Testing Midrange Congestion

The records listed here are often congested in the midrange, making them a good test for both the system and how good the pressing you own may be.

Listening in Depth to Retrospective

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Buffalo Springfield Available Now

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

Here are some albums on our site you can buy with similar track by track breakdowns.

Extracting all the midrange magic from a legendary album and Desert Island Disc like this should be the goal of every right-thinking audiophile.

Who cares what’s on the TAS Super Disc List? I want to play the music that I love, not because it sounds good, but because I love it.

And if the only way to find good-sounding clean copies of typically poorly-mastered, beat-to-death records like this is to go through a big pile of them, well then, I guess that’s what we will have to do.

We’ve never heard a copy of this album that truly qualifies as a Demo Disc, but some of the songs can sound superb — Kind Woman and I Am A Child come immediately to mind. The recording, like so many from the ’60s, may not be perfect, but it’s so full of midrange magic, ambience and sweetness that the musical values of the recording are communicated effortlessly and completely — assuming you have a good copy.

Side One

For What It’s Worth

Almost all copies have surface noise issues at the start of this song.

Mr. Soul

The aggressive quality of the screaming crowd at the beginning of this track is a dead giveaway of the poor sound found on most pressings. When the screaming is clean, undistorted and extends well up high, you have a contender. Add bass, some tubey magic to the midrange, and then you can call it a Hot Stamper.

How hot is another question entirely, but if you get this far, you are definitely in the majors. The typical pressing of this album is strictly bush league.

Sit Down, I Think I Love You

On the best copies the tape hiss is clearly audible and tonally correct; this is the first thing you will notice if you have a Hot Stamper.

The second thing is how much the guitars “ring.”

On the higher rez copies the guitars have some of the loveliest tone you can find on any Springfield album.

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Autoamerican (and Lots of Other Records) Need Their Space, Man

More of the Music of Blondie

More Records that Are Good for Testing Ambience, Size and Space

The Space in the Middle

Allow us to present a key finding we discovered while playing so many of these LPs. I’m sure you’ve noticed this effect on some of your favorite recordings as well. In this case it’s the one quality that allowed some copies to soar while others were left grounded.

About halfway through the session I noticed that the copies with the most top end extension and the deepest bass had another quality which was even more involving: they left more SPACE in the middle for every other element of the mix to occupy.

There was no CROWDING in other words. This may be the result of less compression in the mastering phase; compression tends to richen up the sound, but it has an unfortunate tendency to jam it all together in the middle as well.

Or it just may be higher resolution, so that the space around all the elements is clearly reproduced.

Or it may be equalization, so that the higher parts of the bass stay down and the lower parts of the highs stay up, keeping both from seeping into the midrange.

Who knows what it is? One thing I can tell you is this: it sure is easy to HEAR it. Big as life, with spaciousness and three-dimensionality to beat the band, the sound on this “open middle” copy simply was in a league of its own.

Perhaps you know that sound from your own favorite recordings. It’s the kind of thing that turns a good pop album into a Demo Disc. (more…)

Listening in Depth to Waiting For The Sun

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Doors Available Now

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

Here are some albums on our site you can buy with similar track by track breakdowns. 

My favorite of the first three Doors album, this one is imbued with more mystery and lyricism than previous efforts. The album shows them maturing as a band, having smoked large amounts of pot and preparing themselves for the wild ride of their next opus, the ambitious Soft Parade.

Actually, as I listen to this album it reminds me more and more of that one. Now that it sounds as good as The Soft Parade, I find I’ve gained a new respect for Waiting for the Sun.

Side One

Hello, I Love You
Love Street
Not To Touch The Earth

Listen to the hard rockin’ duel between the keyboards (left channel) and the guitar (right channel) in the middle of the song. Morrison is screaming is head off and Densmore is really slamming the drums. There’s a HUGE amount of information in the grooves there, and only the best copies will be open and spacious enough to not get a bit congested.

Summer’s Almost Gone

On a Hot Stamper pressing, this song is Tubey Magical analog at its best — warm, sweet, rich, and full-bodied.

Wintertime Love
The Unknown Soldier

Side Two

Spanish Caravan
My Wild Love
We Could Be So Good Together

This song is a bit midrangy on every last copy we’ve played. On a Hot Stamper copy, it can still sound quite wonderful, just a little boosted in the midrange.

Yes, The River Knows

This song is the best test for transparency and bass definition on side two. You should be able to hear the bassist really pulling on the strings and sliding his fingers up and down the fretboard.

Five to One

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The Pretenders – Learning To Crawl

More of The Pretenders

More Women Who Rock

  • A superb pressing of the band’s third studio album with Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) sound from start to finish – just shy of our Shootout Winner – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • It takes years to get a shootout for this album going – three to five is my best guess, so get while the gettin’s good if you’re a fan of the most muscular rock album this band ever recorded
  • Both sides of this (very specific and hard to find) import pressing were richer, clearer and more energetic than virtually any of the others we played
  • With Robbie McIntosh having joined the band, this is first and foremost a guitar rock record – his brilliant, jangly, grungy riffs drive every song
  • 5 stars: “Three albums into her recording career, Chrissie Hynde found herself having to put the past to bed and carve out a new beginning for herself with Learning to Crawl, but she pulled it off with a striking mixture of courage, strength, and great rock & roll; with the exception of the instant-classic debut album, it’s the Pretenders’ finest work.”

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What to Listen For on Born In The U.S.A.

More Born in the U.S.A.

More Bruce Springsteen

Not many copies have this kind of full, solid lower midrange. When you hear the album this way, without the edgy, thin sound that plagues most pressings, it really works wonders for the music. The vocals and instruments are more real, and the improved low end lets the whole thing rock.

This copy has the kind of sound we look for in a top quality ’80s Rock record: immediacy in the vocals (so many copies are veiled and distant); natural tonal balance (most copies are at least slightly brighter or darker than ideal; ones with the right balance are the exception, not the rule); good solid weight (so the bass sounds full and powerful); spaciousness (the best copies have wonderful studio ambience and space); and last but not least, transparency, the quality of being able to see into the studio, where there is plenty of musical information to be revealed in this sophisticated recording.

Tchaikovsky / Piano Concerto No. 1 – Our First Shootout Winner – 2008

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Tchaikovsky Available Now

This fairly quiet Large Tulips early DG pressing in the heavy cardboard outer sleeve has THE BEST SOUND we have ever heard for this recording! Believe me, they don’t all sound like this! This copy is airy and sweet; just listen to the flutes — you can really hear the air moving through them. There is still some congestion in the loudest passages, but that’s unfortunately not something we can do anything about. Since it’s on every copy we’ve ever played we just have to assume it’s part of the recording.

Of the twenty or so clean copies we’ve auditioned over the last year or two, this one is clearly in a league of its own, with a price to match.

THE Tchaikovsky First

Since this is the best performance of the Tchaikovsky First Piano Concerto of all time, the minor shortcomings in the sound are easy to overlook. The piano sounds solid and full bodied. I don’t know of another performance of this work that gets the sound of the piano better. You can really hear the percussive quality of the instrument. It’s amazing how many piano recordings have poorly mic’ed pianos. They’re either too distant, lack proper reproduction of the lower registers, or somehow smear the pounding of the keys into a blurry mess. The piano sound is what first impressed me when a friend of mine brought the record over for me to hear. Of course I bought it on the spot.

And the texture of the strings is out of this world — you won’t find a DG that gets with better string tone, and 99% of them are worse. This record does not sound like your typical DG: hard, shrill, and sour. DG made good records in the ’50s and ’60s and then proceeded to fall apart, like most labels did. This is one of their finest recordings. It proves that at one time they knew what they were doing.

This recording really only has one shortcoming, which is that in some sections, when it gets loud, it tends to be a bit congested. Other places are very dynamic. I’m guessing somebody dialed in too much compression in those spots, but who’s to say?

[Not sure we would agree with that in 2024. The best copies are not congested when cleaned and played back properly.]

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Richness Or Transparency – On Why Can’t We Be Friends You Need Both

More of the Music of War

Below we discuss two qualities essential to the sound of War’s Masterpiece of jazzy soul, Why Can’t We Be Friends? 

As usually happens in these shootouts we learned that there’s so much more to this album than just big bass. What really makes this music come alive on the best copies was the result of two qualities we found were in fairly short supply: richness and transparency 

When the vocals sound thin and pinched as they do on so many copies of this album, possibly the result of the grainy crap vinyl UA is infamous for, that sour sound takes all the fun out of the music. Many tracks have group vocals and choruses, and the best copies make all the guys sound like they are standing in a big room, shoulder to shoulder, belting it out live and in living color.

These are not classically trained singers. These are guys who love their music, who make up in enthusiasm what they lack in polish. I say more power to them. Smoke ’em if you got ’em and turn it up!

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 start to take on a lean or gritty quality, the party’s over.

Seriously; this album has a party atmosphere; it’s overflowing with fun energy. If you can’t play it loud enough to rock because the sound is fighting you with every click of the volume knob, what is the point of playing it all? (more…)

Blondie – Autoamerican

More Blondie

DEMO DISC SOUND on this A+++ Hot Stamper Side One! This is one KILLER New Wave Pop Record. All the Blondie magic you could ever want is in these grooves! The truly POWERFUL sound of this Power Pop Band really comes through on this Bad Boy, or should we say Bad Girl? Whatever. This was the Hands Down Hot Stamper Winner of our latest shootout. Man, we had a ball with this one.

To be fair, consistency is the problem with this album, with some songs being absolute Pop Masterpieces (The Tide Is High on side one, Rapture on side two), but other tracks falling short of the standard set by Parallel Lines, where every track bar none was a gem of songcraft and High Gloss Pure Pop Production.

Still, what’s good is good, and the sound is STUNNING, with real Demo Disc qualities. The Right Pressing of the Right Stamper.

As expected, if you clean and play enough copies of a standard domestic major label album like this one, sooner or later you will stumble upon The One, and boy did we ever. One of our copies was OFF THE CHARTS with presence, breathy vocals, and punchy drums. It was positively swimming in studio ambience, with every instrument occupying its own space in the mix and surrounded by air. There was not a trace of grain, just the silky sweet highs we’ve come to expect from analog done right.

This is of course the premise behind Hot Stampers themselves. They are out there to be stumbled upon. You can’t tell what pressing from what era from what country is going to be The One (Keanu, are you listening?) until you actually sit down, clean and play a big pile of them. We found a source for this title sealed and managed to pick up over a dozen new copies, and those, along with some other used ones we had laying around, comprised our data pool. (more…)

Pieces Of Eight – What to Listen For

More of the Music of Styx

More Records with Specific Advice on What to Listen For

Number one: Too many instruments and voices jammed into too little space in the upper midrange.

When the tonality is shifted-up, even slightly, or there is too much compression, there will be too many elements — voices, guitars, drums — vying for space in the upper part of the midrange, causing congestion and a loss of clarity. This is especially noticeable on songs with loud choruses.

With the more solid sounding copies, the lower mids are full and rich; above them, the next “level up” so to speak, there’s plenty of space in which to fit all the instruments and voices comfortably, not piling them one on top of another as is often the case. Consequently, the upper midrange area does not get overloaded and overwhelmed with musical information.

Number Two: edgy vocals, which is related to Number One above. Most copies have at least some edge to the vocals — the boys want to really belt it out in the choruses, and they do — but the best copies keep the edge under control, without sounding compressed, dark, dull or smeary.

The highest quality equipment, on the hottest Hot Stamper copies, will play the loudest and most difficult to reproduce passages with virtually no edge, grit or grain, even at very loud levels

Tracks two and three on side one were our favorite test tracks. Plat track three to hear how correct, smooth and sweet the midrange is.

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Counting Down to Ecstasy and Singing Along with My Old School

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Steely Dan Available Now

We’ve found that two songs are especially helpful in challenging your setup and playback: Razor Boy on side one, and My Old School on side two.

Countdown to Ecstasy shares top honors with Katy Lied as the toughest Steely Dan album to reproduce properly.

It’s a positive shame that most copies are such sonic let-downs. They’re often congested, bass-shy, veiled, compressed and grainy. There’s a good reason we don’t do this album but once a year [make that once every two years these days], and it’s not because of a lack of demand. It’s because so many copies are mastered and pressed so poorly.

What to Listen For

Side One: Piano and Vibes

On Razor Boy listen especially to how clear and solid the piano and vibes are underneath the vocals. On the best copies their contributions are easy to follow and really provide support in the lower registers for the vocals above them. If your copy they’re a murky mess don’t be surprised; that’s pretty much the way they sound on most copies. (They’re a good test for the quality of your reproduction from the mid-bass up through the lower midrange.)

Side Two: the Chorus

The female background singers who make up the chorus on My Old School sound different on every copy you play. When they sound right you’ll know it immediately. The copies with clarity and energy always seem to also have a wonderful “sing along” quality that lets the music really come to life. We didn’t hear it happen too often but when it does it’s a THRILL, one you can buy.

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