vta-advice

Lady in Satin – What It Takes to Hear It Right

Robert Brook runs a blog called The Broken Record, with a subtitle explaining that the aim of his blog is to serve as:

A GUIDE FOR THE DEDICATED ANALOG AUDIOPHILE

Here is Robert’s latest posting.

LADY IN SATIN: What it Takes to HEAR it RIGHT

Robert writes:

A few years ago, Better Records founder Tom Port told me something that I’ve never forgotten. I had just demoed my system for an industry guy, and while relaying the experience to Tom, he asked me what records I had played for him. I mentioned a few, including Charles Mingus‘s Ah Um.

Tom said (paraphrasing here) “Not a good choice. You want to play records that can only sound good one way. Ah Um can sound good a lot of different ways.”

At the time I didn’t fully understand what Tom was getting at. Ah Um, or at least the copy of it I had, always sounded great. Wasn’t it therefore a great record to demo my system with?

Since then I’ve come to understand that this was exactly Tom’s point. If you really want to show someone what your system can do, by all means, play a great sounding record, but also one that requires your turntable and your system as a whole be at their best to reproduce it.

Lately I’ve come to understand something that I feel every audiophile, analog audiophiles in particular, would do well to recognize and come to terms with. When we play a record, each of us is listening for different things, and these things are very often not the things that we should be listening for if we want to determine if our system is sounding its best.

Robert continues:

But a pretty steady diet of Ah Um for a number of years now has taught me that the right copy will sound good, even with the most basic turntable setup, and even on a system that’s not performing its best.

Meanwhile, it would seem that Lady In Satin is a record that only sounds good, great even, one way and one way only. It needs us to attend to all the little details in our system before it will reveal its magic.

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Letter of the Week – “You can’t hear the speakers; the sound fills the entire room, including the back walls.”

More Customer Letters Comparing Our Hot Stamper Pressings to Their Heavy Vinyl

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased a while back:

Hey Tom, 

A good friend of mine came over today to take a look at my cartridge setup now that it is properly burned in. I was still getting some brightness in the right channel and we found that the cartridge was not seating properly in the groove. A few adjustments and now perfection!

My litmus test, Yes Close to the Edge now sounds absolutely unbelievable! You can’t hear the speakers; the sound fills the entire room, including the back walls.

As you stated, everyone should own a copy of this record to determine if their setup is correct.

I went through several of my hot stampers and I feel like I am in audio heaven now.

Morning Has Broken also sounds amazing; Piano definition, Cat’s voice, etc.

nother 3D sound extravaganza!

Finally, I had a chance to compare Led Zeppelin 4 (your hot stamper vs. my 200g Classic).

Before the cartridge tweaking I was hard pressed to tell the difference.

Now that the stylus is properly seated in the groove, with the Hot Stamper I can hear more detail in Jimmy’s guitar, more airiness in Robert’s voice and just an overall more listenable experience.

The entire soundstage is about 3 feet higher than the Classic version.

Well, I am spoiled again and loving it!

Thanks again,
Rob

Rob,

Glad to hear your turntable is working better. As you say, differences between Hot Stampers and Heavy Vinyl pressings are not much more obvious, and that’s a good thing. We think audiophiles should learn to do all these sorts of things for themselves, and have written about it at some length: Tuning and tweaking are essential to improving your critical listening skills.

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Helplessly Hoping to Get the VTA Right

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

This listing from 2005 (!) contains commentary about VTA adjustment using the track Helplessly Hoping from a Hot Stamper pressing of CSN’s So Far. It would not be long before we went with the much more accurate and revealing 17D (first the 17D3, then the 17DX), which took us to another level, as documented here.

Helplessly Hoping is a wonderful song that has a lot of energy in the midrange and upper midrange which is difficult to get right. Just today (4/25/05) I was playing around with VTA, having recently installed a new Dynavector DV-20x on my playgrading table (a real sweetheart, by the way), and this song showed me EXACTLY how to get the VTA right.

VTA is all about balance.

The reason this song is so good for adjusting VTA is that the guitar at the opening is a little smooth and the harmony vocals that come in after the intro can be a little bright. Finding the balance between these two elements is key to getting the VTA adjusted properly.

When the arm is too far down in the back, the guitar at the opening will lose its transparency and become dull and thick. Too high in the back and the vocals sound thin and shrill, especially when the boys all really push their harmony. The slightest change in VTA will noticeably affect that balance and allow you to tune it in just right.

To be successful, however, there are also other conditions that need to be met. The system has to be sounding right, which in my world means good electricity, so make sure you do this in the evening or on a weekend when the electricity is better.

That’s the easy part. The hard part is that you need a good pressing that includes this song, and those don’t grow on trees.

The vast majority of CSN’s first album and the vast majority of So Far’s are junk.

Trying to get junk pressings to sound right is impossible, because they weren’t mastered right in the first place.

But if you’re one of the lucky few who has a good pressing of Helplessly Hoping, try tweaking your VTA adjustment and see if you aren’t able to dial it in even better than before.

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Speakers Corner Peer Gynt Reviewed, with Handy VTA Advice

Hot Stamper Pressings of the music of Edvard Grieg Available Now

Sonic Grade: C+

The Fjeldstad has long been one of our favorite performances of Peer Gynt here at Better Records. 

This record is handy for VTA set-up as well, a subject discussed below in our listing from 2010.

The sound is excellent for a modern reissue*, but in the loudest sections the orchestra can get to be a bit much, taking on a somewhat harsh quality. (The quieter passages are superb: sweet and spacious.)

So I adjusted the VTA a bit to see what would happen, and was surprised to find that even the slightest change in VTA caused the strings to lose practically all their rosiny texture and become unbearably smeared.

This is precisely why it’s a good heavy vinyl pressing for setting up your turntable.

If you can get the strings to play with reasonably good texture on this record you probably have your VTA set correctly.

VTA

Correct VTA adjustment for classical records (as well as all other kinds of records) is critical to their proper reproduction. If you do not have an arm that allows you to easily adjust its VTA, then you will just have to do it the hard way (which normally means loosening a set screw and moving the arm up and down until you get lucky with the right height).

Yes, it may be time consuming, it may in fact be a major pain in the ass, but there is no question in my mind that you will hear a dramatic improvement in the sound or your records once you have taken the time to correctly set the VTA, by ear, for each and every record you play.

We heard the improvement on this very record, and do on all the classical LPs (and all other kinds of records) we play.

The Big Caveat

As for the asterisk (*) above, it concerns the caveat “…for a modern reissue…” What exactly do we mean by that? Allow us to reprint what we wrote about another Heavy Vinyl classical pressing, one that we actually used to like.

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The Planets – Proper VTA Adjustment Is Critical

More of the music of Gustav Holst

Accurate VTA adjustment for classical records is critical to their reproduction. If you do not have an arm that allows you to easily adjust its VTA, then you will just have to do it the hard way (which normally means loosening a set screw and moving the arm up and down until you get lucky with the right height).

Yes, it may be time consuming, it may even be a major pain in the ass, but there is no question in my mind that you will hear a dramatic improvement in the sound of your classical records once you have learned to precisely adjust the VTA for each and every one of them. We heard the improvement on this record, and do pretty much on all the classical LPs we play. All records really.

VTA is not a corner you should be cutting.

Its careful adjustment is critical. Of course, so are anti-skate, azimuth and tracking weight. The links below have a fair amount of advice on turntable setup which might be worth checking out.

By The Way

If you want a good sounding pressing of The Planets, our favorite by far is Previn’s reading on EMI from 1974.

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Turntable Set Up Guide Part 1: Why You Need to Do It Yourself

More from Robert Brook

One of our good customers has a blog which he calls

A GUIDE FOR THE DEDICATED ANALOG AUDIOPHILE

Below you will find a link to an article about turntable setup in which I am quoted on the subject. I would have loved to write something along these lines myself, but just never found the time to do so.

Robert Brook took the job upon himself and has explained it well, so if you would like to learn more about turntable setup, I encourage you to visit his blog and read more about it.

Turntable Setup Guide Part 1: You NEED to DO IT Yourself!

Further Reading

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Accurate VTA Using Helplessly Hoping on the Classic LP

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Crosby, Stills and Nash Available Now

This commentary from way back when (2005!) describes how to go about adjusting your VTA for 180 or 200 gram vinyl, using the track Helplessly Hoping from the first album.

Helplessly Hoping is a wonderful song with plenty of energy in the midrange and upper midrange which is difficult to get reproduce. Just today (4/25/05) I was playing around with VTA, having recently installed a new Dynavector DV-20x [a cartridge replaced by the 17d3 soon afterwards and again by the 17dx] on my table, and this song showed me EXACTLY how to get the VTA right.

VTA is all about balance. The reason this song is so good for adjusting VTA is that the guitar at the opening is a little smooth and the harmony vocals that come in after the intro can be a little bright.

Finding the balance between these two elements is key to getting the VTA adjusted properly.

When the arm is too far down in the back, the guitar at the opening will lose its transparency and become dull and thick. Too high in the back and the vocals sound thin and shrill, especially when the boys all really push their harmony. The slightest change in VTA will noticeably affect that balance and allow you to tune it in just right.

To be successful, however, there are also other conditions that need to be met. The system has to be sounding right, which in my world means good electricity, so make sure you do this in the evening or on a weekend when the electricity is better.

(more…)

A Simple Listening Test Makes It Easy to Judge Pressings of Scheherazade

Hot Stamper Orchestral Pressings Available Now

The Classic reissue of LSC 2446, as well as the Analogue Productions version from 2013 (the original 33 is the only one I have played, mastered by Ryan Smith at Sterling), are both disasters for many reasons, but they do have one specific failing that is easy to recognize.

Both pressings are worth further discussion and analysis because they provide an easy test that can show you how wrong they are.

When reading the commentary below, keep in mind that what is bad about the Classic Records reissue from 1995 is what is bad about the Analogue Productions remaster put out many years later.

As I noted for some of the Classic Heifetz titles a while back, for all I know the CDs for his Living Stereo recordings may have better sound. That’s probably the first place to go, considering Classic’s rather poor track record regarding the remastering of his music.

Case in point: The Living Stereo CDs I own (both the CD and the SACD) of Scheherazade are dramatically better than the awful Classic Records pressing of it.

Audiophiles who don’t notice what is wrong with the Classic pressing need to get hold of a nice RCA White Dog pressing to see just how poorly the Classic stacks up. (They could even find one that’s not so nice and listen through the surface noise. The difference would still be obvious.)

UPDATE 2025

It has been many years since a White Dog pressing won a shootout. In our last listing for a Hot Stamper White Dog pressing in 2024, we noted:

Now that we know which stampers have the potential to win our shootouts, the right Shaded Dog originals have lately been coming out on top, although the White Dog pressings can still sound quite good, just not as good.

No White Dog earned a higher grade than 2+, and none of the three WD pressings we had on hand earned 2+ on both sides.

Our notes for the various sides of the WD pressings read: “a bit brash, sometimes squawky, dry and bright,” and the like.

Those of you looking for the best sound should stick to the Shaded Dog label originals. They are rich and lush in a way that the WD reissues in our experience never are. I used to swear by the WD reissues, but I see now how wrong I was. My judgments were colored by a darker, less revealing stereo than the one we use now, and that makes all the difference in the world.

Back to LSC 2446

The solo violin in the left channel at the opening of the first movement should be all it takes to hear what is wrong with the modern remastered pressings.

Anyone has ever attended a classical music concert will have no trouble recognizing that the violin on any of the Heavy Vinyl pressings, including the Analogue Productions pressing, is completely wrong and sounds nothing like a violin in a concert hall would ever sound.

And I mean ever.

No matter where you might be sitting.

No matter how good or bad the hall’s acoustics.

The violin on these Heavy Vinyl pressings is dark, it’s veiled, and it’s overly rich, as well as lacking in overtones.

Solo violins in live performance never sound like that.

They are clear, clean and present. You have no trouble at all “seeing” them, no matter where you sit.

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Azimuth, VTA, Anti-Skate and Tracking Weight – We Got to Live Together

More Record Playback Advice

With a shout out to my man Sly!

The commentary was written in 2005.

One of the reasons this record is sounding so good today (1/12/05) is that I spent last weekend adjusting my Triplanar tonearm. The sound was bothering me somewhat, so I decided to start experimenting again with the azimuth adjustment.

I changed the azimuth in the smallest increments I could manage, which on this turntable are exceedingly small increments, until at some point the following changes became evident:

  1. The bass started to go deeper,
  2. The dynamics improved, and
  3. The tonal balance became fuller and richer.

In essence the cartridge was becoming perfectly vertical to the record.

I don’t think this can be done any other way than by ear, although I don’t know that for a fact.

Azimuth, VTA, anti-skate and tracking weight all work in combination to create the sound you hear. They are like trying to juggle four balls at the same time. They all interact with each other in mysterious ways.

This is one of the reasons why I think everyone needs to know how to set up their own front end. Nobody you could ever pay is going to put the time and effort into getting it just right. I have at least 30 or 40 and probably closer to 50 hours of set up time in this arm. [It is in the many hundreds by now.]

This is, of course, over a period of two years. But as I have played around and experimented in different ways with the setup, I have managed to tailor the sound to my taste while maintaining what I consider to be the highest levels of accuracy.

Robert Brook has some advice for those who would like to learn more about analog setup, and you can find it here.

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Bob and Ray Produced Our Favorite Record for Cartridge Setup

Hot Stamper Pressings of Bob and Ray Available Now

Bob and Ray Throw a Stereo Spectacular just happens to be our favorite Test Disc, eclipsing all others in the areas of naturalness and difficulty of reproduction. Any tweak or new room treatment — we seem to do them almost weekly these days — has to pass one test and one test only — the Bob and Ray Test. 

This record has the power to help you get to the next level in audio like no other.

Six words hold the key to better sound: The Song of the Volga Boatman.

For the purpose of mounting new carts, our favorite track is The Song of the Volga Boatman from LSP 1773. It’s by far the most difficult track we know of to get to sound right.

There are about twenty places in the music that we use as tests, and the right setting is the one that gets the most of them to sound their best. With every change some of the twenty will sound better and some will sound worse. Recognizing when the sound is the biggest, clearest, and most balanced from top to bottom is a skill that has taken me twenty years to acquire.

It’s a lot harder than it looks. The longer you have been in audio, the more complicated it can seem, which may be counterintuitive but comports well with our day-to-day experience very well.

All our room treatments and tweaks must pass The Bob and Ray Test as well. It’s the one record we have relied on more than any other over the course of the last ten years.

Presenting as it does a huge studio full of brass players, no record we know of is more dynamic or more natural sounding — when the system is working right. When it’s not working right the first thirty seconds is all it takes to show you the trouble you are in.

If you don’t have a record like that in your collection, we highly recommend you find one.

It will be invaluable in the long run. The copy we have is so good (White Hot, the best we have ever played), and so important to our operation here, that it would not be for sale at any (well, almost any) price.

The Bob and Ray Trombone / Trumpet Test

One of the key tests on Bob and Ray that keeps us on the straight and narrow is the duet between the trombone and the trumpet about half way through The Song of the Volga Boatman. I have never heard a small speaker reproduce a trombone properly, and when tweaking the system, when the trombone has more of the heft and solidity of the real instrument, that is a tweak we want to pursue.

The trumpet interweaving with it in the right rear corner of the studio tests the transients and high frequency harmonics in the same section. With any change to the stereo, both of those instruments are going to sound different. For a change to be positive they must both sound better.

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