The better the system, the less forgiving the record

Most people expect a better system to make their records sound better. With a good pressing, it does. With a bad one, it does the opposite, and it is right to.

Inclusions, air bubbles and recycled material in the vinyl compound are invisible on the surface, and the stylus finds every single one. A basic turntable and cartridge let a lot of that pass as part of the charm of the format. My reference chain lets none of it pass.

Here's what I recognised, because I had lived it once already with speakers. When I moved from Klipsch to the Bowers & Wilkins 800 Series I was going up the ladder, and the more revealing speakers made my untreated room's problems sound even bigger. I blamed the dealer before I understood that a better component does not hide a problem. It reports it.

Records follow the same law. Every rung you climb in cartridge, phono stage and amplification makes the system more honest, and honesty includes bad news about the pressing. The higher you climb, the more selective you must become about what goes on the platter.

A revealing system is a demanding customer. Feed it bad pressings and it will complain every time, in perfect detail.