Albums to test your system's (low) limits

[Bouhtou]

My music system is only vinyl related. Deck is the Michell Orbe SE with a Jelco arm (it's actually the Sumiko arm that was sold together with the 1993-94 Pro-Ject 6.1 S/A turntable) and a Denon DL-304. Phono stage is hand-made from a local company, one especially built for very low output cartridges. I use a passive preamp to a Rotel RB991 solid state power amp and speakers are 18-year old Audio Spectrum Artemis TLS transmission line (Greek company)

Well this Synday afternoon and after a few months off use I finally took the time to terminate the tonearm wires to a set of Neutrik plugs and connected permanently the Jelco to the phono stage. Music was fine with normal vinyl discs like Year of the cat-Al Stewart, Alan Parson's Project Greatest hits, Kojiki-Kitaro and so on, as I remembered it from the last time I had temporarily connected the arm just for a brief test. It went late in the evening and allthough music was transparent and balanced it lacked deep bass. I thought that vinyl replay was fine but couldn't go that deep and that the usual suspects were the cartridge, the passive pre and the speakers.
Then I remembered that last year I bought myself 3 OST on 180g vinyl that I had never listened to (I'm a soundtrack fan and have around 50-60 albums and these 3 180g on heavy vinyl). The albums are: THE DARK KNIGHT, 300 and GLADIATOR. All heavy vinyl double albums limited editions on 33rpm except the GLADIATOR that is 45rpm.
I brought them in to give a listen...

Well I was on a shock when the 304's needle touched The Dark Knight's side one grooves. Low frequencies were frightening, I just couldn't believe how low it went. Dynamics too were exceptional. The same surprise came with 300. Shame it was too late in the night that I couldn't turn it up...

If you can rent from a friend these albums, even if you don't like that kind of music, you have to give them a listen on your system. You will be surprised.

(Take care of the volume control...)

[Frankyc2003]

That sounds brilliant.
It goes to show the value of properly mastered and pressed vinyl compared to normal 1970 -80 pressings.
Ang when everything is mastered at 45 rpm it gets even better...

[Bouhtou]

Yes, indeed.
I have around 20 new albums on heavy vinyl from Eagles, Diana Krall, Miles, Kitaro, OSD and a few other.
All are day and night compared with the old pressings.

[Oldpinkman]

I know I've told the story before, so tune out if you've heard it, but the thread title reminded me (haunted me?)

At a Heathrow show, with DaCapo and a prototype , never launched power amp, also by Westlake, and the Ventrical speakers, someone brought a "special" Hotel California CD. The power amp had no low pass filter, and the speaker cone on the right channel parted company with the chassis. The boys thought it very funny, but it was a tad inconvenient, given that the drive units were hand matched for each pair on those speakers...