Difficult to Reproduce Recordings

Listening in Depth to Heart Like a Wheel

More of the Music of Linda Ronstadt

Reviews and Commentaries for the Recordings of Linda Ronstadt

Presenting another entry in our extensive Listening in Depth series with advice on precisely what to listen for as you critically evaluate your copy of Heart Like a Wheel.

A key test on either side was to listen to all the multi-tracked guitars and see how easy it was to separate each of them out in the mix. Most of the time they are just one big jangly blur. The best copies let you hear how many guitars there are and what each of them is doing.

Pay special attention to Andrew Gold’s Abbey Road-ish guitars heard throughout the album. He is all over this record, playing piano, guitar, drums and singing in the background.

If anybody deserves credit besides Linda for the success of HLAW, it’s Andrew Gold.

Our In-Depth Track Commentary

Side One

You’re No Good

Right from the git-go, if the opening drum and bass intro on this one doesn’t get your foot tapping, something definitely ain’t right. Check to make sure your stereo is working up to par with a record you know well. If it is, your copy of HLAW belongs on the reject pile along with the other 90% of the copies ever pressed.

It Doesn’t Matter Anymore

Amazing acoustic guitars! Lots of tubey magic for a mid-’70s pop album. And just listen to the breathy quality of Linda’s voice. She’s swimming in echo, but it’s a good kind of echo. Being able to hear so much of it tells you that your pressing is one of the few with tremendous transparency and high resolution.

Faithless Love

Another superb arrangement with excellent sound. The banjo that opens this track is key — the picking should have a very strong plucky quality, with lovely trailing harmonics, even some fret buzz.

So many copies are veiled or blunted sounding; this clearly demonstrates a lack of transient information.

The copies without the trailing harmonics lack resolution.

Once you hear either of these problems on the banjo, you can be sure to find them on the voices and guitars throughout the side.

That the Cisco pressing doesn’t do a very good job reproducing the banjo should be clear for all to hear. If you want the sound of the real thing, only the best Capitol pressings are going to be able to give it to you.

The Dark End of the Street

We love the meaty, dark and distorted guitars at the opening of this one — really sets the tone.

Side Two

When Will I Be Loved?

This presumptive Hit Single has lots of multi-tracked instruments crammed into its mix, a mix which is ready for radio and plenty processed and compressed to suit the Top 40 format. What that means for us audiophiles is not that the sound will be bad, rather that it will have a set of sonic characteristics common to most of the original pressings: a little grit, yes, that is to be expected, but what one hears more often than not is a murky, dark, muddy quality to the midrange.

It’s the rare copy that presents a breathy, present, clear Linda Ronstadt on this track. Which is why it’s a great test track for midrange presence. If this track sounds right you can be pretty sure that everything that follows will too (up to a point, naturally).

Willin’
I Can’t Help It (If I’m Still in Love With You)

This track has the lovely and talented Emmylou Harris on harmony vocal. Between her and Linda cthere is a great deal of midrange and upper midrange energy on this track which will tend to strain on most copies.

Is that strain the result of bad mastering? Bad pressing quality? Bad vinyl? Some combination of all three? No one can say, and what difference does it make anyway? The proof of the pudding is in the eating. The proof of a good sounding side two is right there on track three. If there’s anything unnatural in the midrange, this song will not be a pleasant listening experience for you, dear reader.

Keep Me from Blowing Away

Linda’s voice here is sweet as honey. On the best copies this one should sound transparent and quite natural. Linda excels at this kind of song, but she stopped doing material like this soon after this album came out. That’s about the time I lost interest in her.

You Can Close Your Eyes

This is one of my all time favorite James Taylor songs. Linda does a lovely version of it here; a superb arrangement with sound to match. What a great ending for the album, with her old buddies The Eagles backing her up. It really takes you out on a high note.

Click on this link to the Classic Tracks entry for the album to read about it in real depth.

This record is good for testing a number of very important aspects of the sound of the copies we play in our shootouts.  The links below will take you to other records that are good for testing these qualities, or lack thereof, as the case may be.

More Records that Are Good for Testing Grit and Grain 

More Records that Are Good for Testing Midrange Presence 

More Records that Are Good for Testing Tubey Magical Acoustic Guitars

(more…)

Jefferson Airplane – Surrealistic Pillow

More of the Music of the Jefferson Airplane

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of the Jefferson Airplane

  • With excellent Double Plus (A++) grades on both sides, we guarantee you’ve never heard the band’s sophomore release sound this good
  • Check out the breathy vocals on “Today” — now THAT is what we call the magic of vintage analog
  • It’s the rare copy of this ’60s Psych Classic that has this kind of freedom from grit and distortion – it’s also swimming in Tubey Magic, the glorious sound of vintage analog vinyl, found on the real thing and, let’s be honest, nowhere else
  • An incredibly difficult album to find with audiophile sound, but this pressing has the goods and is guaranteed to beat – and by a large margin – whatever you throw at it
  • 5 stars: “Every song is a perfectly cut diamond … a groundbreaking piece of folk-rock-based psychedelia that hit — literally — like a shot heard round the world…”
  • The DCC is a hopeless disaster – after fighting its way through Kevin Gray’s transistory, opaque, airless, low-resolution cutting system, whatever was good about the recording was lost
  • If I had compile a list of my Favorite Rock and Pop Albums from 1967, this album would definitely be on it

Three Qualities Are Key 

The best copies of Surrealistic Pillow have three things in common.

  1. Low Distortion,
  2. Driving Rock and Roll Energy and
  3. Plenty of Tubey Magical Richness.

It’s the exceedingly rare copy that has all three. The more of each of these qualities any given pressing has, the higher the sonic grades we typically award it.

In order to find these three qualities, you had better be using the real master tape for starters. At this point, we only buy the Black Label Original RCA pressings, preferably in stereo but occasionally in mono when they’re clean enough to take a chance on, although we think the mono pressings are not competitive with the best of the stereo LPs.

Next, you need a pressing with actual extension up top, to keep the midrange from getting congested and harsh.

Richness, Tubey Magic, weight, and warmth — the other end of the spectrum — are every bit as important, if not more so.

Add freedom from compression — the dynamic, lively sound that’s practically impossible to find on any modern reissue — and you should have yourself a very enjoyable, hopefully not-too-noisy LP to throw on the table and enjoy whenever you like, for years to come.

We know that the best pressings of this groundbreaking album, when played back on modern, high quality equipment, are every bit the thrill you remember — if you were around at the time like I was — from more than fifty years ago.

(more…)

The Pareto Effect in Audio – The 80/20 Rule Is Real

More Entries in Our Critical Thinking Series

Ambrosia’s first album does exactly what a Test Disc should do. It shows you what’s wrong, and once you’ve fixed it, it shows you that it’s now right.

We audiophiles need records like this. They make us better listeners, and they force us to become better audio tweakers. Because the amount of tweaking you do with your setup, components, room, electricity and the like is the only thing that can take you to the highest levels of audio.

The unfortunate reality audiophiles must eventually come to grips with in their journey to higher quality sound is that you cannot buy equipment that will get you there.

You can only teach yourself, painstakingly, over the course of many, many years, how to tweak your equipment — regardless of cost or quality — to get to the highest levels of audio fidelity.

And tweaking and tuning your equipment has other, fundamentally more important benefits in addition to its original purpose: making your stereo sound better.

At most 20% of the sound of your stereo is what you bought.

At least 80% is what you’ve done with it.

Based on my experience I would put the number closer to 90%.

This is known as the Pareto Principle

The Pareto Principle, also known as the 80/20 Rule, The Law of the Vital Few and The Principle of Factor Sparsity, illustrates that 80% of effects arise from 20% of the causes – or in laymens terms – 20% of your actions/activities will account for 80% of your results/outcomes.

The Pareto Principle gets its name from the Italian-born economist Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923), who observed that a relative few people held the majority of the wealth (20%) – back in 1895. Pareto developed logarithmic mathematical models to describe this non-uniform distribution of wealth and the mathematician M.O. Lorenz developed graphs to illustrate it.

Dr. Joseph Juran was the first to point out that what Pareto and others had observed was a “universal” principle—one that applied in an astounding variety of situations, not just economic activity, and appeared to hold without exception in problems of quality.

In the early 1950s, Juran noted the “universal” phenomenon that he has called the Pareto Principle: that in any group of factors contributing to a common effect, a relative few account for the bulk of the effect.

Further Reading

When it comes to Hot Stampers, maybe money can buy you happiness

But it ain’t a cheap hobby and never will be

New to the Blog? Start Here

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Ambrosia

My Stereo (and Thoughts on Equipment)

Even shootouts won’t teach you what you can learn from variations in your table setup

Reviews and Commentaries for Court and Spark

Hot Stamper Pressings of Court and Spark Available Now

There are loud vocal choruses on many tracks, and more often than not at their loudest they sound like they are either breaking up or threatening to do so. I always assumed it was compressor or board overload, which is easily heard on Down to You.

On the best copies there is no breakup — the voices get loud and stay clean throughout.

This assumes that your equipment is up to the job. The loudest choruses are a tough test for any system.

Setup Advice

If you have one of our hottest Hot Stampers, try adjusting your setup – VTA, Tracking Weight, Azimuth, Anti-Skate  –Especially! Audiophiles often overlook this one, at their peril — and note how cleanly the loudest passages play using various combinations of settings.

Keep a yellow pad handy and write everything down step by step as you make your changes, along with what differences you hear in the sound.

You will learn more about sound from this exercise than you can from practically any other. Even shootouts won’t teach you what you can learn from variations in your table setup.

And once you have your setup dialed in better, you will find that your shootouts go a lot smoother than they used to.

(more…)

The Doors / The Soft Parade – Back After a Two Year Hiatus

More of the Music of The Doors

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of The Doors

  • The sound is incredibly powerful from start to finish – big, rich, full-bodied, present and lively – thanks Bruce Botnick, where would The Doors be without you?
  • Full of great songs: Touch Me, Runnin’ Blue, Wild Child, Wishful Sinful and the amazingly trippy Soft Parade extended suite (with Triple Plus sound no less)
  • “Much like a true “parade” of an English fugue, the song morphs from Morrison’s a capella sermon-like intro to a Baroque ballad to a show tune-like section to the long rock outro, the music masterfully following the flowing, stream of consciousness lyric.” Hell yeah!
  • We’ve written extensively about The Soft Parade, and you can find quite a number of Letters and Commentaries for the album on this blog.
  • It’s my favorite by the group and one that was instrumental in helping me progress in this exasperating hobby we have chosen for ourselves.

Vintage covers for this album are hard to find in clean shape. Most of them will have at least some ringwear, seam wear and edge wear. Some will have cut corners. We guarantee that the cover we supply with this Hot Stamper is at least VG, and it will probably be VG+. If you are picky about your covers please let us know in advance so that we can be sure we have a nice enough cover for you.

This Doors pressing (either on the Elektra Gold or Big Red E Label, nothing else would qualify as a Hot Stamper) has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records rarely reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing any sign of coming back.

Having done this for so long, we understand and appreciate that rich, full, solid, Tubey Magical sound is key to the presentation of this music. We rate these qualities higher than others we might be listening for (e.g., bass definition, soundstage, depth, etc.).

Hot Stamper sound is rarely about the details of a given recording. In the case of this album, a Hot Stamper must succeed at recreating a solid, palpable, rich JIM MORRISON singing live in your listening room. The better copies have an uncanny way of doing just that.

If you exclusively play modern repressings of vintage recordings, I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it — not often, and certainly not always — but less than one out of 100 new records do, if our experience with the hundreds we’ve played over the years can serve as a guide. (more…)

Bernstein – The Music of Leonard Bernstein / Rogers

More music written or performed by Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990)

More Orchestral Spectaculars

  • A STUNNING pressing with Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it throughout – a true Orchestral Demo Disc from 1970
  • As I write this, dollar for dollar this is probably the best sound for the money on the site
  • The Symphonic Dances from “West Side Story” sound superb here – big, rich and Tubey Magical
  • The performances are superb – energetic as befits most of the music, yet lyrical when the score calls for it
  • Vibrant orchestrations, top quality sound and fairly quiet surfaces combine for an astounding listening experience
  • Big speakers and loud levels are the sine qua non for the proper reproduction of this album
  • We’ve identified a number of Orchestral Demo Discs of superior quality, and they can be found here

This London Phase 4 British import has some of the most spectacular sound we have ever heard reproduced from disc. The sound is so BIG and BOLD that it handily puts to shame 95% or more of all the Golden Age Shaded Dogs, London Bluebacks, Mercury Living Presences, EMIs and Deccas we’ve ever played. If we had a Classical Top 100 list, this record would belong in the Top Ten, right near the top judging by what we heard when we played it.

If you have a system with the speed, power, and size to play this record properly (yes, you will need all three and a whole lot more), it’s hard to imagine it would not qualify as the best-sounding orchestral recording you’ve ever heard.

Demo Disc barely begins to do it justice. What sound. What music. What a record!

Side two is where the some of the best orchestral action can be found, and it is presented here with spectacular audio fidelity the likes of which you may have never experienced.

(more…)

Copland / Billy the Kid / Gould – Our Shootout Winner from 2011

Living Stereo Titles Available Now

200+ Reviews of Living Stereo Records

Super Hot Stamper sound on BOTH sides, with side one so energetic and exciting it would easily qualify as a Demo Disc. This title is almost impossible to find in anything but beat up condition. Records like these got played over and over and few survived the ten grams of stylus pressure and mis-aligned cartridges of the day.  

The Big Sound

Side one is a bit recessed sounding at the beginning but it soon comes to life.

The drums and snares are HUGE in this recording, way at the back of the hall where they belong.

Here are some other orchestral recordings that are good for testing the sound of the snare drum.

The sound just jumps out of the speakers — believe me, not many Living Stereo pressings from 1958 can do that.

If you like your exciting music to have exciting sound, this pressing will do the trick.

A++ is our grade. The loudest massed string passages can be a bit much, but they are tolerable. Many pressings of this album that we’ve played in the past have pretty much been unlistenable.

Rodeo

So dynamic! — you better have your stereo working at the top of its game or this side is going to be hard to sit through. The close-miked xylophone will give your arm and cart a real workout. If you have precise control over your setup, this may be a good record to fine tune it with. VTA is of course ultra-critical on vintage classical albums such as this.

The quieter passages fare best, showing off the Living Stereo tubey magic to full advantage.

Hoe-Down sounds like it may be slightly worn; either that or its got some compressor distortion problems.

With Big Bold sound such as this the engineers had to walk a very fine line in order to balance the dynamic power of the music without letting the quietest passages disappear. (Nowadays loud orchestral music is either dynamic and shrill or compressed to death.)

(more…)

Linda Ronstadt – Heart Like A Wheel

More Linda Ronstadt

More Women Who Rock

  • With two outstanding sides, this vintage Capital pressing was giving us the sound we were looking for on Linda Ronstadt’s Best Album
  • “You’re No Good” was the hit but “It Doesn’t Matter Anymore,” “Faithless Love” and “The Dark End of the Street” are every bit as good – and that’s just side one!
  • A Must Own Classic, the best album Ms Ronstadt ever made, and a True Country Rock Masterpiece practically without peer
  • 5 stars: “What really makes HLAW a breakthrough is the inventive arrangements that producer Peter Asher, Ronstadt, and the studio musicians have developed. …[they] help turn Heart Like a Wheel into a veritable catalog of Californian soft rock, and it stands as a landmark of ’70s mainstream pop/rock.”
  • If you’re a Country Rock fan, then Linda’s Masterpiece from 1974 belongs in your collection.
  • The complete list of titles from 1974 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here.

I’ve been playing HLAW since the year it came out, roughly 48 years by my calculation, and I can tell you it is no easy task to find this kind of smooth, sweet, analog sound on the album. Folks, we heard it for ourselves: the Heart Like A Wheel magic is here on practically every song.

Pay special attention to Andrew Gold‘s Abbey Road-ish guitars heard throughout the album. He is all over this record, playing piano, guitar, percussion and singing in the background. If anybody deserves credit besides Linda for the success of HLAW, it’s Andrew Gold.

A key test on either side was to listen to all the multi-tracked guitars and see how easy it was to separate each of them out in the mix. Most of the time they are just one big jangly blur. The best copies let you hear how many guitars there are and what each of them is doing.

(more…)

Peter Gabriel / Security

More Peter Gabriel

More Art Rock Records

  • One of the most important records in the Peter Gabriel canon, original and influential on so many levels
  • With the benefit of today’s technology, on a copy this good you hear into the soundfield in a way never possible before, picking out all the drummers and counting all the layers of multi-tracked choruses
  • “Security remains a powerful listen, one of the better records in Gabriel’s catalog, proving that he is becoming a master of tone, style, and substance…”
  • If you’re a Peter Gabriel fan, and what audiophile wouldn’t be?, this title from 1982 is surely a Must Own
  • The complete list of titles from 1982 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here.
  • 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. Security is a good example of a record most audiophiles don’t know well but should.

Man, does this album sound better than I remember it from back in the ’80s when I first played it. Stereos have come a long way since then, along with a host of other things that help records sound better, such as cleaning fluids, room treatments and all the rest.

Now you can really hear INTO the soundfield in a way that simply was never possible before, picking out all the drummers and counting all the layers of PG’s multi-tracked choruses.

On the best pressings, both sides are huge, and the music jumps out of the speakers. The balance is perfection. (more…)

The Rolling Stones – Emotional Rescue

More Rolling Stones

  • Boasting solid Double Plus (A++) grades throughout, this superb pressing is guaranteed to blow the doors off any other Emotional Rescue you’ve heard – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • “Dance (Pt. 1)” and “She’s So Cold” sound great on this copy, and the title track, “Emotional Rescue,” is every bit as good
  • An underrated Stones album – too good to call a guilty pleasure – and very well-recorded by Chris Kimsey
  • Maybe it’s good because “Mick Jagger sounds like he’s having a great time…” – Eric Klinger, PopMatters.com

(more…)