FIVE OF THE BEST-PRODUCED RECORDINGS YOU CAN HEAR

These brilliantly recorded albums deserve to be heard through a great pair of speakers

Pet Sounds The Beach Boys

Brian Wilson famously refined the wall of sound technique by separating and spreading out instruments to produce a clearer, less cacophonous feel. Wilson created the final mono mix in a single nine-hour session to provide more consistency over how people would hear the album regardless of the quality or placement of their home system.

Reach

Jacky Terrason

Recorded by Mark Levinson in close quarters, it’s exactly what it sounds like: an acoustic jazz piano trio in a small room. The twomicrophone recording technique captured single takes and the spontaneous quality of the music, dynamic range and subtlety can be a challenge both for your speakers and your ears, but it’s one that pays dividends.

Hot Buttered Soul Isaac Hayes

Hayes insisted on complete creative control over this album, blending pristine production with an opulencelaced rawness that others scrambled to replicate. The freedom of expression in the playing extended into post-production and it remains a tight, cogent, honest, intimate album with artistry infiltrating every part of the recording process.

Toto Toto IV

It’s clear every performer on

Toto IV has amazing mastery of their own dynamics; for such an unapologetically pop record, there’s an astonishingly full-sounding acoustic range and lack of compression. But the band also experimented with how technology could help enhance their vision, and the result is a polished, multi-layered record.

Pink Floyd

Dark Side Of The Moon

This album continues to remind musicians just how versatile, expressive and illustrative the studio can be. Over nine months at Abbey Road, the band used its state-of-the-art equipment to capture a framework of extended, live studio jams and create the psychological sonic palette that helped unify the album’s theme of a descent into madness.