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

Epictetus

Lincoln Mayorga – Listen for Strained and Blary Brass

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

More Reviews and Commentaries for Direct to Disc Recordings

Most copies of this album are slightly thin and slightly bright.

They give the impression of being clear and clean, but some of the louder brass passages start to get strained and blary, or glary if you like.

The good copies are rich and full.

The sound is balanced from top to bottom.

The sound is smooth, which allows you to play the album all the way through at good loud levels without fatigue.

On the best pressings, the trumpets, trombones, tubas, tambourines, and drums, all have the true tonality and the vibrancy of the real thing. The reason this record was such a big hit in its day is because the recording engineers were able to capture that sound better than anybody else around [not really, but that’s what it seemed like at the time].

That’s also the reason this is a Must Own record today — the sound and the music hold up.

Just listen to that amazing brass choir on Oh Lord, I’m On My Way. It just doesn’t get any better than that. If ever there was a Demo Disc for Brass, this is one!

I used to think the Tower label copies were not as good — that the later pressings were pressed better. Now I know that it doesn’t matter what era the pressing is from: the tonal balance is the key to the best sound.

Notes from an Older Shootout

Side One has all of the texture and transients you could ever want to hear from this title. The bass is big and full-bodied and the drums have all of the energy and presence we love. Again, the CLARITY and clean sound of all the instruments is OFF THE CHARTS!

The beginning of That Certain Feeling is so warm and smooth it makes the typical hard copy sound like crap.

When we dropped the needle on You Are The Sunshine Of My Life, we knew we had a Side Two that was something special.

Immediately we heard more LIFE and ENERGY than we had heard before.

It was so spacious and transparent we felt as if we were in the studio, which is, after all, the point of listening to recording like this, isn’t it?

The bass is PUNCHY and full.

The saxophone solo on ‘Sunshine’ is so breathy and textured and you can hear the keys clacking as he does his trills.

If you have another copy listen for different sax solo performances to see if you have a different take. I believe there are two and they are easily distinguished from one another.

A Round Of Applause For Sheffield

As I’m sure you’ve read on the site, time has not been good to the sound of the typical Mobile Fidelity record. We may have been impressed back in the day, but now it’s clear their mastering approach was disastrous for most of the titles they did.

Sheffield, in this period anyway, turns out to have made some truly amazing sounding records: this one, in particular, as well as the other two Mayorga titles. The Grusin has a few problems [not really when you correct for the polarity issues], and after that their catalog is hit and miss. But the early days at Sheffield produced some wonderful, wonderful albums.

This album checks off a few of our favorite boxes:

On Trust, the Bass Is (Almost) All

Hot Stamper Pressings of Elvis’s Albums Available Now

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Elvis Costello

Notes from a Hot Stamper from a while back.

There’s a TON of low-end on this record. Regrettably, most copies suffer from either a lack of bass or a lack of bass definition. I can’t tell you how much you’re missing when the bass isn’t right on this album. (Or if you have the typical bass-shy audiophile speaker, yuck.) 

It’s without a doubt THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT ASPECT of the sound on this album. When the bass is right, everything falls into place, and the music comes powerfully to life. When the bass is lacking or ill-defined, the music seems labored; the moment-to-moment rhythmic changes in the songs blur together, and the band just doesn’t swing the way it’s supposed to.

On the best pressings, you get the full-on bottom end WHOMP you paid for, with no loss in control. You can clearly follow Bruce Thomas’s bass lines throughout the songs, a real treat for any music lover. (He and Elvis don’t get along, hence the end of the Attractions as his backing band. I guess we should be thankful for the nine albums on which they were together; many of them are Desert Island Discs for me.)

Not only that, but the drums have real body and resonance, a far cry from the wimpy cardboard drum sound you’ll hear on the typical copy.

Hey, these are The Attractions: the pro’s pros. You can’t ask for better, and as expected they deliver big time on this album. But the mastering and pressing problems of most British copies typically make them sound half-hearted and uninspired, which is certainly nothing like what they sound like on the master tape. On the master tape, they play GREAT. You need a very special copy of the LP to hear them play that way, and that’s all there is to it. The better the pressing, the better the band.

A Must Own Title

This, along with My Aim Is True and Armed Forces, is as good as it gets for Elvis on LP. All three are absolute Must Owns that belong in any serious rock collection. This is that rare breed of music that never sounds dated (especially considering the era in which it was produced). Music with real depth such as this only gets better with the passage of time. The more you play it, the more you appreciate it, and love it.

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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 qualify as a good choice.

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.

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…)

Cartridge Tweaking and Turntable Setup Advice

More Turntable Setup Advice

General Audio Advice

Playing so many records every day means that we wear out our Dynavector 17DX cartridges much more often than most consumers would. They last us about three or four months.

This requires us to regularly mount a new cartridge in our Triplanar arm.

Once a new cartridge is broken in (50 hours minimum), we then proceed to carry out the fine setup work required to get it sounding its best. We do that by adjusting the VTA, azimuth and tracking weight for maximum fidelity using recordings we have been playing for decades and that we think know well.

For the longest time our favorite test discs for this purpose have been these:

  1. Bob and Ray Throw a Stereo Spectacular,
  2. Tea for the Tillerman, and
  3. Led Zeppelin II.

(I was the only guy on the listening panel using Bob and Ray, by the way. I have played that record easily 500 or more times. Our listening guys prefer numbers two and three and of course those work fine too.)

We are in the process of making some lists (more lists!) for records we’ve found to be good for testing, tweaking and tuning your system, your room and your front end setup, among other things. You may want to check them out.

These are the records that challenged me and helped me to achieve more progress in audio. If you want to improve your stereo, these are some of the best records we know of to help get you to the next level.

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Listening in Depth to Blue

More of the Music of Joni Mitchell

Reviews and Commentaries for Blue

Presenting another entry in our extensive Listening in Depth series with advice on what to listen for as you critically evaluate your copy of Blue. Here are some albums currently on our site with similar Track by Track breakdowns.

The best copies bring out the breathy quality to Joni’s voice, and she never sounds strained either. They are sweet and open, with good bass foundation and transparency throughout the frequency range.

The best pressings (and today’s better playback equipment) have revealed nuances in this recording — and of course the performances of all the players along with it — that made us fall in love with the music all over again. Of all the tough nuts to crack, this was the toughest, yet somehow copies emerged from our shootouts that made it easy to appreciate the sonic merits of Blue and ignore its shortcomings.

Hot Stampers have a way of doing that. You forget it’s a record; it’s now just music. The right record and the right playback will bring Joni’s music to life in a way that you cannot imagine until you hear it. That is our guarantee on Blue — better than you ever thought possible or your money back.

Side One

All I Want

This is a do-or-die song for side one. When Joni sings “traveling, traveling, traveling, traveling,” she really pushes on the last couple of them, and even the best copies have a hard time dealing with it. When a copy of this record comes in, that first line often tells me that there is no hope for side one.

If an LP can get through that first line properly, it’s at least a ‘B’ and often times a Hot Stamper.

My Old Man

The piano on this track needs to be solid and full-bodied. The sound of the piano tells you if there’s any real weight to the sound of the pressing you are auditioning.

More records that are good for testing the sound of the piano.

Notice that Joni’s voice is much smoother on this track as well. If the whole album sounded like this it wouldn’t be so hard to find a good sounding copy.

Little Green
Carey
Blue

This is a tough track for a number of reasons. Joni really pushes her vocal; it’s at the end of the record where inner groove distortion is at its most problematical; and her voice is quite naked. When you add up these three factors, you have some real hurdles to overcome.

The best copies “survive” this track. Everything before this song on side one can sound awfully good. This song we try to do the best we can with, but it’s the rare copy that won’t have problems of one kind or another.

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Listening in Depth to Led Zeppelin II

More of the Music of Led Zeppelin

Reviews and Commentaries for Led Zeppelin II

The best copies of Zep II have the kind of rock and roll firepower that’s guaranteed to bring any system to its knees.

That’s what makes it a Top Test Disc.

And if you’re looking for rock and pop albums that are very hard to reproduce, here are some that should fit the bill nicely.

Side One

Whole Lotta Love

This album is unique in one sense: both sides of ZEP II start our with MONSTER ROCK AND ROLL tracks with unbelievable dynamics, energy and bass. Most bands would be lucky to get one song like this on an album. This album has about five!

The middle section with the cymbals and panning instruments is key to the best copies. When it starts they goose the volume — not subtly mind you — and a big room opens up in which everything starts bouncing around, reflecting off the walls of the studio. It’s a cool effect, there’s no denying it.

This is the loudest, most dynamic cut on side one. If it doesn’t knock you out, keep turning up the volume and playing it again until it does.

What Is and What Should Never Be

Amazing presence. Plant is right there!

The Lemon Song

The bass parts always sounded muddy on the sub-gen copies I often found. The definition and note-like quality here is superb and it’s only found on these good originals.

There are real dynamics here — the middle part is at a much lower level than the guitars that follow. This song, like so many on II, is really designed to assault you, to give you the sense that guitars are being broken over your head. That’s the kind of power this track has. It’s also relatively smooth and sweet compared to the rest of the album as a whole.

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Sergio Mendes + Psych + Your Mind Will Be Blown

mendestill_depth_1102533608More of the Music of Sergio Mendes and Brasil ’66

Reviews and Commentaries for Stillness

More Albums with Key Tracks for Critical Listening

This commentary was written sometime around 2010.

If you are looking for DEMO DISC QUALITY SOUND with music every bit as wonderful, look no further — this is the record for you.

If I had one song to play to show what my stereo can really do, For What It’s Worth on a Hot Stamper copy would probably be my choice. I can’t think of any material that sounds better. It’s amazingly spacious and open, yet punchy and full-bodied the way only vintage analog recordings ever are.

This one being from 1970 fits the bill nicely.

Side two of this album can be one of THE MOST MAGICAL sides of ANY record — when you’ve got a killer copy. I don’t know of any other record like it. It seems to be in a class of its own. It’s an excellent test disc as well. All tweaks and equipment changes and room treatments must pass the Stillness test.

To fail to make this record sound better is to fail completely. The production is so dense, and so difficult to reproduce properly, that only recently have I begun to hear just how good this record can sound. There is still plenty to discover locked in these grooves, and I enthusiastically accept the challenge to find all the sounds that Sergio created in the studio, locked away in the 40 year old vinyl.

Side One

Stillness
Righteous Life

This is my favorite song on side one. Sergio Mendes magic at its best, with Demo quality sound.

Chelsea Morning

The real test for side one. Without a doubt it’s the hardest song to get to sound right on the entire album. Only certain stampers have the potential and not all of them have the kind of balanced, natural sound that allows the song to work. There’s a certain hardness to the piano on most copies that doesn’t sit right. On the best pressings the piano sounds correct and natural, no doubt the way it was recorded. Why the piano on this track is so difficult to reproduce is beyond me.

Cancao Do Nosso Amor
Viramundo

This track features a room full of Latin percussionists with some of the sweetest female vocals ever recorded layered over them. Another Demo Disc quality track.

Side Two

Lost In Paradise

This is a very difficult track. I never really appreciated how wonderfully different it is from most of Sergio Mendes’ music. I’ve grown to love it. The original version by Brazilian great Caetano Veloso is excellent as well and worth seeking out.

For What It’s Worth

Demo Disc quality sound. This is the track that blows everybody’s mind. The percussion alone is worth the price of admission. Sergio and his merry band take this music in a completely fresh direction, making a version that holds its own against the classic original by Buffalo Springfield. And that’s saying something.

Sometimes In Winter

Another case where Sergio completely reinvents a familiar song, previously done superbly by another band. Who does it better? He’s practically unique in his ability to improve upon a song that was wonderful to start with.

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Elton John – Salvation Is a Great Test

More of the Music of Elton John

Reviews and Commentaries for Honky Chateau

More Records that Are Good for Testing Big, Clear and Lively Choruses

We award the Four Plus A++++ grade so rarely that we don’t have a graphic for it in our system to use in the grading scale. So the side two here shows up on the chart as A+++, but when you hear this copy you will know why we gave it a fourth plus. [We no longer give Four Pluses out as a matter of policy, but that doesn’t mean we don’t come across records that deserve them from time to time.)

When I hear a record with a side this phenomenally good, with the stereo tuned-up and tweaked within an inch of its life to reproduce the album at the highest level I can manage, I will sometimes sit my wife down and play her a track or two. I did it for a Four Plus Deja Vu earlier this year [2016] as a matter of fact, playing Country Girl: Whiskey Boot Hill on side two, with that crazy HUGE organ blasting out of the right speaker — what a thrill!

For this record I played her Salvation, with one huge chorus following another, like powerful waves crashing on the shore, until Elton takes a deep breath and belts out the final, biggest chorus, hitting his peak an octave higher and taking the song to an emotional level neither one of us had ever experienced with it before.

We followed it up with the lovely Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters, and that was about as much Elton John live in my listening room at practically concert hall levels we could take in one sitting.

Hearing Elton with such energy, standing right in front of us, with instruments and singers encircling him from wall to wall and floor to ceiling, was so powerful and immersive it left us both with tears in our eyes.

That’s what gets you a Fourth Plus around these parts. (more…)

The Beatles – Which Is More 3-Dimensional, Mono or Twin Track?

More of the Music of The Beatles

More Reviews and Commentaries for Please Please Me

With all due respect to Sir George Martin, we’ve played a number of mono pressings of this album in the past twenty or so years and have never been particularly impressed with 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 together 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.

And vice versa for the instruments. They reach all the way from the left speaker, where they are heard playing, to the right rear corner of the studio, where the reverb for them trails off.

Which has the effect of making The Beatles sound like they are in a big studio. Both voices and instruments “occupy” the entire studio this way, stretching wall to wall, with at least the appearance of three-dimensionality. The sound reaches right across the stage in both directions and trails off in the dark corners at the back of the room.

It may only be an illusion, but it’s a convincing one nevertheless.

Resolving Power

But it can only be convincing if you have two things:

  1. A highly resolving system (we define the term to include equipment, proper setup, tweaks, electrical quality and room treatments) that is capable of reproducing the “room,” and,
  2. A high resolution pressing that contains all that lovely room information, to be extracted from its grooves by the high-resolution system described above.

If a recording of Please Please Me sounds like it’s stuck in the speakers at your house, it’s the system (which includes the room and room treatments; they are every bit as important as the equipment you own, and probably more important, truth be told), or it’s the pressing, or it’s both.

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