It is our contention that to reach the most advanced levels of audio, you have to do two things.
Firstly, you must become obsessed with getting your favorite albums to sound their best, and,
Secondly, you must then turn your obsession with those albums into concrete action.
What kind of action? Finding better sounding pressings and improving your stereo and room.
We wrote about it here. An excerpt:
As a budding audiophile, I went out of my way to acquire any piece of equipment that could make these records from the ’70s (the decade of my formative music-buying years) sound better than the gear I was then using. It’s the challenging recordings by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, as well as scores of other pop and rock artists like them, that drove my pursuit of higher quality audio, starting all the way back in high school.
And here I am — here we are — still at it, forty years later, because the music still sounds fresh and original, and the pressings that we find get better and better with each passing year.
That kind of progress is proof that we’re doing it right. It’s a good test for any audiophile. If you are actively and seriously pursuing this hobby, perhaps as many as nine out of ten non-audiophile pressings in your collection should sound better with each passing year.
As your stereo improves, not to mention your critical listening skills, the shortcomings of some of them will no doubt become more apparent. For the most part, however, with continual refinements and improvements to your system and room, vintage pressings will sound better and better the longer you stay active in the hobby.
That’s what makes it fun to play old records: The sound just keeps getting better!
Checking Off Three of the Biggest Boxes
- It’s a Must Own record.
- It’s a Rock and Pop Masterpiece.
- And it’s a Personal Favorite of mine.
The blog you are on now as well as our website are both devoted to very special records such as these.
In my opinion, this is also a record that should be more popular with audiophiles. If you have not heard this classic, check it out. It is the very definition of the kind of Big Production Rock I have been listening to since I first fell in love with it back in the mid-Seventies. That was about fifty years ago and I still play the album regularly for enjoyment. I have never tired of the music in all that time and I don’t think I ever will.
I’m sure you have plenty of records you feel the same way about in your collection. This is one of mine.
It is the very definition of a Big Speaker album. The better pressings have the kind of ENERGY in their grooves that are sure to have most audiophile systems begging for mercy.
This is The Audio Challenge that awaits you. If you don’t have a system designed to play records with this kind of SONIC POWER, don’t expect to hear them the way the band, Alan Parsons, Doug Sax and everybody else involved in the production wanted you to.
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