Review on 🎵 HIFI NEWS - Producers Cut Test LP by James Gregg

If you are serious enough about setting up your player and think you might need this disc then you probably SHOULD NOT. For example, do you think you need a $49 vinyl record to figure out how to properly connect your left and right speakers with the correct polarity and figure out if they're correct or not? Or to find out if your system is properly balancing left and right channels? Half of the first page of this entry is dedicated to that. I think I would be happier with this post if it showed ONE error in my setup. But that's not the case. Only the brutal anti-skating test track came close. In this case I slightly increased the strength of the anti-skating. And it was EXACTLY what the player/cartridge manufacturer recommended. 2 grams, which corresponds to downforce. But most people find this particular test track unrealistic and not representative of anything one would encounter while making music in the real world. Anti-skate tracks occupy the second half of the first side of the record. It consists of 4 tracks, each consisting of a 300 Hz sustained tone. Track one at 12dB, track two at 14dB, then 16dB and finally 18dB. The three tracks on the second page repeat the same 300Hz at 15dB, only on the outer, middle, and inner tracks. Does anyone think that if the system worked properly in the anti-skate torture test, it would have trouble tracking the 15dB 300Hz audio track anywhere on the disc? These tracks are a waste of time. There is an entire track with no sound. This is to check for low noise or other system noise. It's useful but redundant. EVERY track on the record ends with a groove that goes nowhere. There is no sound and no transition to the next track. The tonearm just sits there while the records spin. You have to manually move it to each track. So there are already 16 places to test the low noise level, no separate lane is required. A trace on the second page is a frequency sweep on both channels (simultaneously) from 20Hz - 20KHz. Totally useless because if you noticed an anomaly in that fast sweep you would have no way of knowing what the actual frequency is at that moment.