Audio Advice & Exercises

Audio Commentary

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Wherein we discuss issues in audio raised by particular recordings that we've auditioned.

This link details the latest improvements in our playback system. Note that most of the equipment and sound improving devices we use are available for purchase on the site. If we know something works it's usually because we've used it ourselves. Naturally we want our customers to benefit from our experience and achieve the same sonic improvements in their own systems. Wherever possible we carry the products that we have had success with; in fact we rarely carry anything but.

We also have a section devoted to Home Audio Exercises full of experiments and challenges designed to help you improve the sound of your stereo and become a better listener at the same time. (That's fairly redundant actually; improving your stereo and becoming a better listener always go together. You really can't do one without the other.)

As users as well as retailers we offer helpful practical advice regarding the specific application of the products and equipment we recommend. This is especially true for the Hallographs, VPI turntables, Dynavector cartridges, Aurios, Stillpoints, Record Cleaning Machines and Fluids -- products we have experimented with at length over the years -- as well as many others.

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				The Beatles Rubber Soul Helpful Advice on What to Listen For (Item #: beatlrubbe_commentary) Another in our series of Home Audio Exercises. In our Hot Stamper listings you will find an in-depth discussion of the album, which we have reproduced below, along with specific What to Listen For advice on a few key tracks. The album is also helpful when adjusting room treatments for different sides of your listening room. more Info


				Yes Close To The Edge Are Your Planets Aligned? (Item #: yes__close_planets) A word of caution: Even our Hottest Stamper copies can sound problematical unless your system is firing on all cylinders. Your electricity has got to be cooking, you've got to be using the right room treatments, and you should ideally be using a demagnetizer such as the Talisman on the record itself, your cables (power, interconnect and speaker) as well as the individual drivers of your speakers. This is a record that's going to demand a lot from the listener, and we want to make sure that you're up to the challenge. If you don't mind putting in a little hard work, here's a record that will reward you many times over, and probably teach you a thing or two about tweaking your gear in the process. more Info


				Yes, You Too Can Get an Old Buffalo Springfield Record to Sound This Good! (Item #: buffalastt_commentary) Not long ago we found a White Hot Stamper pressing of Last Time Around that really blew our minds. We were surprised to hear ...some of the breathiest, silkiest vocals we’ve ever heard on ANY Buffalo Springfield album, with startling presence and immediacy to boot! This side two had BY FAR the most energy and life of any side of any copy we've ever played. Man, does it ROCK. Even as recently as 2010 we would not have expected to find that kind of sound on a vintage '60s pop/rock album. We know better now. When you get hold of the right copy and know how to clean it and play it right, these vintage pressings (well, the White Hot ones anyway) are a damn sight better than the vast majority of audiophiles think they are. How is such apparently never-before-possible sound being heard now, 45 years after the record came out? Our answer can be found below. more Info


				Advances in Playback Technology More Than Blind Faith (Item #: blindblind_advances) In a 2007 commentary for the Hot Stamper pressing of Blind Faith we noted that When it finally all comes together for such a famously compromised recording, it’s nothing less than a THRILL. More than anything else, the sound is RIGHT. Like Layla or Surrealistic Pillow, this is no demo disc by any stretch of the imagination, but that should hardly keep us from enjoying the music. And now we have the record that lets us do it. more Info


				Turntable Tweaking Advice Try This at Home, It Worked for Us (Item #: goodadvice) The Mapleshade website has a piece of audio advice that caught the eye of one our customers, who sent me the excerpt below. Like most advice, especially audiophile advice, we find that some of it accords well with our own experience and some of it clearly does not. The relationship of good to bad is hard to determine without making a more careful study, but let's just say that there is plenty of both and leave it at that. That being the case, we thought it would be of service to our customers to break it down in more detail, separating the wheat from the chaff so to speak. We've also added a customer's letter at the end of the commentary. more Info


				Good Audio Advice and Otherwise (Item #: badadvice) [This is an updated version of a commentary written in 2009.] The latest Mapleshade catalog (Spring 09) has, along with hundreds of recommendations, this little piece of audio advice that caught my eye: For much improved bass and huge soundstage, put your listening chair or sofa right against the wall behind you. Move your speakers in to 5’ in front of you and 7’ or more apart. No room treatments will yield this much bass improvement. I literally had to read through it a couple of times to be sure I wasn’t hallucinating, but every time I read it it still said the same thing, so I know I can’t have been dreaming. This is crazy talk! What the hell is wrong with these people? more Info


				Richard & Linda Thompson Shoot Out The Lights Loud Versus Live (Item #: thompshoot_loud) Yet another recording that really comes alive when you Turn Up Your Volume. I've seen Richard Thompson on a number of occasions over the years, and as loud as my stereo will play, which is pretty darn loud, I've never been able to make his guitar solos 20 dB louder than everything else, because they're simply not on the record that way. That's why live music can't be reproduced faithfully in the home: the dynamic contrasts are much too great for the typical listener, or his stereo. Having said that, when you actually do turn this record up, way up, you get the feeling of hearing live music, and that's not easy to do. Only the best recordings, in my experience, can begin to give you that feeling. (And of course it helps to have big dynamic speakers.) more Info


				Joe Jackson's Jumpin’ Jive Get Rid of Grit and Grain The Right Way (Item #: jacksjumpi_advice) Jumpin' Jive is one of the clearest examples of an album where it is CRITICALLY IMPORTANT to make sure your stereo is running on good electricity before you make any attempt to play it. This is the kind of recording -- bright, full of energy -- that will bring most stereo systems to their knees. Of course, when you play a good copy and it really sounds good, it's a record that rewards all the time and effort you've put into your system. So much of the aggressiveness, grit and grain that we hear in immediate, high-energy recordings such as this are really the fault of the electricity feeding the stereo, not the fault of the record or even the equipment used to play it. more Info

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