Robert Brook runs a blog called The Broken Record, with a subtitle explaining that the aim of his blog is to serve as:
A GUIDE FOR THE DEDICATED ANALOG AUDIOPHILE
We know of none better, outside of our own humble attempt to enlighten that portion of the audiophile community who love records and are looking to understand them better.
Here is one of Robert’s most recent postings.
More of Robert’s advice on equipment and setup:
Playing so many records every day means that we wear out our Dynavector 17DX cartridges much more often than most consumers would. They typically last us about three or four months.
This requires us to regularly mount a new cartridge in our Triplanar arm.
Once a new cartridge is broken in (50 hours minimum), we then proceed to carry out the fine setup work required to get it sounding its best. We do that by adjusting the VTA, azimuth and tracking weight for maximum fidelity using recordings we have been playing for decades and know well.
For the longest time our favorite test discs for this purpose have been these three:
To be honest, I was the only guy on the listening panel using Bob and Ray. I have played that record at least 500 times, perhaps 1000, and would be lost without it.
Our listening guys — much younger and not nearly as interested in correctly reproducing The Song of the Volga Boatmen as I was — preferred numbers two and three, and of course those work fine too. In fact, when setting up our new studio, I came to realize Bob and Ray were not enough to get the room right, a subject I wrote about here.
We are in the process of making some lists (more lists! You can never have too many!) for records we’ve found to be good for testing, tweaking and tuning your system, your room and your front end setup, among other things. You may want to check them out.
These are the records that challenged me and helped me to achieve more progress in audio. If you are serious about improving your playback, these are some of the best records we know of to help get you to the next level.
