turn-up-your-volume-test

Being able to play some records at good loud levels is key to properly evaluating their sound.

It is far and away the toughest test we know of.

If you want to hear the difference between a Hot Stamper pressing and any other pressing, play the two of them good and loud and see which one sounds right.

The better sounding pressing will almost always be the Hot Stamper.

Lincoln Mayorga and Distinguished Colleagues Implore You to Turn Up Your Volume

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

S9 is hands down one of the best examples of a recording that only really comes to life when you have your volume up good and loud.

One obvious reason that our turn up your volume test makes a good test is that the louder the problem, the harder it is to ignore.

There’s not much ambience to be found in their somewhat dead sounding studio, and very little high frequency boost to any instrument in the mix, which means at moderate levels this record sounds flat and lifeless.

(You could say it has that in common with most Heavy Vinyl pressings these days, assuming you wanted to take a cheap shot at those records, which, to be honest, I don’t mind doing. They suck; why pretend otherwise?)

But turn it up and man, the sound really starts jumpin’ out of the speakers, without becoming phony or hyped-up. In fact, it actually sounds more NATURAL and REAL at louder levels.  

A Quick and Easy Test

Play the record at normal levels and pick out any instrument — snare, toms, sax, bass — anything you like.

Now turn it up a notch and see if the timbre of that instrument isn’t more correct.

Add another click of volume and listen again.

I think you will see that with each increase in volume, the tonality of each instrument you hear becomes more accurate. The insturments are sounding more real than they did at lower levels.

This record would sound right at something very close to, if not actual, LIVE levels, assuming you have the system and the room that can manage it. (more…)

Chicago and The Hottest Sounding Vinyl – Are You a Thrillseeker Too?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Chicago Available Now

We admit to being thrillseekers here at Better Records, and make no apologies for it.

The better the system and the hotter the stamper, the bigger the thrill.

I want to hear the music I love playing louder and sounding better, with more energy and excitement, and the reason I spent an ungodly number of hours over the last 40+ 50+ years working on my stereo is that the kind of sound that can give me thrills doesn’t happen by accident.

You have to work your ass off to get it.

And spend a lot of money.

And search for those pressings that have the sound you are looking for.

And be very lucky.

I don’t play records to sip wine and smoke cigars. I play records to feel something.

Whether the music is rock, jazz or classical, I want to feel the power of the music just as you would feel it at the live event.

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Rockin’ Out to Victim of Love

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Eagles Available Now

This commentary was written more than ten years ago. Wouldn’t change a thing though!

Victim of Love is a classic case of yet another in the long list of recordings that really comes alive when you turn up your volume.

It’s the sound of this five piece tearing it up LIVE IN THE STUDIO. It’s also the track where the DCC just falls apart for us. Where did the rock and roll energy go? The DCC makes it sound like the band just doesn’t care, which was certainly not our experience when we were playing any of the killer Hot Stampers we came across.

Just the reverse was true; we had them turned up full blast and they ROCKED.

One reason the turn up your volume test is such a great test — in this case, the problem being the kind of lifeless sound that Heavy Vinyl pressings more often than not suffer from — the harder it is to ignore.

I might go so far as to say that Victim of Love is the best sounding track on the whole album. It’s punchy, real and MUSICAL in a way that nothing else on the album is, because it’s being played by a real band, live. The energy and coherency of the sound is like nothing else you will hear on Hotel California, and possibly on any other Eagles record. (more…)

Carlos Santana Knows: The Louder His Guitar Gets, the Better It Sounds

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Santana Available Now

Abraxas is yet another in the long list of recordings that really comes alive when you turn up your volume.

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 than Abraxas.

This is a true Demo Disc in the world of rock records. It’s also one of those recordings that demands to be played LOUD. If you’ve got the the big room, big speakers, and plenty of power to drive them, you can have a LIVE ROCK AND ROLL CONCERT in your very own home.

When Santana lets loose with some of those legendary monster power chords — which incidentally do get good and loud in the mix, unlike most rock records which suffer from compression and “safe” mixes — I like to say that there is no stereo system on the planet that can play loud enough for me. (Horns maybe, but I don’t like the sound of horns, so the point is moot.)

You may have heard me say this before, but it’s important to make something clear about this music. 

It doesn’t even make sense at moderate listening levels. 

Normal listening levels suck the life right out of it. You can tell by the way it was recorded — this music is designed to be played back at LOUD levels, and anything less does a disservice to the musicians, not to mention the listener, you.

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How Wide and Tall Is Your Copy of Little Queen? Compared to What?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Heart Available Now

Little Queen is yet another recording that only truly comes alive when you turn up your volume.

On the right system, this is a classic rock Demo Disc to beat practically anything you could ever throw at it.

Love Alive and Barracuda on this copy will deliver the full rock and roll power your system is capable of.

If you’ve got The Big Sound, this is the record that will show you just how big it is.

You get huge meaty guitars, big bass, a smooth top end, full-bodied vocals, powerful rock energy and dynamics, loads of richness and incredible transparency.

Wide and Tall

A key quality we look for in Hot Stamper copies of Little Queen is wide and tall presentation.

What exactly does that mean you ask? The best copies, the ones that really jump out of the speakers, tend to present some (usually high frequency) information higher and more forward than others. This is not hard to miss.

When you’re playing ten or fifteen copies of the same side of the same album and suddenly a cymbal crashes higher and more clearly than the others did in the part of the track you are testing, you can’t help but notice it. Wow! How did that get there?

Once you hear it you start to listen for it, and sure enough the next copy won’t do it, nor will the next. Maybe the one after that gets about halfway there: the cymbal crashes are higher than most, but not as high as the one that really showed you how high is up.

This is why we do shootouts, and why you must do them too, if owning the highest quality pressings is important to you.

Progress in Audio

And of course it all ties in with our revolutionary changes in audio commentary. If you’ve been making steady improvements to your system, or have better cleaning technologies, or better room treatments, or cleaner electricity, maybe ALL the Little Queen pressings do it now. They might ALL do something they never did before, and in fact they SHOULD be doing most things better now. 

Our last shootout was a while back. Since then many, many parts of the chain have undergone improvement. During this shootout we heard things in the recording we’d never heard before. This is the point of all this audio fooling around. It pays off, if you do it right. You have musical information waiting to be unlocked in your favorite recordings. It isn’t going to free itself. You have to do the work to set it free. Do it our way or do it some other way, but do it. You, more than anyone else, will be the one to get the benefit.

Problems Noted More Recently

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The Turn Up Your Volume Test – Almost Cut My Hair

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Crosby, Stills, Nash and (Sometimes) Young

The only time Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young actually sound like a real rock and roll band is on the track Almost Cut My Hair.

According to Stephen Barncard, one of the engineers on Deja Vu, the track was actually recorded live in the studio.

Boy, it sure sounds like it. The amount of energy the band generates on this one song exceeds the energy of the entire first album put together. 

The reason this song presents such a tough test is that it has to be mastered properly in order to make you want to turn it up, not just louder, but as loud as your stereo will play.

This song is not to be used as background music whilst sipping wine and smoking cigars.

It positively cries out to be played at serious volume levels on monstrously large speakers. Nothing else will do justice to the power of the band’s one and only live performance captured on the album.

Listen to Neil in the left channel wailing away like a man possessed. Imagine what his grunged-out guitar would sound like blasting out of a stack of Marshall amps the size of a house.

Now hold that sound in your head as you turn up the volume on your preamp.

When your system starts to distort, back it off a notch and take your seat.

Deja Vu Letters

Some of our customers have written to tell us about the amazing sound they heard on our Hot Stamper pressings of Deja Vu.

“I know in one sense you’re only doing your job but who the hell else does what you do?”
“I almost fell off my listening chair.”
“I think It’s a bargain at $800. It absolutely trashes my Mofi version…”
“I had no idea that vinyl could produce this sound.”

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Carlos Santana Knows: Louder Is Better

santasanta_1401s

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Santana Available Now

The commentary below refers to an experience I had playing the album on my Legacy Whisper speakers in the late-90s.

This album needs to be played loud. I mean really loud. Years ago I used to demonstrate how important it was to have the level up good and high on the song Waiting.

Back in the mid-90s, I had somehow lucked into my first shockingly good Hot Stamper copy.

As a demonstration of what the Legacy Whisper system and its 8 fifteen inch woofer/midrange drivers could do, I would play the first minute or so of the track at a pretty good level. There’s lots of ambience, there’s a couple of guys who shout things out from way back in the studio, there’s a substantial amount of deep bass, and the whole recording has a natural smooth quality to it, which is precisely what allows you to play it at loud volumes.

Then I would turn it up a notch, say about 2-3 DB. I would announce to my friends that this is probably louder than you will ever play this record, but listen to what happens when you do. The soundstage gets wider and deeper, all those guys that shout can be heard more clearly, you start to really feel that deep bass, and when the song gets going, it really gets going. The energy of the music would jump to another level.

Then I would turn it up another 3 DB or so. At this point I would say that “this is how loud it should be played.” All the effects I mentioned earlier would become even more pronounced — wider, deeper, more clear, more powerful. The record was actually starting to sound like live music in my living room.

But of course, I was showing off a system that few could afford and that nobody in his right mind would put out in the middle of his living room. You would need a custom sound room, and a big one at that, to fit such a massive speaker and be able to turn it up.

But I was a bachelor at the time, and my live-in girlfriend at the time knew that she would have to go before the stereo did.

Unboosted

It was pointed out to me one day that the reason this record can be played loud is that, unlike most popular recordings, this album has a natural, unboosted top end, which means that the louder you play it, the more real it sounds. You can’t do that with most records. Many records have a top end that’s boosted to sound good at lower volumes. Not so with the first album by Santana. [For more records with the kind of vintage smooth sound we find so appealing, click here.]

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Baby You’re a Rich Man

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Beatles Available Now

Below we discuss listening to Baby You’re a Rich Man from side two of the German MMT.

If you own a copy of the album, play yours and listen for what we describe in this track by track breakdown.

For those of you interested in digging deeper into the sound of scores of other titles, our listening in depth commentaries have track breakdowns for some of the better-known albums we’ve done shootouts for.

Baby You’re A Rich Man

This track is Demo Disc Quality on the best Hot Stamper pressings. As I was playing this song for the shootout, the thought occurred to me that if I had one track to play to someone to demonstrate what a thrill it is to have a big, expensive stereo, it would be hard to pick a better song than Baby You’re A Rich Man.

The only other one that occurs to me off the top of my head is Sergio Mendes’ For What It’s Worth off of Stillness.

The sound is wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling and big as life. You can’t get that sound with screens and you can’t get it with smaller speakers and their smaller drivers.

Once you’ve heard that sound it’s hard to get too excited about any other.

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Our 2016 Shootout Winner Just Sounded More Like Live Music

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Paul McCartney Available Now

Back in 2016 we had this to say about a copy of the album we had just played:

This copy will put you front and center for the single greatest Paul McCartney recorded concert of all time.

In the final round of shootouts on both sides, this copy showed itself as clearly superior in terms of transparency and three-dimensionality, as well as having the most rock solid bottom end. To sum it up, my notes read “so real,” which is exactly what makes this copy THE one to have. This is Paul and his mates LIVE in your listening room like you have never heard them before.

This copy gave us the feeling that we were right there in the audience for the taping of this amazing performance. It made other copies sound like records — good records, but records nonetheless. This one has the IMMEDIACY of a live show, one which just happened to be fronted by one of the greatest performers in the history of popular music, Sir Paul McCartney.

We shootout this album about once a year, which means that many changes will have occurred to the stereo in the meantime. One of the qualities that we noticed this time around was how much like live music this album can be when the pressings have one specific quality — tons of bass.

Live music, especially live music heard in a club, tends to have plenty of bass. It’s the sonic quality that’s by far the most difficult to recreate in the home.

When a record manages to capture that kind of “live” low end energy, it really helps make the connection between the sound of live music and the sound coming out of your speakers.

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Energy Is Key to the Best Copies of JT

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of James Taylor Available Now

The good copies really rock on songs like I Was Only Telling A Lie, yet have lovely transparent, delicate sound on the ballads, songs such as Another Grey Morning or There We Are.

Just turn up the volume and play the opening to Honey Don’t Leave L.A. — this is James Taylor and his super-tight studio band at the peak of their powers. Russ Kunkel hits the drum twice, then clicks his sticks together so quickly you can hardly notice it, then goes back to the drums for the rest of the intro. On a superb copy like this one, the subtleties of his performance are clearly on display.

Until copies like this one came along, we had never even noticed that stick trick. Now it’s the high point of the whole intro.

Sound and Music

As audiophiles, we all know that sound and music are inseparable. In our shootout, after dropping the needle on a dozen or so copies, all originals by the way, we know when the music is working its magic and when it’s not.

As with any pop album, there are always some songs that sound better than others, but when you find yourself marvelling at how well-written and well-produced a song is, you know that the sound is doing what it’s supposed to do. It’s communicating the Musical Values of the material.

The most important of all these musical values is energy, and boy do the best copies of JT have it going on.

Val Garay is the man behind so many of our favorite recordings: JT (a Top 100 title), Simple Dreams (also a Top 100 title), Andrew Gold, Prisoner In Disguise, etc.

They all share his trademark super-punchy, jump-out-the-speakers, rich and smooth analog sound.

With big drums — can’t forget those. (To be clear, only the best copies share it. Most copies only hint at it.)

I don’t think Mr Garay gets anything like his due with audiophiles and the reviewers who write for them. This is a shame; the guy makes Demo Disc quality pop records about as good as those kinds of records can be made.

If you have a big speaker system that really rocks, you owe it to yourself to get to know his work. This is truly a knockout disc if you have the equipment designed to play it.

We do, and it’s records like this that make the effort and expense of building a full-range dynamic system worthwhile.

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