{"product_id":"bobanthrow_2609","title":"Bob and Ray - Throw A Stereo Spectacular - White Hot Stamper","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e*NOTE:\u003c\/strong\u003e Side two of this record was not noisy enough to rate our M-- to EX++ grade, but it's not quite up to our standards for Mint Minus Minus either. If you're looking for quiet vinyl, this is probably not the best copy for you.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBob 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eThis record has the power to help you get to the next level in audio like no other.\u003c\/i\u003e Six words hold the key to better sound: \"The Song of the Volga Boatman.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor the purpose of mounting new carts, our favorite track is \"The Song of the Volga Boatman\" on Bob and Ray Throw A Stereo Spectacular (LSP 1773). It’s by far the most difficult track we know of to get to sound right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a lot harder than it looks. The longer you have been in audio the more complicated it seems, which may be counterintuitive but comports well with our day-to-day experience very well.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePresenting 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eIf you don’t have a record like that in your collection, you need to find one.\u003c\/i\u003e It will be invaluable to you in the long run.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe copy we have is so good, and is so important to our operation here, that it would not be for sale at any (well, almost any) price.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis vintage Living Stereo pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records can barely BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn't showing signs of coming back. If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to \"see\" the performers, and feeling as if you are sitting in the studio with the band, this is the record for you. It's what vintage all analog recordings are known for -- \u003ci\u003ethis sound\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you exclusively play modern repressings of vintage recordings, I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it -- not often, and certainly not always -- but maybe one out of a hundred new records do, and those are some pretty long odds.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eWhat The Best Sides Of Bob and Ray Throw A Stereo Spectacular Have To Offer Is Not Hard To Hear\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe most Tubey Magic, without which you have \u003ci\u003ealmost\u003c\/i\u003e nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes in \u003ca href=\"\/search?q=tag:%221958%22\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e1958\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eNatural tonality in the midrange -- with all the instruments having the correct timbre\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTransparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional studio space\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNo doubt there's more but we hope that should do for now. \u003ci\u003ePlaying the record is the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above,\u003c\/i\u003e and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find a pressing that sounds as good as this one does.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eWhat We're Listening For On Bob and Ray Throw A Stereo Spectacular\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eEnergy\u003c\/strong\u003e for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThen: \u003cstrong\u003epresence and immediacy\u003c\/strong\u003e. The vocals aren't \"back there\" somewhere, lost in the mix. They're front and center where any recording engineer worth his salt would put them.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eThe Big Sound\u003c\/strong\u003e comes next -- wall to wall, lots of depth, huge space, three-dimensionality, all that sort of thing.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThen \u003cstrong\u003etransient information\u003c\/strong\u003e -- fast, clear, sharp attacks, not the smear and thickness so common to these LPs.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eTight, full-bodied bass\u003c\/strong\u003e -- which ties in with good transient information, also the issue of frequency extension further down.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eNext: \u003cstrong\u003etransparency\u003c\/strong\u003e -- the quality that allows you to hear deep into the soundfield, showing you the space and air around all the instruments.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eExtend the top and bottom\u003c\/strong\u003e and \u003ci\u003evoila\u003c\/i\u003e, you have The Real Thing -- an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eThe Bob and Ray Trombone \/ Trumpet Test\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne 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 better. For a change to be positive they must both sound better.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eWhat To Listen For (Side One)\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat first crack of thunder on side one is an obvious test for bottom end size and weight. On the better copies it really rattles the room.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut the real test for side one is \"Buck Dance.\" For one of our top copies a while back we wrote:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003eWithout a doubt this is the best sound I have ever heard for side one of this album. The sound here is so amazing I’m willing to go out on a limb and make the following recklessly bold statement. \"Buck Dance\" on this pressing has the most extended, natural and harmonically correct high frequencies I have ever heard from my speakers (or anyone else’s for that matter).\n\u003cp\u003eAnd the crazy thing about it is, when played against an actual original pressing of Music for Bang, Baa-room and Harp, this copy, which one would assume is made from a dub, \u003ci\u003esounds far better\u003c\/i\u003e. Now of course we don’t have ten copies of LSP 1866, which would allow us to find one with an even better \"Buck Dance\" than the one heard here on Bob and Ray, which means we cannot be definitive in any way about the disparity in sound between the two albums.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe can only judge the records we have in hand, not the ones we might have heard years ago or — even worse — speculate about the sound of records we have not actually played, recently or otherwise. So we will stick to the facts, and the facts of this side one are that it is \u003ci\u003eabsolutely amazing\u003c\/i\u003e sounding.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/blockquote\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eBob and Ray and the TAS List\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe album is comprised of a group of selections taken from the best of the early Living Stereo releases, some of which obviously sound better than others, all interspersed with hilarious dialogue and sound effects by Bob and Ray. From start to finish this record is a blast. The entertainment value is off the scale.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHarry Pearson put this record on his TAS list of Super Discs. When you hear a copy sound as good as this one does you will have no doubt that it belongs there. (Other records on the list, not so much. Played Summer Side of Life or Warm Shade of Ivory lately? These aren’t even good records, let alone Super Discs.)\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe all owe HP a huge debt of gratitude for turning us on to this wonderful record, which also happens to be my favorite LSP of all time. I might not have ever played it were it not for the TAS list. (That’s actually a bit disingenuous; any classic Living Stereo gets played around here because the potential for good sound — and therefore a sizable return on investment — is fairly high.)\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eVinyl Condition\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMint Minus Minus and maybe a bit better is about as quiet as any vintage pressing will play, and since only the right vintage pressings have any hope of sounding good on this album, that will most often be the playing condition of the copies we sell. (The copies that are even a bit noisier get listed on the site are seriously reduced prices or traded back in to the local record stores we shop at.)\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThose of you looking for quiet vinyl will have to settle for the sound of other pressings and Heavy Vinyl reissues, purchased elsewhere of course as we have no interest in selling records that don't have the vintage analog magic of these wonderful recordings.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you want to make the trade-off between bad sound and quiet surfaces with whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing might be available, well, that's certainly your prerogative, but we can't imagine losing what's good about this music -- the size, the energy, the presence, the clarity, the weight -- just to hear it with less background noise.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis album ranks fairly high on our \u003ca href=\"\/search?q=tag:%22difficulty-of-reproduction%22\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003edifficulty of reproduction scale\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e. Do not attempt to play it using anything but the highest quality equipment.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Bob and Ray","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":52353093435688,"sku":"bobanthrow","price":499.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0257\/3415\/2295\/files\/bobandraythrow.jpg?v=1788801769","url":"https:\/\/better-records.com\/products\/bobanthrow_2609","provider":"Better Records","version":"1.0","type":"link"}