Whenever we go into a deep dive of a particular track we think you should add to your testing arsenal, or we proselytise about the finest tunes we’ve been enjoying in our listening rooms for any given month, the same things to listen out for tend to come up time and again.
We’re looking for how your system can handle a range of given qualities and parameters, be they low-level dynamics, textural detail or the establishment of an emotional connection. Those things are generally easy to define, and you can whack on a range of tunes and see how your shiny new gear is stacking up.
This time, though, things are a bit different, as we’re looking for something that doesn’t always spring to mind when putting together a given set-up or selecting a new pair of headphones: how forgiving is it of unusual poor quality recordings?
It’s a question you might not have considered before, as many listeners can become convinced that all tracks are somehow recorded, mixed and edited in the same way. A moment’s pause, of course, exposes the true reality: not all recordings are born equal.
We put Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories, for example, alongside the likes of James Taylor’s Sweet Baby James and Jay-Z’s The Black Album as some of the best-produced albums ever made.
It’s not just about how intrinsically good the music is, but how much care and attention went on behind the scenes – the ceiling for your hi-fi to bring out a given song’s qualities, then, tends to be rather high when the mix is up to scratch.
What happens, though, when your hi-fi comes face-to-face with something that’s a little harder to digest? What happens when it’s challenged to make the most of a mix that, in retrospect, leaves a little, or a lot, to be desired.
That’s where Elvis Costello’s Veronica comes in. Quite aside from being an up-tempo yet heart-punching melancholic tune about the younger days of a senior citizen with dementia in a care home, Veronica is a go-to test track for how your hi-fi or headphones manage when the going gets a bit rougher.
The version we use, incidentally, is taken straight from Costello's 1989 release Spike, and we're usually streaming from a decent source such as Tidal or, occasionally, Qobuz.
Veronica, great song as it is, is something of an esoteric recording, shall we say. It’s lean and thin, with a harshness, even a coarseness, to the production that can leave you feeling as though your ears are being scraped out by a drill.
Those snare drums can sound hard, even a little rattly, when they kick the tune into gear at the outset, while twinkling glockenspiel notes and a noticeably lean guitar threaten to tip things into excessive top-end brightness.
That can make it tough on the old earholes, especially when you’re listening to it at higher volumes or you’re using a pair of decent wired headphones that tend to dig up every musical aspect with forensic intent.
You need, then, a set-up that’s forgiving enough to ensure that your ears aren’t bleeding by the time that Mr Costello has started singing the first lines of the opening verse. Any excessive brightness within your system will only exacerbate the recording’s flaws, making the whole experience as enjoyable as putting your head next to a whirring buzzsaw.
Naturally, you’d think you'd want a product or set-up that can smooth over those rough edges, especially when scratchy guitars get peaky at the higher registers. That’s a helpful characteristic, but if that smoothness translates to a lack of energy or sharpness across other tracks, you’re rather cutting off your nose to spite your face.
What we’re aiming for, then, is a proper handling of transparency. A good product should be capable of showing the nature of a recording without highlighting its flaws, of bringing out the essential character of the tune without masking its core nature.
The wired Beyerdynamic DT 990 Pro X over-ear headphones do this brilliantly. We described those as being a “warts and all” set of cans, in that they refused to round off any hard or harsh edges but rarely shied away from showing, rather than over-egging, a particularly outlandish or challenging feature of any given source material.
As we said in our review, “The DT 990 Pro X don’t shy away from the industrial stabs and distorted high notes of Avenged Sevenfold’s We Love You, refusing to smooth over those harsher tones in favour of an informative, honest yet always entertaining approach.”
Those sentiments ring true when switching over to Veronica, of course – peppy ‘80s pop-rock is more palatable than experimental post-metal, too, which is part of the reason we're recommending it here.
In the world of proper hi-fi separates, the Fyne Audio F502S evidence a similarly canny balance. Like the DT 990 Pro X, they have the insight and detail levels to bring out what’s going on a track – be it good, bad, or anything in between – yet rarely will you ever feel as though any irksome elements are being exacerbated by their honest, insightful approach.
That’s what makes a track such as Veronica so valuable, in that it reveals an aspect of hi-fi that’s often overlooked but essential for your long-term enjoyment. It’s a really tough balance, too, with so many lesser candidates falling onto one side of the fence – excessive honesty or masking flaws so much that the the point of the music gets lost.
It's something that you may not have considered before, and if you've found your set-up or system straining you ears of late, or you're thinking of committing to a new piece of kit, it's an essential test for ensuring that you haven't invested in something that grates on your ears.
Feel free to use Veronica, then, as a sort of musical shortcut. Stick it on and, whether you're system matching various components or seeing how well run-in a pair of wired headphones are, you'll have a strong litmus test for whether the recording's flaws have become utterly fatal.
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