Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Fleetwood Mac Available Now
Rumours is a record that is good for testing your speakers’ lower midrange and mid-bass reproduction.
What do the best copies of Rumours have that the also-rans don’t?
Lots and lots of qualities, far too many to mention here, but there is one you should pay special attention to: the sound of the snare.
When the snare is fat and solid and present, with a good “slap” to its sound, you have a copy with weight, presence, transparency, energy — all the analog stuff we adore about the sound of the best copies.
Now if your speaker is not capable of getting the snare to sound that way, perhaps because you have screen speakers or a small boxed design, or a lousy copy of the album (anything without KP in the deadwax), this is still a handy test. Next time you are on the hunt to buy new speakers, see which ones can really rock the snare.
That’s probably going to be the speaker that can do justice to Rumours, and The Beatles, and Zuma, and lots of other favorite records of ours, and we hope favorites of yours too.
The speaker you see to the left is probably not the right kind of speaker for a record such as Rumours. Three 6.5 inch woofers are just not going to be enough to get that snare to sound big and fat.
Here are some other records that are good for testing the sound of the snare drum.