Records that Are Good for Testing Dynamics

Art Pepper – Thoughts on One of the Most Dynamic Contemporary Recordings

More of the Music of Art Pepper

A Classic Case of Audio Progress

[This commentary was written in 2008.]

Intensity is right — this is some SERIOUSLY GOOD SOUNDING alto saxophone led quartet jazz. AMG was right to give this one 4 1/2 stars — the musicianship is top notch and Pepper’s playing is INSPIRED throughout. 

The real surprise was how well recorded this album from 1963 is. I can’t recall a more DYNAMIC Contemporary. Pepper’s sax gets seriously LOUD in some passages. This is very much a good thing. Not only is he totally committed to the music, but the engineers are getting that energy onto the record so that we at home can feel the moment to moment raw power of his playing.

(Pepper was famous for saying that his playing is best when he just plays whatever he feels in the moment, and this record is the best kind of evidence for the truth of that claim.)

Of course, since this is a Roy Dunann recording, all the tubey magical richness and sweetness are here as well, but what is surprising is how transparent, spacious and clear the sound is. Some of Roy’s recordings can sound a bit dead (recording in your stockroom is not always the best for spaciousness) and sometimes are a bit thick as well. Not so here. But it should be pointed out that we liked what we heard from a previous shootout too.

Last time around we wrote:

This record has superb sound: you can actually hear the keys clacking on the man’s alto. And that sort of detail does not come at the expense of phony brightness as it would with your typical audiophile recording. The tonality of the sax, drums, and bass are right on the money, exactly the way we expect Roy DuNann’s recording to be.

This time around we got more extension out of the cymbals. Either these copies are better, were cleaned better, or were helped quite a bit by our new Townshend SuperTweeters. (Probably the last two more than the first one.) (more…)

Dire Straits – Not Bad When It’s Properly Mastered and Pressed!

More of the Music of Dire Straits

Reviews and Commentaries for Brothers in Arms

Many copies suffer from harsh, digital-sounding highs.

Pull out your old copy and listen to the beginning of side two and you’ll quickly hear what we’re on about.

Compare that to the silkier, sweeter top end on a top quality Hot Stamper and it’s unlikely you’ll find yourself going back.

Our Older Hot Stamper Commentary

Both sides of this bad boy are SUPERB. Drop the needle on So Far Away — it’s airy, open, and spacious, yet incredibly rich and full-bodied. The bottom end really delivers the goods — it’s punchy and meaty with healthy amounts of deep, tight bass.

The vocals are tonally Right On The Money — full-bodied, with breathy texture, surrounded by the lovely ambience of the studio.

The 3-D quality to the soundfield here is something that most copies simply cannot reproduce.

The overall sound is lively, dynamic, and relatively natural.

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Santana’s Guitar Solos Soar on Inner Secrets

More of the Music of Santana

Albums with Especially Dynamic Guitar Solos

On side two the final guitar solo Santana takes on Well All Right gets as loud in the mix as any guitar solo on any rock record with which I am familiar. Here are some of the other records with especially dynamic guitar solos we have auditioned to date.)

The sound gets louder after the first chorus, then louder still right before the second solo, and then the solo itself gets even louder until it seems to be as loud as live music. (Operative word: seems.)

Some copies get loud and some do not. Some stereos are dynamic and some are not.

If you have the right stereo, set at the right volume, and THIS copy, you will hear something that not one out of one hundred audiophiles (or music lovers) have ever heard on a record — LIVE ROCK SOUND.

What makes it possible to play this record so loud and still enjoy it? Simple. Just like Nirvana, when the sound is smooth and sweet, completely free of aggressive mids and highs, records get BETTER as they get LOUDER. (This of course assumes low distortion and all the rest, but the main factor is correct tonality from top to bottom, and this record has it.) 

One reason The Turn Up Your Volume Test is such a great test; the louder the problem, the harder it is to ignore.

Turn It Up

It’s a true Demo Disc in the world of rock records. It’s also one of those recordings that demands to be played LOUD. If you’ve got the the big room, big speakers, and plenty of power to drive them, you can have a LIVE ROCK AND ROLL CONCERT in your very own house. When Santana lets loose with some of those legendary monster power chords — which incidentally do get good and loud in the mix, unlike most rock records which suffer from compression and “safe” mixes — I like to say that there is no stereo system on the planet that can play loud enough for me. (Horns maybe, but I don’t like the sound of horns, so there you go.)

Jump Factor

There were about a half dozen different stampers for each side that we did the shootout with. Like other Hot Stampers you may have read about, sometimes the instruments and voices just JUMP out of the speakers. When that happens I usually write “It’s Alive!” on the post-it, and I know exactly what to do with it — it goes right in the Contender pile, to be compared with the other top contender copies. It’s definitely a crazy Hot Stamper; just how hot we still need to find out.

Which is what happens in Phase Two of these affairs. We go back through all the best copies to see in what areas they really shine and in what areas they may fall a bit short of the best.

Occasionally a record will come along that just murders what I thought was the best. That is what happened this time.

Of course there’s no way to know what accounts for any of the sound we hear. Not for sure anyway. It’s just interesting to ponder what makes one record sound one way and the next record, with stampers as little as one letter off in the alphabet — sometimes with exactly the same stampers! — sound so different from one another.

The Sound We Like

But back to Inner Secrets. I know EXACTLY the kind of sound I like on this album. When the background vocals come in, on the tubey magical copies they are wall to wall and sweet as honey, with no trace of grain or edge. Big as life too. The guitars have plenty of bite, but no matter how loud they get, they never seem to strain. The louder they get the more I like it. That’s the ticket as far as I’m concerned.

The Music

This is, IMHO, their best later album, and much better than the ones Carlos has been doing lately, which frankly suck in my opinion. Well All Right and Dealer are the two monster tracks on this one — both have some of the best rock sound I have ever heard.

Musicanship

Like Abraxas, when you play a Hot Stamper copy good and loud, you find yourself marvelling at the musicanship of the group — because the Hot Stamper pressings, communicating all the energy and clarity the recording has to offer, let you hear what a great band they were.

On badly mastered records, such as the MoFi or CBS Half-Speed of Abraxas, the music lacks the power of the real thing. I want to hear Santana ROCK. Only the best early Columbia pressings let me do that. 

TRACK LISTING

Side One

Dealer/Spanish Rose

This track is worth the price of the album. It rocks! The dueling guitars and synths are out of this world.

Move On
One Chain (Don’t Make No Prison)
Stormy

Another big hit for the band.

Side Two

Well…All Right

This track is almost worth the price of the album as well. Another big hit for the band with superb sound. Santana’s guitar work here is as good as it gets.

Open Invitation
Life Is a Lady/Holiday
The Facts of Love
Wham

Steely Dan – Donald Gets Dynamic on Rikki

More of the Music of Steely Dan

More Albums with Key Tracks for Critical Listening

This is one knockout recording.

Having done shootouts for every Steely Dan title, I can say that sonically this one has no equal in their canon. 

Which is really saying something, since Becker and Fagen are known to be audiophiles themselves and real sticklers for sound. No effort in the recording of this album was spared, that I can tell you without fear of contradiction.

They sweated the details on this one. The mix is PERFECTION. 

But you would never know it by playing the average pressing of this album, which is dull, compressed and dead as the proverbial doornail.

It’s positively criminal the way this amazingly well-recorded music sounds on the typical LP pressing. And how can you possibly be expected to appreciate the music when you can’t hear it right?

The reason we audiophiles go through the trouble of owning and tweaking our temperamental equipment is that we know how hard it is to appreciate good music when it doesn’t sounds good.

Bad sound is a barrier to understanding and enjoyment, to us audiophiles anyway.  How can you like what you can’t hear properly?

Rikki – Dead as a Doornail or Dynamic as Hell?

First, a Warmup Test

By far the biggest hit on this album and one of the biggest for the band, it’s also one of the clearest indicators of Hot Stamper Sound. The Horace Silver inspired intro is at its best when you can easily hear the acoustic guitar in the left channel doubling the piano. On most copies it’s blurry and dull, which causes it to get lost in the mix. Transparent copies pull it out in the open where it belongs.

Now On to the Real Test

That’s the first test, but the real test for this track is how well the (surprisingly) DYNAMIC chorus is handled. On a properly mastered and pressed copy, Fagen’s singing in the chorus is powerful and very present. He is RIGHT THERE, full of energy and drive, challenging the rest of the band to keep up with him. And they do! The best copies demonstrate what a lively group of musicians he has backing him on this track. (If you know anything about Steely Dan’s recordings, you know the guys in these sessions are the best of the best.)

Check out the big floor tom that gets smacked right before the first chorus. On the best copies the whomp factor is off the scale.

DOA Is Par for the Course

Shocking as it may seem, most copies of this album are DOA on this track. They’re severely compressed — they never come to life, they never get LOUD. The result? Fagen and the band sound bored. And that feeling is contagious.

Of course, most audiophiles have no idea how dynamic this recording is because they’ve never heard a good pressing. Only a handful of the copies we played had truly powerful dynamics.

These are Pretzel Logics with far more life than I ever dreamed possible.