good-test

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

Jamento – Listening for Speed and Smear

What to Listen For – Smear

What to Listen For – Speed

Clear piano notes, first and foremost.

Any smear or loss of speed (a problem with hi-fi equipment since the beginning of time) detracts from the fun. 

Next, the tonality of the best copies is rich and solid. Accept nothing less.

And, finally, the proper reproduction of the percussion instruments is critically important to the energy and drive of the music. The better you hear them — without losing the weight and richness of the piano — the more you will enjoy your copy of the record.

No two copies will reproduce all these elements equally well. On high quality equipment with the volume turned up good and loud the winners are easily separated from the losers. (more…)

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.

Part Two — For Those Who Are About to Rock

Now listen to the intensity of the toms as they break into the rock section. The sound is ENORMOUS and POWERFUL. I hope your woofers are in shape cause they’re about to get the workout of their lives. The Whomp Factor on the best copies is OUT OF THIS WORLD.

That’s what makes this such a great Test Disc. You can’t listen for just detail on a song like this.

For Part One, yes, detail is good. For Part Two, detail is almost (but not quite) irrelevant. You need weight, fullness, richness, freedom from distortion, dynamics, power, slam — all the stuff that comes under the heading of Whomp Factor.

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Vivid and Accurate Timbre for Reeds and Percussion – A Demo Disc Like No Other

Hot Stamper Pressings of Percussion Recordings Available Now

This is one of the most phenomenal sounding records I have ever heard in my life.

Take the best sound you’ve ever heard from the best authentic Mercury classical record you own (not that Heavy Vinyl BS) and translate it into pop arrangements for clarinets, flutes, saxes, oboes, bassoons, percussion and who-knows-what-else and what do you have?

Sound that leaps out of the speakers with absolutely dead on tonality.

But what is most shocking of all is how vivid and accurate the timbre of every instrument is.

Yes, it’s multi-miked, and sometimes the engineers play with the channels a bit much (especially at the start of the first track).

That said, if you have the system for it, it’s very possible you have never heard most of these instruments sound this real on any other recording. It’s as if you were standing right in the studio with them. Yes, it’s that crazy good.

For our last shootout, it took two copies to provide you with top sound on both sides. Clean stereo pressings are very hard to find. Most copies are mono, and most copies are beat, and that combination makes for some slim pickings indeed. This side two is not especially quiet but it’s the best we can find, and we hope that when you hear the glorious sound the surfaces will be easy to ignore. If not, send it back.

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Connecting the Players on Maiden Voyage

More of the Music of Herbie Hancock

More Jazz Recordings Featuring the Piano

Freddie Hubbard on this album is nothing short of astonishing. I remember playing around with the stereo one day, listening for different effects as I made minor changes to the tracking weight, the VTA, adjustments to the Hallographs and the like, and at one point I noticed that the ensemble seemed to be more coherently connected, with each of the players more properly balanced with the others. 

It was a striking effect and it made me realize that musical values can often be overlooked while chasing after audiophile effects of one kind or another.

Hearing the ensemble come together made me appreciate this album even more.

Tony Williams on the drums here deserves a special nod. His cymbal work on the first track is original and spontaneous in the best tradition of jazz improvisation. (more…)

Dexter Gordon Knocked Us Out All the Way Back in 2007

Hot Stamper Pressings of Blue Note Albums Available Now

UPDATE 2026

We used to have a lower opinion of Blue Note, but that changed over the next couple of decades as we found more and more amazing recordings on their label, most of them reissues of one kind or another.

Some text has been altered, mostly the overuse of capitalization.

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.

Both the sax and the trumpet sound unbelievably good — airy and breathy with lots of body and clearly audible leading edge transients. It’s hard to find a Blue Note where the horns aren’t either too smooth or too edgy, but here they have just the right amount of bite. The overall sound is open, spacious, tonally correct from top to bottom and totally free from distortion. We’ve heard good copies of this album before, but this one is magical.

The presence and immediacy on this copy are stunning. Just listen to the snare drum at the beginning of Coppin’ The Haven — it sounds like someone is bangin’ that thing right in your living room.

We’ve never heard a Blue Note with this kind of clarity, this kind of transparency, and this much life. We rate it an A+++ on both sides — Master Tape Sound, As Good As It Gets.

This copy has the power of live music. When we turned it up loud, it was as if we were right up front at one of the best jazz concerts imaginable. The music is every bit as good — soulful hard bop played superbly and passionately.

Just listen to Donald Byrd blowing his lungs out on his own Tanya, or Gordon’s lyrical solo on Darn That Dream — these guys are pros at the top of their game.

Further Reading

Mingus Revisited – 25 Guys in a Big Room Playing Live

More of the Music of Charles Mingus

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Charles Mingus

This copy sounds like a big room full of musicians (25 in all!) playing live, which it surely was. The Tubey Magical richness of this 1960 recording is breathtaking – no modern record can touch it. Allmusic gives it 4 stars and we think it’s maybe even a better than that.

On both sides the best sound can be heard starting with the second track, but on side one the first track was very spacious and had a fuller sounding piano than practically any other we played.

This copy has the original bound-in booklet with pictures and background on the recording, which was “directed” by none other than Leonard Feather.

The best copies recreate a live studio space the size of which you will not believe.

On both sides the best sound can be heard starting with the second track, but on side one the first track was very spacious and had a fuller sounding piano than practically any other we played.

Side one is tonally correct, Tubey Magical and above all natural. The timbre of each and every instrument is right and it doesn’t take a pair of golden ears to hear it.

Side two is big, clear and balanced, with an especially sweet, rich, tubey sax — what a sound! So high-resolution too. The top extends beautifully on this copy, and that was not true for most of the copies we played.

If you love ’50s and ’60s jazz you cannot go wrong here. Mingus was a genius and the original music on this record is just one more album’s worth of proof of that fact.

Hi-Fidelity

What do we love about these vintage jazz Hot Stamper pressings? The timbre of every instrument is Hi-Fi in the best sense of the word. The unique sounds of the instruments are reproduced with remarkable fidelity. That’s what we at Better Records mean by “Hi-Fi”, not the kind of Audiophile Phony BS Sound that passes for Hi-Fidelity these days. There’s no boosted top, there’s no bloated bottom, there’s no sucked-out midrange.

This is Hi-Fidelity for those who recognize The Real Thing when they hear it. I’m pretty sure our customers do, and whoever picks this one up is guaranteed to get a real kick out of it.