold use of Mussorgsky’s original to stimulate hours of delightful listening.”

This British Island LP has real weight and heft, so when Emerson lays into the organ, it’ll rattle the walls. It has that big, fat, rich, smooth sound that we love here at Better Records. It’s warm and full, not thick and sludgy. It’s on the right end of the “tubey-transistory” spectrum.

Listen to how GIGANTIC the organ is that plays the fanfare opening of the work. Honestly, I have never heard a rock album with an organ sound that stretched from wall to wall like this one does. It sounds like it must be seventy five feet tall, too.

No, I take that back. The first ELP album has an organ that sounds about that big, but that’s a studio album. How did they manage to get that kind of organ sound in a live setting without actually having to build one inside the concert hall?

The domestic copies are a bad joke as you may have guessed.

You might think that you could just pick up any old Brit pressing to get this kind of sound, but that has not been our experience. Many of them are thick, dull, smeary, veiled, congested and/or just plain lifeless.

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Cat Stevens – Mona Bone Jakon

More of the Music of Cat Stevens

  • Incredible sound throughout this UK Island pressing of Cat Stevens’s brilliant third album, with both sides earning Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them
  • So transparent, open, and spacious, nuances and subtleties that escaped you before are now front and center
  • When you play “I Wish, I Wish” and “I Think I See The Light” on this vintage pressing, we think you will agree with us that this is one of the greatest Folk Rock albums of them all
  • One of the most underrated titles on the site – you owe it to yourself to see just how good the album that came out right before Tillerman can be when it sounds this good
  • 4 stars: “A delight, and because it never achieved the Top 40 radio ubiquity of later albums, it sounds fresh and distinct.”

So many copies excel in some areas but fall flat in others. This side one has it ALL going on — all the Tubey Magic, all the energy, all the presence and so on. The sound is high-rez yet so natural, free from the phony hi-fi-ish quality that you hear on many pressings, especially the reissues on the second label.

Right off the bat, I want to say this is a work of GENIUS. Cat Stevens made three records that belong in the Pantheon of greatest popular recordings of all time. In the world of Folk Pop, Mona Bone Jakon, Teaser and the Firecat and Tea for the Tillerman have few peers. There may be other Folk Pop recordings that are as good but we know of none that are better.

Mike Bobak was the engineer for these sessions from 1970. He is the man responsible for some of the best sounding records from the early ’70s: The Faces’ Long Player, Rod Stewart’s Never a Dull Moment, The Kinks’ Lola Versus Powerman And The Moneygoround, Part One, (and lots of other Kinks albums), Carly Simon’s Anticipation and more than his share of obscure English bands (of which there seems to be a practically endless supply).

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

Roxy Music / Self-Titled

More of the Music of Roxy Music

  • This vintage UK pressing of Roxy’s amazing debut LP (one of only a handful of copies to hit the site in twenty-two months) boasts KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them throughout – this is some of the most dynamic sound the band achieved
  • Andy Hendriksen’s engineering (over the course of a week!) is superb in all respects – we think the best pressings of this first album reveal a recording that is superior to any other by the band
  • A Top 100 album, Roxy’s masterpiece, and a Must Own desert island disc of glamorous Arty Rock
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Falling halfway between musical primitivism and art rock ambition, Roxy Music’s eponymous debut remains a startling redefinition of rock’s boundaries. Simultaneously embracing kitschy glamour and avant-pop, Roxy Music shimmers with seductive style and pulsates with disturbing synthetic textures.”
  • When it comes to rock and pop music in 1972, our picks for the best of the best, numbering at the moment a mere 21 titles, can be found here
  • This link will take you to the Hot Stamper pressings of our hardest rockin’ albums currently available
  • Here are the titles that have earned a place on our none rocks harder list

Folks, this is a true Demo Disc in the world of Art Rock. It’s rare to find a recording of popular music with dynamics like these. The guitar solo at the end of “Ladytron” rocks like you will not believe.

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10cc – The Original Soundtrack

More 10cc

  • With two seriously good Double Plus (A++) or BETTER sides, you’ll have a hard time finding a copy that sounds remotely as good as this vintage UK import
  • Superb clarity and energy, solid down low, silky up top, and as huge as any recording you’ve ever heard
  • A Top 100 Album and a real sonic blockbuster on a copy that sounds as good as this one does
  • “Musically there’s more going on than in ten Yes albums, yet it’s generally as accessible as a straight pop band… 10cc is among the few groups actively engaged in stretching rock’s restrictive boundaries in a constructive and meaningful manner, without falling prey to pretense or excess.” – Rolling Stone

The recording itself is a Tour De Force, one reason I’ve been demonstrating my stereo with it for more than thirty years. The extended suite that opens side one, One Night in Paris, has ambience, sound effects, and incredibly dynamic multi-tracked vocals at its climax that will make your jaw drop.

Reinventing The Wall of Sound The Right Way

This is the kind of record that makes you sit up and take notice. It’s classic 10cc everything-but-the-kitchen-sink “Wall of Sound” sound (minus the Phil Spector distortion), the kind big speaker guys like me live for.

Supertramp; Yes; Ambrosia; Blood, Sweat and Tears; Zeppelin; Bowie — to this day I’m a sucker for the Cinerama soundstage these musicians liked to play on. It’s one of the reasons I was the proud owner of the Legacy Whisper speaker system for close to ten years, with its eight fifteen inch woofer complement. You need that kind of piston power to produce The Really Big Sound with Super Low Distortion at Really High Levels. The louder the better.

We now have a pair of highly modified Focuses set up in our listening room. Three twelves per channel moves a fair amount of air too, and can do it with much less power, so that the system has much more resolving power than the Whispers could manage.

We’re CRAZY About This Album

This was my first 10cc album, and I fell in love with it completely. Used to play it all the time. “Une Nuit a Paris,” the suite that opens side one, is just an phenomenal Demo Quality track. As you may have read elsewhere on the site, it’s the kind of sound that a big powerful stereo reproduces well. Even back in 1975 I had speakers nearly as tall as I was that weighed 300 pounds apiece (the famous Fulton J!), so playing a record like this was just a thrill.

It still is. I still love it. And I recommend it highly to those of you who are fans of the band. If you don’t know who 10cc are, this album and this band may not make much sense to you, but if you have an open mind and like Art Rock from the 70s, you may end up falling for it the way I did all those years ago.

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