top-test

“The greater the difficulty, the more glory in surmounting it. Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests.” – Epictetus

Listening in Depth to Songs for Beginners

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Graham Nash Available Now

Presenting another entry in our extensive listening in depth series with advice on what to listen for as you critically evaluate your copy of Song for Beginners.

(Here are some other albums currently on our site with similar track by track breakdowns.)

This is one helluva well recorded album. Most of the credit must go to the team of recording engineers, led here by the esteemed Bill Halverson, the man behind all of the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young albums. Nash was clearly influenced by his work with his gifted bandmates, proving with this album that he can hold his own with the best of the best.

Some songs (We Can Change The World, Be Yourself) are grandly scaled productions with the kind of studio polish that would make Supertramp envious. For me, a big speaker guy with a penchant for giving the old volume knob an extra click or two, it just doesn’t get any better.

Others (Sleep Song, Wounded Bird) are quiet and intimate. Their subtlely is highlighted by the big productions surrounding them. This is that rare album in which every aspect of the production, from the arrangements to the final mix, serves to bring out the best qualities in the songs, regardless of scale.

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Piano and Snare Testing with Love Over Gold

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Dire Straits Available Now

UPDATE 2026

In 2017 we reviewed a copy of Love Over Gold that really knocked us out. This was sound we had never heard on the album before, so as you can imagine, we had to tell the world -s or at least that small part of the world that accepts the reality of Hot Stamper Pressings — all about it.

Since then we have noted the value of testing albums with pianos and snare drums as those seem to be key part of some recordings that are hard to get right, which of course is makes them good tests.

Telegraph Road does something on this copy that you won’t hear on one out of twenty pressings: It ROCKS. It’s got ENERGY and DRIVE.

Listen to how hard Allan Clark bangs on the piano on side one — he’s pounding that piano with all his might. No other copy managed to get the piano to pop the way it does here, so clear and solid.

Wow, who knew? Maybe this is the reason HP put the record on the TAS Super Disc List. (I rather doubt he’s ever heard a copy this good, but who’s to say?)

Best test for side two?

The snare drum on Industrial Disease. Play five copies of the album and listen on each of them for how much snap there is to the snare. It will be obvious which ones get the transient attack right and which ones don’t. (If none of them do, try five more copies!)

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What to Do If a Favorite Record Changes Its Sound

Records We’ve Found Are Good for Testing

UPDATE 2026

This commentary was written around 2010. Note that we rarely have this title in stock, for the simple reason that these days it’s just too hard to find with the right stampers and good vinyl.

Our last big shootout for Blood, Sweat and Tears’ debut was back in early 2008. Since we never tire of discussing the revolutionary changes in audio that have occurred over the last quite eventful year (really more like five quite eventful years) , we here provide you with yet another link to that commentary.

Suffice to say, this record, like most good records, got a whole lot better.

(Some records do not, but that’s another story for another day. If your audiophile pressings — especially these — start to sound funny, you are probably on solid ground. They sure sound funny to us.) 

This time around all the best qualities of the best copies stayed the same; this is to be expected.

If records you have known well, over a very long period of time, suddenly start to sound different*, you can be pretty sure that you’ve made an error of some kind in your system, room, electricity, setup or something else.

You need to find it and figure out how to fix it as quickly as possible, although as a rule this process can turn out to be very time consuming and difficult.

The first place I would look is to any changes you might have made in your wiring, whether speaker, interconnect or power cord. (Robert Brook has done some work in this area that you may find helpful.)

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Listening in Depth to Romantic Warrior

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Return to Forever Available Now

Romantic Warrior is my favorite Jazz/Rock Fusion album of all time. As good as the music is, the sound is even better.

This is the Jazz/Rock Demo Disc that stands head and shoulders above the rest. In my experience, no record of this kind is more dynamic or has better bass. Not one.

Demo Disc doesn’t begin to do this kind of sound justice.

Simply put, not only is this one of the greatest musical statements of all time, it’s one of the great recording achievements. Few albums in the history of the world can lay claim to this kind of sonic power and energy.

But the Super Sound has a purpose, a raison d’etre. This is the kind of music that requires it; better yet, demands it. In truth, the sound is not only up to the challenge of expressing the life of the music on this album, it positively enhances it.

Just to take one example: Those monster Lenny White drum rolls that run across the soundstage from wall to wall may be a recording studio trick, but they’re there to draw your attention to his amazing powers, and it works! The drums are everywhere on this album, constantly jumping out of the soundfield and taking the music into the stratosphere where it belongs.

Side One

Medieval Overture

The grandiose opening of this record serves as an important sonic checkpoint, as well as a tipoff for the pyrotechnics to come. On the better copies Corea’s multi-layered, swirling synths occupy their own space, clearly separated from each other, not blurred and inarticulate as they are on the poorer pressings.

Also notice how much attack Lenny White’s drums have, especially in the more exposed sections. The transients are breathtakingly immediate. Run-of-the-mill copies tend to flatten Mr White, making his acrobatic playing seem two-dimensional and less-than-inspired. The best copies prove that nothing could be further from the truth.

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Bashin’ Is a Good Test for Setup, Tweaks, Room Treatments, etc.

Hot Stamper Pressings of Large Group Jazz Recordings Available Now

On side one of Smith’s (and Oliver Nelson’s) Masterpiece, Bashin’, the bell tree in the right channel on track one is a great test for top end extension, resolution of harmonic complexity, overall clarity and freedom from smear.

Get all the top end you can from whatever turntable adjustment, tweak or room treatment you’re messing around with, then check to make sure that all the brass instruments still sound right. If they do, you are probably good to go.

Blary, smeary, leading-edge-challenged horns are the kiss of death on this album, as are grainy, gritty, transistory ones.

When the horns have clarity, correct tonality, plenty of space around them and a solid, full-bodied sound, probably every other instrument in the soundscape will too. Other records with brass instruments that are good for testing can be found here.

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On Please Please Me, Which Is More 3-Dimensional, Mono or Twin Track?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Beatles Available Now

With all due respect to George Martin, we’ve played a number of mono pressings of Please Please Me in the past twenty or so years and have never been particularly impressed by any of them.

The monos jam all the voices and instruments together in the middle, stacking them one in front of the other, and lots of musical information gets mashed up and simply disappears in the congestion. 

But is twin track stereo any better?

Yes, when you do it the way Norman Smith did on Please Please Me.

Twin Track stereo (which is actually not very much like two-track stereo, I’m sure Wikipedia must have a listing for it if you’re interested) is like two mono tracks running simultaneously. It allows the completely separate voices to occupy one channel and the completely separate instruments to occupy another, with no leakage between them.

On some stereos it may seem as though the musicians and the singers are not playing together the way they would if one were hearing them in mono. They are in fact recorded on two separate mono tracks, the instruments appearing in the left channel and the singers in the right, separated as much as is physically possible.

Stuck in their individual stereo speakers, so far apart from one another, the members of the band don’t even seem to be playing together in the same room.

That’s on some stereos, and by some stereos I mean stereos that need improvement. Here’s why.

Three-Dimensional Mono?

In the final mixing stage, Norman Smith added separate reverb to each of the two channels, sending the reverb for the sound recorded in each channel to the opposite channel. This has the effect of making the studio, the physical space that The Beatles appear to be in, seem to stretch all the way from the right channel, where the Beatles’ voices are heard, to the back left corner of the studio, where the reverb eventually trails off.

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Belafonte at Carnegie Hall – I Have a Theory

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Harry Belafonte Available Now

We’ve long known that some copies of the album are mastered with the polarity reversed. This is one of those copies.

But the crazy news we have today is that this copy of the album sound just fine without reversing the polarity of the system, better than any other copy we played.

True, it sounds a bit better with the polarity reversed, but it is still our Shootout Winner even with the wrong polarity.

I would never have believed that to be the case in the past, but my theory is that the new studio we built has reduced distortions and problems to such a degree that polarity issues are less of a problem now than they might have been in the past.

As I say, it’s just a theory, and as time goes on we will revisit this idea with other recordings that we know to have polarity issues, and we’ll be sure to let you know what we find.

The best sounding versions we played are cut super clean. The brass and strings have dead-on correct textures and timbres.

As good as some pressings are, the best pressings are clearly a step up in class. The differences are easy to hear:

  • The brass has more weight and body and richness.
  • Same with the strings.
  • The voice gets fuller and sweeter and less sibilant, while still maintaining every nuance of detail.
  • The presence is startling; Belafonte is absolutely in the room with you.

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Port’s Rule and The Song of the Volga Boatman

More Records that Helped Me Make Progress in Audio

The track that started us down the road to our first Sauter-Finegan shootout is, to this very day, our Number One Test Track of All Time, a little ditty known as the Song of the Volga Boatman.

We first heard it back in the 90s on Bob and Ray Throw a Stereo Spectacular, which is still the version we test with, but this album of forward-looking big band contains that track  as well as 10 others, all with truly amazing sound.

Why is the Song of the Volga Boatman our ultimate test track?

The simplest way to understand it is that all the instruments are being played live in the studio, and all of them in the huge soundfield are real and acoustic — string bass, drums, horns of every size and type, woodwinds, percussion, tubular bells, etc.

In addition, the arrangements given to this roomful of players is so complex and lively that if anything sounds “funny,” to use the precise audiophile nomenclature, it really calls attention to itself.

Port’s Rule states: If it isn’t easy for your Test Discs to sound wrong, they are not very good Test Discs.

Wrong is the natural order of things.

Getting it right is where the work comes in to play.

And it should seem more like play than work or you are unlikely to get very far with it. (That’s another one of Port’s Rules, sometimes referred to as music does the driving.)

When the stereo is right from top to bottom, this song is right from top to bottom, and every other record we know the sound of will have the sound it’s supposed to have.

It seems simple and in some ways it is.

We’ve been getting the Song of the Volga Boatman to sound bigger and better now for years, through scores and scores of changes. At our current stage of audio evolution, at the very loud levels we play it at, it’s shocking how big, powerful and real it seems. It has more of the “live music” qualities we prize than almost any other studio recording I can think of.

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Thick as a Brick Is a Top Test Disc for System Accuracy

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Jethro Tull Available Now

From 2009 to 2010 this was our single go-to record for testing and tweaking our system.

Although we now use an amazing copy of Bob and Ray (the big band version of The Song of the Volga Boatmen located therein has to be one of the toughest tests we know of), we could easily go back to using TAAB.

Artificiality is the single greatest problem that every serious audiophile must guard against with every change and tweak to his stereo. cleaning system, room, electricity and everything else.

Since TAAB is absolutely ruthless at exposing the slightest hint of artificiality in the sound of the system, it is clearly one of the best recordings one can use to test and tune with. Here are just some of the reasons this was one of our favorite test records back in the day:

Dynamics

The better copies are shockingly dynamic. At about the three minute mark the band joins in the fun and really starts rocking. Set your volume for as loud as your system can play that section. The rest of the music, including the very quietest parts, will then play correctly for all of side one. For side two the same volume setting should be fine.

Bass

The recording can have exceptionally solid, deep punchy bass (just check out Barrie “Barriemore” Barlow’s drumming, especially his kick and floor toms. The guy is on fire).

Midrange

The midrange is usually transparent and the top end sweet and extended on the better pressings.

Tubey Magic

The recording was made in 1972, so there’s still plenty of Tubey Magic to be heard on the acoustic guitars and flutes.

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Top End Extension Is Key to the Best Pressings of Fingers

airtofinge_

Hot Stamper Pressings of Jazz Fusion Albums Available Now

The best copies have the highs that are missing from so many of the CTI originals. When you play them against most copies, there is an extension to the top end that you won’t hear elsewhere. Since this album is heavy on percussion, that difference is critical.

The HARMONICS of the percussion are critically important to the music. When they go missing, it’s as if the music seems to slow down, a strange effect but a fairly common one with rhythmically dense arrangements such as these. Some of the energy of the music is lost. 

With an extended top end the sound is SWEET, not HARSH. Believe us when we tell you, the last thing you want is a harsh sounding pressing of a Rudy Van Gelder recording. (Not unless you have a dull, dull, deadly dull system. Those old school stereos are practically the only way one can tolerate some of his early recordings.)

With so many high frequency transients and such complex arrangements, this is a record that must be mastered (and pressed) with great skill or the result is going to be trouble. RVG, who both recorded and mastered the album, has a penchant for over-cutting records and being heavy handed when it comes to his favorite studio tricks, often to the detriment of instrumental fidelity. When his approach works, the resulting recordings are wonderful. When he gets too carried away with his “sound,” look out.

This is without a doubt the best album Airto ever made. On top of that, this copy really has the kind of sound we look for, with an open, fully extended top end that gives all the elements of this complex music room to breathe.

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