Important Lessons We Learned from Record Experiments
We have a section on the blog you may have seen called live and learn.
It’s devoted to discussing the records we think we we were wrong about.
Oh yes, it’s true. But it’s not really a problem for us here at Better Records. We see no need to cover up our mistakes. The process of learning involves recognizing and correcting previous errors.
Approached scientifically, all knowledge — in any field, not just record collecting or music reproduction — is incomplete, imperfect, and must be considered provisional.
What seems true today might easily be proven false tomorrow. If you haven’t discovered that for yourself yet, one thing’s for certain, you haven’t been in this hobby for very long.
We’re so used to the conventional wisdom being wrong, and having our own previous findings overturned by new ones, that we gladly go out of our way in listing after listing to point out just how wrong we were. (And of course why we think we are correct now.)
A common misperception among those visiting the site is that we think we know it all. Nothing could be further from the truth.
We learn something new about records with practically every shootout.
Each time we go back and play a 180 gram or Half-Speed mastered LP we used to like (or dislike), we gain a better understanding of its true nature. (The bulk of those “audiophile” pressings seem to get worse and worse over time, a subject that has been thoroughly discussed on the blog.)
Record cleaning gets better, front ends get better, electronics get better, tweaks get better, rooms get better — every aspect of your playback system should be improving on a regular basis, allowing you to more correctly identify the strengths and weaknesses of every record you play.
I almost forgot: your ears get better too, whether you like it or not. If that’s not happening, you’re probably not doing some very important things right. (Maybe some of your records are holding you back.)
What follows is a typical excerpt from a recent listing.