good-test

Here are about 60 titles that are good for testing. All genres of music are represented.

Massed Strings and Brass Sections Are Difficult to Reproduce

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Jacques Offenbach Available Now

UPDATE 2020

Our current favorite recording of the work is the one Fistoulari recorded for Readers Digest.

Since that is a pressing we don’t expect to be able to offer to our customers again, Readers Digest vinyl being what it is, allow us to point you in the direction of a different album of Offenbach’s music you may enjoy reading about and should definitely consider buying the next time you see it on the site.

Our Previous Commentary

It’s also an excellent record to test with. As you no doubt know, there is a lot of “action” in this piece of music.

To get the strings and the brass to sound lively yet natural is a bit of a trick. (It doesn’t help that the polarity is reversed.)

When I first played this record many years ago, I was none too happy about the string tone. After making a few tweaky adjustments, the strings became much clearer and more textured. The overall presentation still sounded rich, but was now dramatically more natural and relaxed.

It was this record that made me realize some of the changes I had made to my stereo back then had caused it to have a certain hi-fi-ish quality, which seemed to work fine on the popular and jazz recordings I was using as test discs at the time.

But the reproduction of classical music is the ultimate challenge for any stereo.

And this record was telling me I wasn’t getting it right. I’m happy to report that things are sounding wonderful now, on every kind of record: jazz, rock and especially on excellent classical recordings such as this one, on Readers Digest no less (!)

A famous jazz album by Michel LeGrand was also helpful in getting my playback to be more correct.

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Clarity Was Never the Point

Hot Stamper Pressings of Live Recordings Available Now

Some audiophiles spend their time listening for details in their favorite recordings. I should know; I was as guilty as anyone of that behavior.

But is that where the music is – in the details? Lots of details come out when one copy is brighter than another.

Brighter ain’t necessarily better. Most of the time it’s just brighter. 

Listening for the details in a recording can be a trap, one that is very easy to fall into if you are not careful or don’t know where these kinds of pitfalls lie.

801 Live isn’t about clarity. It’s about the sound of a rock concert.

It’s about the raw power of one of the most phenomenal rhythm sections ever captured in performance on analog tape.

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Listening For the Spirit and Enthusiasm of the Musicians

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Beatles Available Now

UPDATE 2026

The discussion below, brought about by a Hot Stamper shootout we conducted for Revolver quite a number of years ago (2007!), touches on many issues near and dear to us here at Better Records.

Some of the things we learned about Revolver all those years ago are important to our Hot Stamper shootouts to this very day, including, but not limited to:

  • Pressing variations,
  • System upgrades,
  • Dead wax secrets,

and the quality we prize most in a recording:

  • LIFE, or, if you prefer, energy.

At the end of the commentary we of course take the opportunity to bash the MoFi pressing of the album, a regular feature of our Beatles Hot Stamper shootouts. We’re not saying the MoFi Beatles records are bad; in the overall scheme of things they are mostly pretty decent. What we are saying is that, with our help, you can do a helluva lot better.

Our help doesn’t come cheap, as anyone on our mailing list will tell you. You may have to pay a lot, but with us you get what you pay for, and we gladly back up that claim with a 100% money back guarantee for every pressing we sell.

The Story of Revolver, Dateline October 2007

(Incidentally, 2007 turns out to have been a milestone year for us here at Better Records.)

White Hot Stampers for Revolver are finally HERE! Let the celebrations begin! Seriously, this is a very special day for us here at Better Records. The Toughest Nut to Crack in the Beatles’ catalog has officially been cracked. Yowza!

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Testing for Whomp Factor with Love Alive

heartlittl_1501_1187219026Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Heart Available Now

Heart’s Little Queen has long been a favorite Test Disc. It works especially well as a test for something we here at Better Records like to call whomp — the energy found at the low end of the frequency spectrum. Some call it slam, we prefer whomp.

The commentary is here to help guide you as you make changes to your system, insuring that you end up with more whomp without sacrificing equally important qualities found in the midrange and top end of your system.

Reality Check Parts One and Two

Take the song Love Alive.

The beginning section is chock full of lovely and quite subtle details (such as the autoharp and tabla) that seem to lose their magic on most systems. The autoharp is rich and chimey, and the tabla has some real low end extension. The recorders and flutes that join them are breathy and sweet, while the acoustic guitars heard throughout display all the tubey-magical harmonic richness found on our favorite Hot Stamper recordings, from the Eagles first album to Teaser and the Firecat. These qualities easily get lost in the sauce if you’re listening to the average copy, or the typical audiophile stereo.

That’s Part One of the test — the opening.

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Counting Down to Ecstasy and Singing Along with My Old School

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Steely Dan Available Now

We’ve found that two songs are especially helpful in challenging your setup and playback: Razor Boy on side one, and My Old School on side two.

Countdown to Ecstasy shares top honors with Katy Lied as the toughest Steely Dan album to reproduce properly.

It’s a positive shame that most copies are such sonic let-downs. They’re often congested, bass-shy, veiled, compressed and grainy. There’s a good reason we don’t do this album but once a year [make that once every two or three years at present], and it’s not because of a lack of demand. It’s because so many copies are mastered and pressed poorly.

What to Listen For

Side One: Piano and Vibes

On Razor Boy listen especially to how clear and solid the piano and vibes are underneath the vocals. On the best copies their contributions are easy to follow and really provide support in the lower registers for the vocals above them. If your copy they’re a murky mess don’t be surprised; that’s pretty much the way they sound on most copies. (They’re a good test for the quality of your reproduction from the mid-bass up through the lower midrange.)

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Years Ago the Piano on a Copy of Blue Really Took Us Aback

Hot Stamper Pressing of the Music of Joni Mitchell Available Now

About ten years ago we played a copy of Blue that put us in the presence of a piano the likes of which we had never heard on the album before.

We found it on the track The Last Time I Saw Richard.

This is not the thin and hard-sounding instrument that accompanies Joni on every pressing you have ever had the misfortune to play, hoping against hope that someday you would find that “elusive disc” with sound worthy of such extraordinary music.

No, this piano had real weight; it has body; and it was surrounded by real, three-dimensional studio space. No vinyl pressing we had ever played up to then has managed to capture the sound of the piano on this record any better. Exactly no copies.

For those of you with a certain Heavy Vinyl pressing in your collection, we can only say that the piano on this copy will show you everything that is wrong with the piano on that one.

The piano had no smear, allowing both the percussive aspects of the instrument and the extended harmonics of the notes to be heard clearly and appreciated fully.

Pianos are very good for testing your system, room, tweaks, electricity and all the rest, not to mention turntable setup and adjustment.

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The Turn Up Your Volume Test – Almost Cut My Hair

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Crosby, Stills, Nash and (Sometimes) Young

The only time Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young actually sound like a real rock and roll band is on the track Almost Cut My Hair.

According to Stephen Barncard, one of the engineers on Deja Vu, the track was actually recorded live in the studio.

Boy, it sure sounds like it. The amount of energy the band generates on this one song threatens to exceed the energy of the entire first album put together. (Not really. The energy on 49 Bye-Byes, the last track on side two and my favorite on the album is off the charts and shows just how powerful there brand of Hippie Folk Rock could be given the right material. I defy anyone to name two albums from the period released back to back that are better. They have their equals, don’t get me wrong, but the idea of there being a pair of “betters” is a hard one to entertain once the pot smoke clears.)

The reason this song presents such a tough test is that it has to be mastered properly in order to make you want to turn it up, not just louder, but as loud as your stereo will play.

This song is not to be used as background music whilst sipping wine and smoking cigars.

It positively cries out to be played at serious volume levels on monstrously large speakers. Nothing else will do justice to the power of the band’s one and only live performance captured on the album.

Listen to Neil in the left channel wailing away like a man possessed. Imagine what his grunged-out guitar would sound like blasting out of a stack of Marshall amps the size of a house.

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Finding the Rare Pressing of Heavy Weather with An Extended Top End

Hot Stamper Pressings of Jazz Rock Fusion Albums Available Now

It has been our experience that the copies with high frequency extension and the clarity, space and percussive energy that results from it are almost always the best sounding.

You may have read elsewhere on the site that what separates many of the best Columbia LPs from their competition is an open, extended top end.

For some reason, Columbia, more than most labels, had a habit of making slightly dull records. Dull does not work for this album. 

When the highs on the record are right, it all comes together. Unfortunately, most copies don’t have those highs. There’s more to it than that of course: some copies lack bass, some are a bit grainy and gritty sounding — the normal problems associated with vinyl records are all here to one degree or another.

But when you have good highs you are about 80 to 85% of the way toward a Hot Stamper. Complete the picture with bass, dynamics, etc. (and a big speaker system) and there’s a good chance the sound will blow your mind.

Heavy Weather is a classic case of yet another in the long list of recordings that really comes alive when you turn up your volume.

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Dexter Gordon Knocked Us Out Back in 2007

Hot Stamper Pressings of Blue Note Albums Available Now

UPDATE 2026

In 2007 we had a fairly low opinion of both the Blue Note label and the work of Rudy Van Gelder, but that changed over the decades as we auditioned more and more of his amazing recordings, many of which were reissues of one kind or another.

In the commentary below, some text has been altered, mostly the overuse of capitalization.

Our latest review for One Flight Up can be found here.

Our 2007 Commentary

This Blue Note LP is without a doubt one of the best sounding jazz records we’ve ever heard. We were auditioning a bunch of jazz records today (4/25/07), and when the needle hit the grooves on this one we were absolutely blown away.

I can’t think of one jazz record we’ve ever played here at Better Records with this kind of whomp. Everything here is so rich and full — nothing like a typical Blue Note album.

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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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