good-audio-advice

Gino Vannelli, Big Speakers and The Amazing SP3A-1 Preamp

Rock Records that (Potentially) Sound Amazing on Big Speakers at Loud Levels

At one time Storm at Sunup was easily my favorite Gino Vannelli album. When it came out in 1975 I immediately fell in love with the music and put it into heavy rotation on my turntable (a phrase that had not been invented yet but perfectly describes how easy it is to become obsessed with an album).

It was one of a group of recordings that made me want to pursue higher quality equipment, hoping that any improvement in playback would allow the music to sound even bigger and more exciting.

It was pretty damn big and exciting already, but I wanted more. 

Right around that time I got my first tube preamp, the Audio Research SP3A-1, which replaced a Crown IC-150. As you can imagine, especially if you know the IC-150 well, playing this album through that state-of-the-art tube preamp was a revelation.

From that point on there was no going back. I started spending all my money on (what I took to be) better and better equipment and (often mistakenly) better records by the score. That was fifty plus years ago and I haven’t stopped yet. [Not so much now that I’m retired, but you get the point.]

Even at the age of 21 I wanted to pursue Big Systems driving Big Speakers.

You need a lot of piston area to move enough air to bring the dynamics of a recording like this to life, and to get the size of all the instruments to match their real life counterparts, or at least to seem to, this being a multi-track studio recording.

For that you need big speakers in big cabinets, the kind I’ve been listening to for more than fifty years. (My last small speaker was given the boot around 1973 or so.)

To tell you the truth, the Big Sound is the only sound that I can enjoy. Anything less is just not for me, mostly because the music I love demands the big sound, whether the listener is aware of that fact or has anything like the system required to reproduce it.

With few exceptions, the records that helped us improve our playback required big speakers that could play at loud volumes.

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Hard Left, Hard Right Staging “Problems”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Barney Kessel Available Now

We hear complaints from time to time about hard-left/ hard-right staging, but the right pressing, properly cleaned, then played on the right equipment and all the rest, will allow you to hear the ROOM in the middle, the real space the musicians are in.

It’s the same with some of The Beatles twin track stereo stuff — there is a room there.

(And sometimes there was actually “no room” there but Norman Smith could make you think there was one.)

The sound may be stuck in the speakers at your house, but over here the music is floating in the real space of the studio, from left to right, and that includes the middle. (Records with stuck in the speakers sound can be found here — audiophiles with good systems would be wise to avoid them.)

Speaker placement is critically important in reproducing the size and space of recordings. No matter how expensive your speakers may be, if you stand them up against a wall (or stick them in the corners of your sound room) they will struggle to recreate the space that’s on your recordings.

This Kessel record really doesn’t have a problem with hard-right / hard-left sound, but some Contemporary titles do and I just thought I would get that off my chest.

Modest equipment (as well as not-so-modest equipment, especially if it’s modern) has one helluva time finding the ambient information on most recordings, just one more reason why we don’t recommend cheap tables and inexpensive phono stages.

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Sibilance Can Be a Bitch (and a Good Test for Table Setup Too)

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of 10cc Available Now

On side two the tonal balance is key. If there is any boost to the top end, the vocals on track two will SPIT LIKE CRAZY.

This is also a good test for how well your cartridge and arm are doing their jobs. Sibilance is a bitch. The best pressings, with the most extension up top and the least amount of aggressive grit and grain mixed into the sound, played using the best front ends, will keep it to a minimum. VTA, tracking weight, azimuth and anti-skate adjustments are critical to reducing the spit in your records.

We discuss the sibilance problems of MoFi records all over the site. Have you ever read Word One about this problem elsewhere? Of course not. Audiophiles and audiophile reviewers just seem to put up with these problems, or ignore them, or — even worse — simply fail to recognize them at all.

Play around with your table setup for a few hours and you will no doubt be able to reduce the sibilance problems on your favorite test and demo discs. All your other records will thank you for it too. 

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

  1. Grit and grain
  2. Sibilance (it’s a bitch) 

Playing so many records day in and day out means that we wear out our Dynavector 17DX cartridges often, about every three to four months.

Which requires us to regularly mount a new cartridge in our Triplanar.

Once broken in (50 hours min.), we then proceed to the fine setup work required to get it to sound its best, adjusting the VTA, azimuth and tracking weight for maximum fidelity.

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Sound Like This Makes Audiophiles the Laughing Stocks of the Music World

Advice We Think Can Help You Make More Audio Progress

Click on the link below and give this system a listen for a minute or two.

Have you ever heard live music that sounded like this?

Who in his right mind wants a stereo with this kind of ridiculously artificial sound?

If you’re reading this blog, I hope it’s not you, because you will never find a record on our site with sound this unnatural.

If you like the sound of an album such as Aerial Boundaries, then buy this speaker. It will make all your records sound just like it! It’s the perfect example of a pass/fail record, the way this speaker is an example of a pass/fail speaker.

Here is how we described the sound of Aerial Boundaries years ago:

It sounds as if someone went into the biggest room in the studio they could book, sat Michael Hedges down on a stool out in the middle of it, and then took all the mics and aimed them at the walls. Roll tape! (Assuming they used tape, who knows what kind of crap digital system they were using.)

And the best part is that it was nominated for an engineering Grammy!

If you think the average music lover today wouldn’t know good sound if it bit him in the ass, this album is proof that nothing has changed, not since 1984 anyway.

Some commentary I found on the web

Aerial Boundaries is the second album by guitarist Michael Hedges released on the Windham Hill label in 1984. It was nominated for a Grammy Award as Best Engineered Recording.

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Small Speakers and Some Audio Lessons I’ve Learned Over the Last 50+ Years

These Are the Fundamentals of Good Sound

UPDATE 2026

The video linked to below is now private.

However, as you will see from our commentary, it really doesn’t make much of a difference whether it is or not. What we had to say about it years ago is nonetheless true.

Do not believe a word you hear in this video. [Not a problem!]

You probably shouldn’t even watch it. [Same.]

Let me state clearly one of our core beliefs here at Better Records.

Small speakers are incapable of lifelike musical reproduction in the home.

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VTA – A Few Moments of Experimentation Can Really Pay Off

Basic Audio Advice — These Are the Fundamentals of Good Sound

Here we discuss what to listen for as you critically adjust your VTA.

While experimenting with the VTA for this record, we found a precise point where it all came together, far beyond whatever expectations we might have had for the sound at the time.

Practically out of nowhere we heard a solid, full-bodied, palpable violin that appeared to be floating between the speakers, an effect that, speaking for myself as a lifelong, obsessive audiophile — I fully appreciated for the magic trick that it is.

The sound of the wood of the instrument became so clear, the harmonic textures so natural, it was quite a shock to hear a good record somehow become an amazing one.

And all it took was a few moments of experimentation.

With the right VTA setting we immediately heard more harmonic detail, achieved, as is often not the case, with no sacrifice in richness.

That’s the clearest sign that your setup is right, or very close to it.

By the way, Robert Brook can get your front end tuned up and working right. We highly recommend his new service. It might just put you on the path to achieving the next level in audio. (You will definitely struggle to get there with a table, arm and cartridge that aren’t set up with a high degree of precision by a person who knows what they are doing, and Robert has been doing this work for years now.)
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Cat Stevens Wants to Know How You Like Your Congas: Light, Medium or Heavy?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Cat Stevens Available Now

During the shootout for this record a while back [the late 2000s would be my guess], we made a very important discovery, a seemingly obvious one but one that nevertheless had eluded us for the past twenty plus years (so how obvious could it have been?).

It became clear, for the first time, what accounts for the wide disparity in ENERGY and DRIVE from one copy to the next. We can sum it up for you in one five letter word, and that word is conga.

The congas are what drive the high-energy songs, songs like Tuesday’s Dead and Changes IV.

Here is how we stumbled upon their critically important contribution.

We were listening to one of the better copies during a recent shootout. The first track on side one, The Wind, was especially gorgeous; Cat and his acoustic guitar were right there in the room with us. The transparency, tonal neutrality, presence and all the rest were just superb. Then came time to move to the other test track on side one, which is Changes IV, one of the higher energy songs we like to play.

But the energy we expected to hear was nowhere to be found. The powerful rhythmic drive of the best copies of the album just wasn’t happening. The more we listened the more it became clear that the congas were not doing what they normally do. The midbass to lower midrange area of the LP lacked energy, weight and power, and this prevented the song from coming to LIFE the way the truly Hot Stampers can and do.

Now I think I understand why. Big speakers are the only way to reproduce the physical size and powerful energy of the congas (and other drums of course) that play such a big part in driving the rhythmic energy of the song.

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A Better Way to Get Rid of Grit and Grain on Jumpin’ Jive

More Records that Are Good for Testing Grit and Grain

Jumpin’ Jive is one of the clearest examples of an album where it is critically important to make sure your stereo is running on good electricity before you make any attempt to play it. This is the kind of recording — bright, full of energy — that will bring most stereo systems to their knees. Of course, when you play a good copy and it really sounds good, it’s a record that rewards all the time and effort you’ve put into your system.

So much of the aggressiveness, grit and grain that we hear in immediate, high-energy recordings such as this are really the fault of the electricity feeding the stereo, not the fault primarily of the record or even the equipment used to play it.

Now it should be noted that this recording has a ton of high frequency information that will be difficult to reproduce on most systems. If you leave a lot of appliances and electronic devices plugged in around the house when you listen to your stereo, you can forget ever hearing this record right. The grit and grunge caused by polluted electricity will make this record practically unlistenable, at the levels we listen at anyway. (At lower levels most of the garbage is masked, one reason no doubt that audiophiles rarely turn their stereos up to anything approaching live levels.) 

So do as we do: unplug everything you can get your hands on before you sit down to listen. Make sure your tubes (if you have tube equipment) are nice and warm too.

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Amazing Grace – A Bit of VTA Experimentation Can Really Pay Off

More Setup Advice for Turntables and Cartridges

UPDATE 2026

Although we liked it well enough, this title unfortunately did not get much love from our customers.

Years ago it was tagged here as a never again title, which simply means we would stop doing shootouts for it because they were no longer profitable. (It’s possible we could do it again, expecially if we were to get hold of an amazing sounding pressing or two, but at this point that does not seem to be in the cards, if for no other reason than we have stopped buying them altogether. Cheap records are a thing of the past and have been for quite a while now.)

We encourage you to find a nice copy for yourself. Stick with the early label. If you don’t hear the sound we describe below, you might consider buying more copies until you do, assuming you like the music.

Amazing Grace is a handy record for VTA setup, a subject we discuss below.

On the better copies Aretha’s vocals are as dynamic as any you will ever hear, and unlike all the records she did with Tom Dowd, her voice never breaks up on this record. If you have big speakers that can play at loud levels, with the right volume level you can really get Aretha to belt it out like nothing you have ever heard on record. 

Like most modern churches, the kind that have upholstered pews and lots of carpeting, the natural reverberation of the sound isn’t as pronounced as it would be were the recording taking place in a 16th century cathedral.

Note also that the recording is from 1972, not 1962, so the Tubey Magic that would have been on a recording such as this ten years earlier is not going to be as great either.

When we play a big stack of copies of a record like this, the limitations of the recording have to be taken into account.

The best copies will do what the best copies do; we can’t ask them to sound like something they were never designed to sound like.

The best copies of the album clearly sound quite a bit better than the average copy we played, but they still sound like the same recording, just bigger, richer, clearer and more alive.

To set your VTA right, don’t try to make Aretha too smooth — she should sound a bit “hot” when the spirit fills her and she shouts her loudest. If you get her to sound correct you lose a lot of space and ambience. What space and ambience there is on the tape need to be there for the recording to sound “real.”

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Imagine on Mobile Fidelity from 1984

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of John Lennon Available Now

This Jack Hunt-mastered Half Speed has the midrange suckout that Mobile Fidelity was notorious for.

Lennon and his piano on the first track sound like they are coming from another room.

And yet somehow there are still “audiophiles” in this day and age that defend the records put out by this ridiculous label.

Oy vey. What is wrong with these people?

I Have a Theory

Actually, I have a good idea why so many so-called audiophile records have a sucked-out midrange.

A midrange suckout creates depth in a system that has difficulty reproducing depth.

Imagine that instead of having your speakers pulled well out from the back wall as they should be, instead you have placed your speakers right up against the wall.

This arrangement, though preferable aesthetically and dramatically more family- and wife-friendly, has the unfortunate effect of seriously limiting your speakers’ ability to reproduce whatever three-dimensional space exists on your recordings.

I hinted back in 2022 that I was going to discuss this idea down the road, and like most things that I was supposed to write about down the road, we’re still waiting to see it.

The album I was going to write more about was Kind of Blue.

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