Records that Are Good for Testing High Frequency Extension

Oscar Peterson’s Best Recording? Sure Sounds Like It to Us

More of the Music of Oscar Peterson

More Jazz Recordings Featuring the Piano

I’ve known this was a well-recorded album since I first heard the DCC Gold CD back in the 90s, which is excellent by the way.

If you happen to own the DCC vinyl pressing, buy the CD and find out for yourself if it doesn’t have better sound. The DCC vinyl will most likely be thick, opaque, airless and tonally too smooth. That is the sound they tended to go for back in those days, and at the time I too bought into that mastering approach. I clearly had a lot to learn. Over the course of the next decade I learned how foolish I had been to fall for that kind of euphonic EQ.

Back to the Gold CD

It sounded great to me at the time, although I had nothing to compare it to. I was not an Oscar Peterson fan in those days. The CD may be very good, but it is unlikely to hold a candle to any of our Hot Stamper vinyl pressings.

I now realize that this album is clearly one of the best jazz piano recordings we’ve ever played. In its own way it’s every bit as good as the other landmark recording we talk so much about, The Three, from 1975.

This album checks off a number of important boxes for us here at Better Records:

The description for the amazing copy we found in our shootout more than a decade ago has been reproduced below.

The Right Sound from the Get Go

Side one starts out with a solid, full-bodied piano and snare drum, a sure sign of great sound to come. This side was richer and fuller than all the other copies we played. That rich tonality is key to getting the music to work. It keeps all the instrumental elements in balance. The natural top on this side is just more evidence that the mastering and pressing are top drawer. Great space and immediacy, powerful driving energy — this side could not be beat.

And side two was every bit as good! The sound was jumpin’ out of the speakers. There was not a trace of smear on the piano, which is unusual in our experience, although no one ever seems to talk about smeary pianos in the audiophile world (except for us of course).

Ray Brown’s bass is huge, probably bigger than it would be in real life, but I can live with that. Once again, with this kind of extended top end, the space of the studio and harmonics of the instruments are reproduced brilliantly.

Testing with Oscar

Lately we have been writing quite a bit about how good pianos are for testing your system, room, tweaks, electricity and all the rest, not to mention turntable setup and adjustment.

Other records that we have found to be good for testing and improving your playback can be found here.

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Dick Schory – Listen for a Sweetly Extended Top End

Percussion Recordings with Hot Stampers Available Now

Living Stereo Titles Available Now

What to listen for you ask? Top end, plain and simple. It’s the RARE copy that really has the incredible extension of the side two we heard recently. The space, the clarity, the harmonic complexity — perhaps one out of ten copies will show you a side two like that.

The highs are so good on this record you can use it as a setup tool. Adjust your VTA, tracking weight and the like for the most natural and clear top end, then check for all the other qualities you want to hear. You may just find yourself operating on a higher sonic plane than you ever thought possible.

Harry Pearson put this record on his TAS List of Super Discs, and rightfully so. It certainly can be a Super Disc, but only when you have the right pressing. It’s a real treat to hear such a crazy assortment of percussion instruments with this kind of amazingly clear, high-resolution sound!

This is one of the Demo Discs on the TAS List which truly deserves its status when, and only when, you have a killer copy.

Polarity

Music for Bang, Baa-room and Harp is yet another one of the many pressings we’ve discovered with reversed polarity on some copies.

Are audiophile reviewers or audiophiles in general listening critically to records like this? I wonder; I could not find word one about any polarity issues with this title, and yet we’ve played four or five copies with reversed polarity on side two. How come nobody is hearing it, apart from us?

We leave you, dear reader, to answer that question for yourself.

This record, along with the others linked below, is good for testing the following qualities.

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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The Strings on Elton John’s Second Album Are a Tough Test

More of the Music of Elton John

Reviews and Commentaries for Elton John’s Self-Titled Second Album

What’s especially remarkable about this album is the quality of Paul Buckmaster‘s string arrangements. I don’t know of another pop record that uses strings better or has better string tone and texture. Strings are all over this record, not only adding uniquely interesting qualities to the backgrounds of the arrangements but actually taking the foreground on some of the songs, most notably Sixty Years On.

When the strings give in to a lovely Spanish guitar in the left channel (which sounds like a harp!) just before Elton starts singing, the effect is positively glorious. It’s the nexus where amazing Tubey Magical sound meets the best in popular music suffused with brilliant orchestral instrumentation. Who did it better than The Beatles and Elton John? They stand alone.

Correct string tone and texture are key to the best-sounding copies. The arrangements are often subtle, so only the most transparent copies can provide a window into the backgrounds of the songs that reproduce the texture of the strings.

Without extension on the top, the strings can sound shrill and hard, a common problem with many pressings.

Without a good solid bottom end, the rockers (“Take Me to the Pilot”) don’t work either of course, but you can even hear problems in the lower strings when the bass is lightweight.

String tone on a pop record is a tough nut to crack, even more so on a record like this where the strings play such a prominent role. It’s the rare copy that allows you to forget the recording and lets you just enjoy the music.

For that you really need a Hot Stamper.

These Are Some of the Qualities We’re Listening For in the Shootouts We Do for Elton’s Albums

There are probably closer to a dozen, but some of the more important ones would be:

Extraordinary Engineering

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Boston – What the Best Copies Really Get Right

Hot Stamper Albums with Huge Choruses

Albums with Choruses that Are Good for Testing

The multi-tracked layers of guitars really come to life on the better copies. The not-so-great pressings tend to be congested and compressed, thickening the sound and diffusing the layers of multi-tracked harmonies. Tom Scholz’s uniquely overdriven, distorted leads have near-perfect timbre. On the top copies you can really hear how much power that sound adds to the music.

As is the case for best pressings of Aqualung, when the guitar sounds this good, it really makes you sit up and take notice of the guy’s playing. When the sound works the music works, our seven word definition of a Hot Stamper.

Our killer copies have sweetness and tubey warmth we didn’t expect to hear. Better yet, the best copies have jump-out-of-the-speakers presence without being aggressive, no mean feat.

The good ones make you want to turn up the volume; the louder they get the better they sound. Try that with the average copy. When playing mass-market pop-rock music like this, more level usually means only one thing: bloody eardrums.

The typical Boston EQ is radio-friendly, not audiophile-friendly. But some were cut right, with the kind of richness, sweetness and smoothness that we fondly refer to here at Better Records as The Sound of Analog.

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Listening in Depth to Sounds of Silence

More of the Music of Simon and Garfunkel

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Paul Simon (and Art Garfunkel)

Presenting another entry in our extensive Listening in Depth series with advice on what to listen for as you critically evaluate your copy of Sounds of Silence. Here are some albums currently on our site with similar Track by Track breakdowns.

Sounds of Silence is made from a second generation tape, as we explain below. Since we listen to all the records we sell, we like to point out such things so our customers know what they are getting.

This album is the proverbial tough nut to crack, a mix of folkie tracks and ambitious big production numbers, all recorded on a four track machine and bounced down maybe just a few too many times along the way. Some got handed a troublesome case of Top 40 EQ — hey, this is 1965, it’s the way they thought pop records should sound.

But many of the best tracks survived just fine. They can sound wonderful, it’s just that they rarely do. This is precisely where we come into the picture.

The key to good sounding pressings of this record is to look for the ones with a top end. Now of course you can’t see the top end when you buy the record. But most of the copies of this album you pick up are going to sound like cassettes. There won’t be much over 8K, and that means hard, harsh, transistor radio sound. You need extended highs to balance out the upper midrange.

Although the rock tracks certainly come to life and really do sound good on the hottest of the hot copies, the folkie tracks are the real reason to buy these early pressings. They have the Tubey Magic that’s missing from virtually any reissue or digital format version.

Best and Worst Tracks

For the best sounding tracks try Leaves That Are Green on side one, and April Come She Will on side two. 

Keep in mind that the big hit ”Sounds of Silence” will never sound much better than it does in the car. It’s basically the track from their previous album with rock instrumentation added, meaning an electric guitar, a second generation of tape and some extra distortion for good measure.

But on a superb copy, that track can still be surprisingly enjoyable. Not Demo Disc quality, just enjoyable.

Below you will find our moderately helpful advice for finding the best sounding pressings of Sounds of Silence.

In our experience the album sounds best this way:

Which simply means that the 360 label domestic stereo pressings win our shootouts, in this case without exception.

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Listening in Depth to Joe Jackson – Balancing Night with Day

More of the Music of Joe Jackson

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Joe Jackson

There are basically four elements that go into the making of Night and Day: vocals; keyboards (mostly the piano); percussion (in the mids and highs) and rhythm (drums and bass).

No two copies will get all of these elements to sound their best. The trick to finding the hottest of the Hot Stamper pressings is to find copies of the album that reproduce these four elements clearly and correctly. They should be balanced with one another, and distributed throughout a large, three-dimensional studio space.

It may sound easy but I assure you it is not. With this many instruments in the mix, it’s a lot to get right.

Vocals

Pop records live and die by the quality of their vocals and Night and Day is no different in that respect. The vocals have to be front and center. Veiling in the midrange costs a fair number of points. They should also be smooth, not thin or edgy. I would rather have slightly veiled vocals relative to thin and edgy ones, but some copies manage to give you full, clear, present vocals, and those are the ones we tend to like the best.

Keyboards

When the sound is thin in the lower midrange and upper bass the piano will lose its weight and solidity. In the denser mixes it can easily get washed out, and nobody wants a washed out piano.

There is no guitar on this record. The piano carries much of the structural energy of the music. You need to be able to hear the piano clearly and hear that it is both full-bodied and percussive. (more…)

The Grateful Dead – Barncard Knocked It Out of the Park with This One

More of the Music of The Grateful Dead

Hot Stamper Pressings of Stephen Barncard’s Recordings

Reviews and Commentaries for Stephen Barncard’s Recordings

The crowning glory of the Grateful Dead, this is their MASTERPIECE. Albums like this come along once in a band’s life — if they’re lucky. This is the zenith of the Grateful Dead. Workingman’s Dead is a good album. American Beauty is a great one.

If you don’t have a killer copy yet, it’s time to get on the bus. Stephen Barncard is the recording engineer responsible for this album, Deja Vu, Brewer and Shipley’s Tarkio, and a host of other amazingly rich, sweet and natural, mostly acoustic recordings that stand head and shoulders above the bulk of their contemporaries. American Beauty is one of them.

All the Elements Come Together for Once

All of the elements necessary to take this music to an entirely new level are here, my friends: smooth, sweet vocals; rich, meaty bass; an open and airy top end; top-notch presence and so forth. The sound is so spacious and transparent that you can easily pick out each of the instruments and follow them over the course of the songs.

The acoustic guitars sound magical on this one, and I can’t believe how wonderful these guys’ voices sound. The Tubey Magic and immediacy on this copy are going to STUN you.

You could choose any track you wanted to and find lovely sound here, but I’d recommend Ripple and Attics Of My Life for starters.

Most copies suffer from a glaring lack of highs, but just listen to the ride cymbal on this one to find out that the top end is still alive and well here.

Here are some other records we’ve played that often have No Real Top End.

John Klemmer / Touch – A Great Test for Your Tweeters

More of the Music of John Klemmer

More Records That Are a Good Test for High Frequency Extension

Mobile Fidelity, maker of some of the worst sounding records in the history of the medium, is the KING on this title. We know of no better pressing than the right version of the MoFi. (There are three different stampers for the MoFi, and only one of them ever wins shootouts.)

Klemmer says pure emotion is what inspired the album’s creation. Whatever he tapped into to find the source of that inspiration he really hit pay dirt with Touch. It’s the heaviest smooth jazz ever recorded. Musically and sonically, this is the pinnacle of Klemmer’s smooth jazz body of work. I know of none better. (If you want to hear him play more straight-ahead jazz try Straight from the Heart on Nautilus Direct to Disc.)

High Frequency Testing

MoFi was famous for demonstrating on an actual scope that the standard domestic ABC pressing had nothing above about 8 or 10 thousand cycles up top, which is why they all sound insufferably dull and dead. Some MoFi copies have no real top end either, which is the reason to we do these shootouts — to find the copies that are actually mastered and pressed right, not just the ones that should have been.

There’s plenty of information above 15K I would guess on this record — all those delicate percussion instruments ring so sweetly, the highs have to be extending way up there. (This album would probably make a good test to see how well your tweeters work, as well as for turntable setup. The right tracking weight and VTA are crucial to getting all the harmonics of a record like this right.) (more…)

Brewer & Shipley – Do All the Robert Ludwig Mastered Copies Have Hot Stampers?

More of the Music of Brewer and Shipley

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Brewer and Shipley

This commentary describes some observations we were able to make after doing a shootout a few years back.

Even though all the original Pink Label pressings are mastered by the great Robert Ludwig, they have a marked tendency to be dull, thick and opaque. Other records we’ve played with these same shortcomings can be found by clicking on the links below.

On too many original pressings, the sound is too smooth.

Starting at some point in the mid-’90s, many Heavy Vinyl pressings started to have the same shortcoming, one that we find insufferable to this day: they are just too damn smooth.

The best copies, however, have the top end and the transparency to let you hear all the guitar harmonics, surrounded by the large acoustic of the studio.

This time around we discovered something new: one specific stamper that seemed to be the only one with the potential for an extended top end. This special stamper did not always fare well; some copies with it were mediocre. We have always found this to be the way with the “right” stampers; they often let us down and sometimes they really let us down hard.

But this stamper, when it was right, had an extension on the top that no other copy could match. The Robert Ludwig mastered Band second albums are the same way. Most have no top but boy, when they do, the magic you hear is phenomenal.

We’ve discovered a number of titles in which one stamper always wins, and here are some of the others.

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