Best Examples Of Cymbal Decays On A Recording

Led Zeppelin-

"In My Time of Dying" from the Physical Graffiti album. Bonzo in all his greatness.

A must listen to @11

(457) In My Time of Dying (1990 Remaster) - YouTube

On T Bone Burnett’s Truth Decay album (Takoma Records TAK 7080, released in 1980), the song "Driving Wheel" (written by T Bone and Billy Swan) ends side one of the LP. The song comes to it’s end, drummer David Kemper (a fantastic drummer who came out of the Tulsa, Oklahoma scene) punctuating the last note with a cymbal crash. That crash slowly fades away for a LONG time, the eventual near silence broken by the re-emergence of acoustic guitar and upright bass, the drums then re-entering after a coupla more bars. In other words, the song had a false ending.

That is the case on the original pressing of the LP, when Takoma was being distributed by Chrysalis Records. Later in the 1980’s (I think, perhaps the 90's) the Truth Decay LP was being distributed by Allegiance Records, who had the album remastered for their repress of the album. Whomever did the remastering apparently didn’t listen to the entire master tape, and thought the false ending was a real ending. When the cymbal crash had faded to near silence, the mastering engineer ended the album side, cutting off the rest of the song!

When looking for a copy of Truth Decay, look for the "Distributed By Chrysalis Records" line on the bottom of the back of the cover. It not only has the unabridged version of "Driving Wheel", but also sounds better than the Allegiance Records pressing.

Since I’ve been a drummer for over 60 years, I have always brought in selected music when auditioning speakers that favored the drums, mainly the cymbals. I knew what a larger ride cymbal sounds like as well as a good hi hat pair and the music I would bring in had examples of that. Of course there is more to listen to when auditioning like the bass, guitar, organ, horns, etc.. but if the cymbals didn’t sound right, it would be hard to pick that speaker. In the 70’s when I got my 1st hifi system, my speakers had the heil air transformer mid/tweeter. For the last 6 years, I’ve been using a Diamond tweeter

Ah @rbstehno, but WHAT cymbals? I have A. Zildjians, K. Zildjians, Paiste 602's, and Bosphorus, each of which sounds different than the others. I have recordings made by myself with small capsule condenser mics and a Revox A77 of some of them, as well as recordings made in pro studios (I keep a log of which mics the engineers used). I employ both in my loudspeaker evaluations.

Fleetwood Mac - Dreams 

The first cymbal crash at the begining has a long decay.

I heard it on lesser quality systems than mine and it is not as long and sustained. The more transparent the system the more noticable it is. It's a great test for cymbal decay.