percussion-test

Some of our favorite percussion test discs.

Varese / Arcana, Ionisation and more / Mehta

More of the music of Edgar Varese (1883-1965)

Decca and London Hot Stamper Pressings Available Now

  • This wonderful orchestral spectacular returns to the site after a 2+ year hiatus, here with STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it on this vintage London pressing
  • Both sides are open, high-rez, and spacious, with depth like you will not believe – this recording of the LA Phil is truly spectacular (and we say that about very few LA Phil recordings outside of this one)
  • Dynamic, huge, lively, transparent and natural – with a record this good, your ability to suspend disbelief will require practically no effort at all

Superb sound for this crazy 20th Century music, featuring wild and wacky works which rely almost exclusively on percussion (not one, not two, but three bass drums!). My favorite piece here may be Ionisation, which uses real sirens (the Old School ones cranked by hand) as part of Varese’s uniquely specialized instrumental array.

The speed of the percussion is also critical to its accurate reproduction. No two pieces of electronics will get this record to sound the same, and some will fail miserably. If vintage tube gear is your idea of good sound, this record may help you to better understand where its shortcomings lie.

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Shelly Manne & Jack Marshall – Sounds!

More Shelly Manne

 More Exotica and Easy Listening Recordings

  • Sounds! makes its Hot Stamper debut on this original Capitol Stereo pressing with stunning Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) sound from start to finish – just shy of our Shootout Winner
  • Spacious, rich and smooth – only vintage analog seems capable of reproducing all three of these qualities without sacrificing resolution, staging, imaging or presence
  • The follow up to Sounds Unheard Of!, the duo’s 1962 stereo test and demo record released on the Contemporary label

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Britten / Young Person’s Guide To The Orchestra

More of the music of Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)

More Classical and Orchestral Recordings

  • An early UK Wideband London stereo pressing with excellent Double Plus (A++) sound or close to it on both sides
  • It’s also fairly quiet at Mint Minus Minus, a grade that even our most well-cared-for vintage classical titles have trouble playing at
  • The Young Person’s Guide is on side two of this album, and that is the better sounding side here
  • The early London pressings often do well in our shootouts, but the Unboxed Decca originals are a step up in class, when and if they can be found with quiet enough surfaces
  • For those who have never heard the work, check out The Young Person’s Guide on YouTube – it is a tour de force of orchestral excitement, especially the percussion section

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Listening in Depth to Joe Jackson – Balancing Night with Day

More of the Music of Joe Jackson

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Joe Jackson

There are basically four elements that go into the making of Night and Day: vocals; keyboards (mostly the piano); percussion (in the mids and highs) and rhythm (drums and bass).

No two copies will get all of these elements to sound their best. The trick to finding the hottest of the Hot Stamper pressings is to find copies of the album that reproduce these four elements clearly and correctly. They should be balanced with one another, and distributed throughout a large, three-dimensional studio space.

It may sound easy but I assure you it is not. With this many instruments in the mix, it’s a lot to get right.

Vocals

Pop records live and die by the quality of their vocals and Night and Day is no different in that respect. The vocals have to be front and center. Veiling in the midrange costs a fair number of points. They should also be smooth, not thin or edgy. I would rather have slightly veiled vocals relative to thin and edgy ones, but some copies manage to give you full, clear, present vocals, and those are the ones we tend to like the best.

Keyboards

When the sound is thin in the lower midrange and upper bass the piano will lose its weight and solidity. In the denser mixes it can easily get washed out, and nobody wants a washed out piano.

There is no guitar on this record. The piano carries much of the structural energy of the music. You need to be able to hear the piano clearly and hear that it is both full-bodied and percussive. (more…)

Bizet-Shchedrin / As Tough a Test Disc As Any We Know

More of the music of Georges Bizet (1838-1875)

More Turntable Setup Advice

If I had only one record to bring to someone’s house in order to evaluate their equipment, a killer copy of this Bizet-Shchedrin record would certainly be at the top of my list. (Here are some others.)

If you can make this record sound the way it should, your stereo is cookin’.

If you are having problems, this record will show them to you in short order.

Many copies are bright in the upper-midrange, sounding as nasally and artificial as a bad Mercury or London. Many lack weight down low. The lower strings and heavier percussion play a crucial role in balancing out the upper strings and lighter percussion, so without enough going on down low, the sound skews upwards in an artificial way.

If your copy has either of these problems don’t use it to set up or tweak anything in your system.

Use one of our Hot Stampers, the hotter the better.

The sound of the best copies is rich, full-bodied, incredibly spacious, and exceptionally extended up top. There is a prodigious amount of musical information spread across the soundstage, much of it difficult to reproduce. Musicians are banging on so many different percussive devices (often at the back of the stage, exactly where they should be) that getting each one’s sonic character to clearly come through is a challenge. And when you’ve met it, a thrill.

If you’ve done your homework with VTA, Azimuth, Anti-Skate and Tracking Weight, this is the record that will make clear just how much you’ve accomplished.

Neutrality Is Key

But boy is it a difficult record to reproduce. You better have everything working right when you play this one — it’s guaranteed to bring practically any audiophile system to its knees. And if you have any peaky audiophile wire in your system, the kind that is full of detail but calls attention to itself, you are in big trouble with a record like this.

More than anything, this is a record that rewards your system’s neutrality.

The recording has tremendous transients and dynamics. Be prepared to have trouble tracking it. In that respect it’s a prime candidate for table, cartridge and system tweaking.

If you have the kind of big system that a record like this demands, when you drop the needle on the best of our Hot Stamper pressings, you are going to hear some amazing sound.

Further Reading

Percussion Is Key to Night and Day

More of the Music of Joe Jackson

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Joe Jackson

Rich solid piano tone, lively drums, tight powerful bass and plenty of vocal presence make this one come ALIVE and sound just the way it should. You’ll want to turn it up to get the full effect, because the music really swings on a copy that sounds as good as this one. It not only swings, it ROCKS.

From that opening big drum on ‘Another World,’ you know you’re in for some wonderful sound: BIG, spacious, transparent, dynamic — you name it, this record has it all. Lesser original copies can be grainy, irritating, flat and lifeless. Nothing new there, right?

Most reissues are clearly made from sub-generation tapes. They sound smeared and dead and are guaranteed to bore you to tears. With the right originals the sound is MAGIC.

Night and Day is Joe Jackson’s masterpiece. The music is simply WONDERFUL from start to finish. 

TRACK LISTING

Side One

Another World 

The big drum and all the percussion instruments that lead off this track — and by percussion instruments I am also referring to the piano — tell you everything you need to know. The timbre of the big drum is very pronounced on the best copies.

Chinatown
T.V. Age
Target 

This track has some really deep bass. Check it out.

Steppin’ Out

Side Two

Breaking Us in Two
Cancer
Real Men
A Slow Song 

This is a tough track because Jackson’s vocal can sound strained on even the best copies, and positively painful on the worst ones. If side two has plenty of top end and not much edge to his voice, you have a copy that’s definitely in the ballpark.

AMG  Review

Jackson’s Night and Day and Costello’s Imperial Bedroom announced to the world that both were “serious songwriters,” standing far apart from the clamoring punkers and silly new wavers.

John Klemmer / Touch – A Great Test for Your Tweeters

More of the Music of John Klemmer

More Records That Are a Good Test for High Frequency Extension

Mobile Fidelity, maker of some of the worst sounding records in the history of the medium, is the KING on this title. We know of no better pressing than the right version of the MoFi. (There are three different stampers for the MoFi, and only one of them ever wins shootouts.)

Klemmer says pure emotion is what inspired the album’s creation. Whatever he tapped into to find the source of that inspiration he really hit pay dirt with Touch. It’s the heaviest smooth jazz ever recorded. Musically and sonically, this is the pinnacle of Klemmer’s smooth jazz body of work. I know of none better. (If you want to hear him play more straight-ahead jazz try Straight from the Heart on Nautilus Direct to Disc.)

High Frequency Testing

MoFi was famous for demonstrating on an actual scope that the standard domestic ABC pressing had nothing above about 8 or 10 thousand cycles up top, which is why they all sound insufferably dull and dead. Some MoFi copies have no real top end either, which is the reason to we do these shootouts — to find the copies that are actually mastered and pressed right, not just the ones that should have been.

There’s plenty of information above 15K I would guess on this record — all those delicate percussion instruments ring so sweetly, the highs have to be extending way up there. (This album would probably make a good test to see how well your tweeters work, as well as for turntable setup. The right tracking weight and VTA are crucial to getting all the harmonics of a record like this right.) (more…)

The Beatles – Two Key Tracks for Testing Rubber Soul

Hot Stamper Pressings of Rubber Soul Available Now

Reviews and Commentaries for Rubber Soul

Rubber Soul is one of the most difficult Beatles records to get to sound right. The individual tracks seem to vary drastically in terms of their tonality. Some (What Goes On) sound sweet, rich and near perfect. Others (You Won’t See Me) can be thin and midrangy. What’s a mother to do?

I think what we’re dealing with here are completely different approaches to the final mix. The Beatles were experimenting with different kinds of sounds, and their experiments produced very different results from track to track on this album more than practically any other I can think of besides The White Album (which was recorded in multiple studios by multiple producers and engineers).

Is Your Rig Up To It?

One final note: this is the kind of record that really rewards a good cartridge/ arm/ table combination. You do not want to play this record with a lean or bright sounding cartridge, or a front end that does not track sibilances well. (I could name some equipment that I would not want to play this record on, but rather than insult the owners of such equipment, let’s just say they will have a tough time with this record.)

The Toughest Test on Side One

“Nowhere Man.” Unless you have an especially good copy this song will sound VERY compressed, much too thick and congealed to be as enjoyable as we know it can be. The best copies manage to find the richness in the sound as well as the breathiness in the vocals that others barely hint at.

Play this track on whatever copies you own (more than one I hope) and see if it doesn’t sound as compressed, thick and congested as we describe.

The Toughest Test on Side Two

“Wait,” a song we’ve never commented about before. The drums in the left channel are a key test — they should have huge amounts of energy.

In the other channel, the shakers and tambourines are well up in the mix and really come jumping out of the right speaker on the best copies.

The bass is a slightly lean compared to the other tracks and tends to get lost somewhat. If you can follow it throughout the song, that’s a good thing.

Balancing the bass and drums in the left channel with the vocals and percussion in the right channel is not easy to do, which is of course what makes it a great track to test with.

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Bernstein – Conducts Symphonic Dances from West Side Story

More music written or performed by Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990)

More Orchestral Spectaculars

  • This vintage Columbia stereo pressing boasts outstanding sound from first note to last
  • The best copies are out of this world, reproducing some of the most dynamic, exciting, richest, and most spacious sound we have ever heard from Columbia records, especially those conducted by Leonard Bernstein
  • The music is wonderful of course, with the Suites giving you all the best parts of his marvelous compositions with none of the filler
  • These vibrant orchestrations are played with tremendous energy, and that, coupled with rich and tubey analog sound, combine for an especially immersive and engrossing listening experience, particularly on side one here
  • For those of you playing along at home, it should be obvious why side one earned the higher grade – some of the qualities important to the sound are in greater abundance on side one, and this is not in any way difficult to hear

This is one of the great Columbia recordings. I suspected it might have been done at their legendary Columbia studios in New York but I was wrong, Manhattan Center’s huge stage served as the venue. Either way the sound is no less glorious.

One of the biggest advantages this copy had over most of what we played is fuller brass. The shrill sounding horns on most Columbia albums is what gets them tossed into the trade pile. Fortunately for us audiophiles who care about these sorts of things, the sound here is rich and clean, with solid, deep bass. The stage is huge, with the multi-miking kept to a minimum so that you can really hear the space this big group of musicians occupies.

There is a HUGE amount of top end on this recording. Wildly splashing cymbals and other percussion instruments are everywhere, and they are a joy to hear. No original was as clean up top as this reissue, and without a clear, (mostly) distortion-free top end, the work will simply not sound the way Bernstein wanted it to.

All that percussion is in the score. The high-frequency energy – perhaps the most I have ever heard from any recording of his music — is there for a reason. He conducted his own score, and one can only assume he liked the way it came out. We sure did. (more…)

Britten / Young Person’s Guide To The Orchestra

More of the music of Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)

More Classical and Orchestral Recordings

  • An original UK Unboxed Decca stereo pressing with STUNNING Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) sound on both sides – just shy of our Shootout Winner
  • This one plays Mint Minus Minus to EX++ throughout, with no audible marks and no groove distortion of any kind, which is not bad considering it is an early pressing from 1964
  • We learned in our shootout that the London pressing can also be quite good, but none of them earned the kinds of grades the early Deccas did
  • For those who have never heard the work, check out The Young Person’s Guide on youtube — it is a tour de force of orchestral excitement, especially the percussion section

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