percussion-test

Some of our favorite percussion test discs.

Albeniz / Suite Espanola on Decca

More of the Music of Albeniz

  • With two seriously good Double Plus (A++) sides, we guarantee you’ve never heard Suite Espanola sound remotely as good as it does on this vintage Decca pressing – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • This is our best sounding Decca pressing – the best Londons will always win the shootouts we do, but the best Deccas can come close and sound truly amazing in their own right
  • The orchestral power on display is positively breathtaking – few recordings we know of are this dynamic and exciting
  • Wilkie’s Decca Tree recording is overflowing with the kind of clear, spacious, realistic sound that can only be found on the better vintage vinyl LPs
  • Performances and sound like no other – De Burgos’s Suite Espanola is practically in a league of its own

Wow, is this record ever dynamic! I would put it right up there with the most dynamic recordings we have played over the course of the last twenty five years. It also has tons of depth. The brass is at the far back of the stage, just exactly where they would be placed in the concert hall, which adds greatly to the realism of the recording.

Note that careful VTA adjustment for a record with this kind of dynamic energy is a must. Having your front end calibrated to this record is the only way to guarantee there is no distortion or shrillness in even the loudest passages.

What to Listen For

Clear castanets.

Big bass drum thwacks.

Crescendos that build to intense climaxes.

(more…)

Listening in Depth to Heavy Weather

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Weather Report Available Now

Heavy Weather has some of the biggest, boldest sound we’ve ever heard.

It’s clearly a big speaker Demo Disc. Play this one as loud as you can. The louder you play it, the better it will sound.

The commentary below contains track-by-track advice on what to listen for when auditioning the album.

Side One

Birdland

Not an easy track to get right; there’s so much upper midrange and high frequency information to deal with. If the synthesizers and horns are too much, the effect is exciting but won’t wear well. Too much 6k is the problem on most copies, along with not enough above 10. That is a deadly combination.

A Remark You Made

Such an original composition. This is the band at their unconventional, uncommercial best.

(more…)

Listen for a Sweetly Extended Top End on Bang, Baaroom and Harp

Hot Stamper Percussion Recordings Available Now

What to listen for you ask? Top end, plain and simple.

It’s the RARE copy that has the incredible extension of the side two we played recently. The space, the clarity, the harmonic complexity — perhaps one out of ten copies will show you a side two like that.

The highs are so good on this record you can use it as a setup tool. Adjust your VTA, tracking weight and the like for the most natural and clear top end, then check for all the other qualities you want to hear. You may just find yourself operating on a higher sonic plane than you ever thought possible.

Harry Pearson put this record on his TAS List of Super Discs, and rightfully so. It certainly can be a Super Disc, but only when you have the right pressing. It’s a real treat to hear such a crazy assortment of percussion instruments with this kind of amazingly clear, high-resolution sound!

This is one of the Demo Discs on the TAS List which truly deserves its status when, and only when, you have a killer copy.

UPDATE 2025

The last three shootouts for this album were won by the same set of stampers. Here are about a hundred other albums with one set of stampers that consistently win shootouts.

There is only one other set of stampers that we buy apart from those of the shootout winners. We avoid the rest. As a rule this is not our approach, but in the case of this record, having done so many shootouts for it over the course of decades, we can’t be bothered to buy, clean and play the pressings that have little hope of earning good grades.

This album is hard enough to sell as it is, even when it sounds amazing. Like so many other records we offer, we think it should be more popular with audiophiles, especially for those more serious types who don’t mind working at improving their playback.

The best copies are amazingly spacious and three-dimensional. They would probably come in handy for setting up speakers using some of the principles outlined in this discussion of the “room coupling method.”

(more…)

Turned Up Good and Loud, Carnavalito Is Glorious

Records that Must Be Turned Up Good and Loud to Sound Their Best

UPDATE 2024

The commentary about Carnavalito you see below was written in 2016. With the 12 foot high ceiling in our new, bigger and quite a bit more spacious studio, I’ll bet this album sounds even more mind-blowing than it did back then.

Ken Perry mastered all the best early pressings — accept no substitutes.

Here in 2024 we’ve just done the shootout again, our first since 2016.

Sky Islands is not an easy record to find as it didn’t sell particularly well, but those of you who treasure the music of Weather Report or Return to Forever or The Mahavishnu Orchestra the way we do here at Better Record (or, to be clear, some of us do) will find much to like here.

Finding customers for music most audiophiles have never heard of, let alone heard, has always been the trick with well recorded, mostly unknown releases such as Sky Islands.

Which means that this is a woefully underrated album that should be more popular with audiophiles.

It’s also one of those difficult-to-reproduce records that I credit with helping me make real progress in audio (along with a great many others.).

Carnavalito is a track that really comes alive when you crank up the volume. I played it full blast on two different occasions for audiophile friends of mine just to show them what happens when a big speaker system meets a recording with absolutely amazing audiophile quality sound — big and bold, wall to wall and then some!

It’s my favorite track not only for the album as a whole but for the band’s entire recorded output. It just doesn’t get any better than this if you have the system for it.

Hearing the megawatt energy in the section when the soprano saxophonist jumps in, right into an ongoing orgy of wild percussion, who then proceeds to blow his brains out — now that is a thrill beyond belief. Played REALLY LOUD it’s about the closest to The Real Thing, the Live Event, that you will ever hear in your living room. (Unless you have a very large living room and lots of latin jazz musician friends.)

Even a year ago there was no way I could get that music to play that LOUD, that CLEANLY, and that CORRECTLY in terms of tonality, from the deepest bass to the highest highs, with the wild swings in dynamics that the recording captures so well.

The audio revolution is alive and well. It’s never too late to join in the fun.

(more…)

For Arcana, Speed Is Key

Hot Stamper Pressings on Decca and London Available Now

This is a recording that allows your speakers to disappear completely like practically no other. A powerful Test Disc as well. Use this one to check your speed and staging, subtle changes in your equipment can have a big effect on recordings like this

Incredible 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.

But the main reason audiophiles will LOVE this album is not the music, but the SOUND. Ionisation has amazing depth, soundstaging, dynamics, three-dimensionality and absolutely dead-on tonality — it’s hard to imagine a recording that allows your speakers to disappear more completely than this one.

It also makes a superb test disc. Subtle changes in your equipment can have a big effect on recordings like this.

The instrumental palette is large and colorful, giving the critical listener plenty to work with.

And this copy is perfect for testing because is is nearly FLAWLESS in its sound. No other copy could touch it. Many copies are not especially transparent, spacious or three-dimensional, and lack extension on both ends of the frequency spectrum.

The SPEED of the percussion is also critical to its proper 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 the ultimate in sound, this record may help you to better understand where its shortcomings lie.

(more…)

Britten / Young Person’s Guide To The Orchestra

More of the Music of Benjamin Britten

  • Superb sound throughout this unboxed UK Decca stereo pressing, with both sides earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades
  • It’s also exceptionally quiet at the high end of Mint Minus Minus, a grade that even our most well-cared-for vintage classical titles have trouble playing at, and it should be noted that early Decca pressings rarely can be found in this condition
  • This is our favorite recording of the work – those of you looking for a Young Person’s Guide can stop looking, this is the one
  • We’ve learned from shootouts past (and were reminded again during our most recent) that the London pressing can also be quite good, but none of them can hold a candle to these early Deccas
  • 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

(more…)

On Discovered Again, Does It Sound Like the Snare Is Wrapped in a Towel on Your Copy?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Direct-to-Disc Recordings Available Now

The bulk of this commentary was written in 2008 and is based on the shootout we had just done, our first for the album. It has been amended a number of times since.

I bought my first copy of Discovered Again in 1976 upon its release. I was a big fan of the label at the time. The Missing Linc had been a revelation to me years before in terms of how good music could sound in the home (or apartment as the case may be). I wrote a bit about it here.

I credit that amazing record as well as Discovered Again as fundamentally important in helping me advance in this devilishly difficult hobby of ours. Back in those dark days of the 70s, although I was completely clueless at the time about pretty much everything having to do with vinyl and equipment, I can take some solace in the fact that everybody else was every bit as clueless as I was too.

This blog is dedicated to sharing some of what I’ve learned — with the unflagging help of my staff of course — about records and audio over the last fifty years.

The sound quality of the typical pressing of Discovered Again leaves much to be desired.

Two areas are especially lacking as a rule: the top end tends to be rolled off, and there is a noticeable lack of presence, which can easily be heard in the drum sound.

The snare sounds like it’s covered with a towel on most copies of this album.

How does that even happen?

Who knows? Even though the mastering is fixed at the live event, there are many other variables which no doubt affect the sound. The album is cut on two different lathes — M (Master) and S (Slave), and pressed in two different countries: Japan and Germany. Many mothers were pulled from the acetates and many, many stampers made from those mothers. (I saw one stamper marked number 15!)

Bottom line? You got to play ’em to know how they sound, just like any other pressing. If no two records sound the same, it follows that no two audiophile records sound the same, a fact that became clear early on in the listening.

Of course not many audiophiles are in a position to shootout six copies of Discovered Again, and I’m not sure most people would have the patience to do it. Here at Better Records we have a whole system set up to do that, so we waited until we had a pile of them, got them all cleaned up, and off to the races we went.

What Else to Listen For

Listen to the harmonics around the cymbals and bells on Git Along Little Dogies — on the best copies you can really hear the transients of the cymbals and percussion, so important to the actual sound of those instruments. (More records that are good for testing percussion can be found here.)

The stand-up acoustic bass is amazingly well recorded on this album; it’s so rich and full-bodied. You will have a hard time finding a string bass that sounds better.

Track after track, the sound is surprisingly open and airy. Dave’s keyboards throughout have wonderful presence; on the best copies they really jump out of the speakers. (A good test for midrange presence.)

(more…)

Listening in Depth to Fingers

Hot Stamper Pressings of Recordings by Rudy Van Gelder Available Now

At times this record really sounds like what it is: a bunch of guys in a big room beating the hell out of their drums and singing at the the top of their lungs. You gotta give RVG credit for capturing so much of that energy on tape and transferring that energy onto a slab of vinyl. 

Of course this assumes that the record in question actually does have the energy of the best copies. It’s also hard to know who or what is to blame when it doesn’t, since even the good stampers sound mediocre most of the time. Bad vinyl, worn out stampers, poor pressing cycle, it could be practically anything.

Side One

Fingers

This is the most problematical track on the entire album — please DO NOT JUDGE the album by this song! The sound is much better on the tracks that follow. This may have been an attempt to get that hot hit single sound for track one, the kind that would jump out of your radio speaker, but the effect can be a bit much, depending on how low distortion and high resolution your equipment is. The better your system, the less of a problem you will have getting this track to play well. If this track sounds decent, everything after it will really shine.

The biggest problem one typically runs into is a lack of bass and lower midrange. On the better copies the bass will be fine on the next track and those that follow.

Romance of Death

The guitar work on this track is stellar, some of the best musicianship on the album. Credit must go to Rudy Van Gelder for making the guitar jump out of the mix. One of the things he can do, practically better than anyone, is make a lead instrument sound as big and as bold as you’ve ever heard it.

Merry-Go-Round

This track has a tendency to be overly compressed. Some stampers have so much added compression that the guitar and the percussion in the middle of the soundfield turn into undifferentiated muck. Those copies are what we refer to as “Not-So-Hot Stampers.”

Wind Chant

Side Two

Note that the sound on side two tends to be more open, rich and clear as a rule.

(more…)

On Sweetnighter, Watch Out for Sourness, Slowness and Smear

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Weather Report

What surprised us most about the dozen or so copies that we played years ago for a shootout was how wrong most copies of this album sound. They’re SOUR in the midrange. On this kind of music, a sour midrange is the kiss of death.

Those copies that aren’t sour are frequently just plain dull. On a recording like this, so full of percussion — which, to be honest, it’s a record that LIVES OR DIES on the quality of its percussion — dullness is devastating.

And so is slowness. If you have old school tube equipment — great for vintage RVG recordings but way too slow to keep up with this fast-paced and percussion-heavy music — this record is not going to do what it desperately wants to do: get your feet tappin’.

Smear is also another thing to watch out for — smear kills what’s good about this record. The percussion transients lose their snap and the harmonics get lost. The less smeary sides really bring out the funky magic of the recording.

(more…)

Touch – A Great Test for Tweeters

More of the Music of John Klemmer

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…)