Records that Must Be Turned Up Good and Loud to Sound Their Best
UPDATE 2024
The commentary about Carnavalito you see below was written in 2016. With the 12 foot high ceiling in our new, bigger and quite a bit more spacious studio, I’ll bet this album sounds even more mind-blowing than it did back then.
Ken Perry mastered all the best early pressings — accept no substitutes.
Here in 2024 we’ve just done the shootout again, our first since 2016.
Sky Islands is not an easy record to find as it didn’t sell particularly well, but those of you who treasure the music of Weather Report or Return to Forever or The Mahavishnu Orchestra the way we do here at Better Record (or, to be clear, some of us do) will find much to like here.
Finding customers for music most audiophiles have never heard of, let alone heard, has always been the trick with well recorded, mostly unknown releases such as Sky Islands.
Which means that this is a woefully underrated album that should be more popular with audiophiles.
It’s also one of those difficult-to-reproduce records that I credit with helping me make real progress in audio (along with a great many others.).
Carnavalito is a track that really comes alive when you crank up the volume. I played it full blast on two different occasions for audiophile friends of mine just to show them what happens when a big speaker system meets a recording with absolutely amazing audiophile quality sound — big and bold, wall to wall and then some!