good-demo-bad-test

Listening in Depth to Aja

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Steely Dan Available Now

Generally, what you try to get on side one is a copy with ambience, because most copies are flat, lifeless and dry as a bone.

You want a copy with good punchy bass — many are lean, and the first two tracks simply don’t work at all without good bass. And then you want a copy that has a natural top end, where the cymbals ring sweetly and Wayne Shorter’s saxophone isn’t hard or honky or dull, which it often is on the bad domestic copies.

The truly amazing side twos — and they are pretty darn rare — have an extended top end and breathy vocals on the first track, Peg, a track that is dull on nine out of ten copies. (The ridiculously bright MoFi actually kind of works on Peg because of the fact that the mix is somewhat lacking in top end. This is faint praise though: MoFi managed to fix that problem and ruin practically everything else on the album.)

If you play Peg against the tracks that follow it on side two, most of the time the highs come back. On the best of the best, the highs are there all the way through.

Side One

Black Cow

Fagen’s voice on the first line will always sound grainy – it’s that way on the CD and every LP I have ever played, which means it’s on the tape that way. It will quickly pass, and the rest of the vocals will sound amazing if you have a Hot Stamper Copy.

This song is as BIG and BOLD sounding as any pop song I know. This is Demo Disc material if you have the system to do it justice.

And don’t you just love the way it starts on the upbeat? Now that’s the way to kick off an album!

Aja

Got a big speaker? Lots of power? You will need both to play this song right. Note how the percussion comes through the dense mix, without being abrasive in any way. That’s a sure sign that you have a copy with the transparency and resolution you need to bring out the track’s best qualities. The mix needs that percussion; it’s there for a reason. You, dear audiophile, need an LP that lets that percussion be heard. Many are called; few are chosen.

Deacon Blues

It’s the rare copy that gets the top end for the first two tracks right and still has enough presence and top end for this song, which will tend to sound dull even if the first two tracks don’t. The truly killer pressings get all three tracks to sound amazing, no mean feat.

Side Two

For some reason, side two is almost always cut at a lower level than side one. Pump up the volume a db or two in order to get the full Aja effect for the songs on this side.

UPDATE 2022

The commentary about Peg you see below was written many years ago, and I no longer agree with the claim it makes.

The MoFi is so bad in so many ways that whatever it fixes on the top end, it destroys everywhere else.

It’s one of the greatest audio disasters of the 80s, along with the equally awful Cisco pressing, which qualifies as one of the great audio disasters of the modern Heavy Vinyl era.

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Is Kind of Blue a Good Test Record?

Hot Stamper Pressing of Miles’s Albums Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about a Hot Stamper pressing of Kind of Blue he purchased recently:

Hey Tom, 

Listening to Kind Of Blue. Who needs an equipment upgrade with records like these?

Our reply at the time:

So true!

But on further reflection, it became clear to me that there is more to this idea than one might think upon first hearing it.

When records sound as good as Kind of Blue on vintage vinyl (not this piece of trash), it’s easy to think that everything in the system must be working properly, or, and more to the point I would like to discuss, reproducing the sound of the album at a high level.

If only more records were as well recorded as KOB, we could save ourselves a lot of time and money, time and money that we’re currently spending on tweaking, tuning and upgrading the various components of our systems. (Assuming you are in fact doing these things. I certainly hope you are. Achieving higher quality sound is one of the greatest joys to be had in all of audio.)

This is undoubtedly true, as far as it goes. But we must live in the world of records as we find it, not the one we want to exist.

Finding good sound for most of the records you wish to enjoy takes a great deal of effort, assuming you are setting your standards for sound at a fairly high level. Your standards don’t have to be as high as ours — we’re the guys who put their reputations on the line for extravagantly priced Hot Stampers, not you — but the records you are playing have to sound good enough to allow you to forget they are records in the first place. You want to be able to get immersed in the music without having to fight the sound to do it. You shouldn’t have to work at it. It should just happen. In our experience, that takes a good record.

With every improvement you make to your system, you eventually will find yourself banging your head up against the psychological effect of Hedonic Adaptation.* Once you have achieved better sound, it doesn’t take long before you get used to it, and now your much-improved “new normal” isn’t as thrilling as it was when you first experienced it.

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Another Good Demo Disc / Bad Test Disc from Willie Nelson

More of the Music of Willie Nelson

Much like Stardust, a Hot Stamper pressing of this record is a real treat for the audiophile, no matter where they may be on the audio scale.

The transparency and in-the-room presence on the best copies will be nothing less than astonishing.

It’s what we like to call a Great Demo Disc / Bad Test Disc.

Even if your system isn’t all that good, or isn’t performing at its best, a killer copy of this record will still sound both musical and musically involving.

On the other hand, if you’ve spent the time and energy to really get your stereo cooking, you’re going to be in for some seriously good Tubey Magical vocal reproduction.

If you are looking for a challenge, we have a whole section of records that are difficult to reproduce. If you can play these albums good and loud, you can probably play anything.

Without a Song is not on that list. It will sound good on practically any system, which is why it is not a good test disc.

Rickie Lee Jones – Good Demo Disc / Bad Test Disc

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Rickie Lee Jones Available Now

RLJ’s first album is what we would consider a Good Demo Disc but a Bad Test Disc.

Meaning that this record can sound good on really crappy stereos — which explains why it is so often heard at stereo stores and at shows, where really crappy stereos are unusually plentiful.

But it’s not what the System Doctor ordered if the goal is to work out some problem or fault with the reproduction of all your other recordings. In other words, records like this can be misleading. 

Of course, all records have that quality to one degree or another, which is why you need to use a basket of recordings to make judgments about equipment.

Don’t rely on any given recording to be The Truth. None of them are.

Wait a minute. Perhaps I spoke too soon. (more…)