More of the Music of Duke Ellington
More Large Group Jazz Recordings
If you are a fan, this record will be a thrill. If you’re unfamiliar with the Duke’s music, I can’t imagine a better introduction than this.
This LP also includes Gerry Mulligan’s only performance with the Ellington band.
Paul Gonsalves’s saxophone performance is superb and worth the price of the album alone.
The clarinet parts on Princess Blue are out of this world — Ellington at his best!
More of the Music of The Pretenders
Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of The Pretenders
Take it from us, it is the rare pressing that manages to get rid of the harshness and congestion that plague so many copies.
Look for a copy that opens up the soundstage — the wider, deeper and taller the soundstage the better the sound — as long as the tonal balance stays right.
When you hear a copy sound like this one, relatively rich and sweet, the minor shortcomings of the recording no longer seem to interfere with your enjoyment of the music. Like a properly tweaked stereo, a good record lets you forget all that audio stuff and just listen to the music as music. Here at Better Records we — like our customers — think that’s what it’s all about.
And we know that only the top copies will let you do that, something that not everyone in the audiophile community fully appreciates to this day. We’re doing what we can to change that way of thinking, but progress is, as you may well imagine, slow.
What to Listen For
The best copies have superb extension up top, which allows the grit and edge on the vocals to almost entirely disappear. Some of it is there on the tape for a reason — that’s partly the sound they were going for, this is after all a Bob Clearmountain mix and a Jimmy Iovine production — but bad mastering and pressing adds plenty of grit to the average copy, enough to ruin it in fact.
You can test for that edgy quality on side one very easily using the jangly guitar harmonics and breathy vocals of My Baby.
If the harmonic information is clear and extending naturally, in a big space, you are more than likely hearing a top quality copy.
The Domestic LP and CD
The domestic LP is pretty awful, and the domestic CD is even worse, practically unlistenable in fact. I have one in my car; only the judicious use of the treble control, set steeply downwards, makes the sound even tolerable.
But the album rocks — it’s great driving music.
This Super Hot Stamper pressing has superb RCA Living Stereo sound, with an exceptionally clear, solid, tonally correct piano.
We recently did a major shootout for all of Beethoven’s Piano Concertos, pulling pressings from the three major Golden Age labels — RCA, London, Mercury — and this Fourth came out near the top of the heap.
Most pressings of Rubinstein’s Beethoven concertos simply do not have this kind of open, big and bold sound.
Side one earned a grade of A++ and side two was actually a bit better at A++ to A+++. That makes this a very special piano recording indeed. (more…)
Finding clean real Elvis records — not those crappy compilations and vault-leftovers, but real Elvis albums from his golden period when he was the true King of Pop (sorry Michael) — has never been a walk in the park. We do the best we can.
Fortunately there are some reissues from the ’60s and ’70s that have the potential for excellent sound. This is clearly one of them. The originals we see are a lost cause; they’re practically always scratched and full of groove damage. We’d be lucky to find a clean one every five or ten years nowadays.
Side One
Breathy vocals and very full sound make this a top quality side.
For a kick check out the great sounding percussion on the third track.
Side Two
Rich and smooth on the first track, more like an old Elvis record, but the next tracks sound better, tubier and livelier. (more…)
More of the Music of Supertramp
Reviews and Commentaries for Crime of the Century
[This commentary is well over ten years old, so take it with a grain or two of salt.]
AMAZING White Hot Stampers for the greatest Ken Scott production in history. This is his (and the band’s) MASTERPIECE, and now we have a pressing that allows us to revel in the GLORY that is Crime of the Century!
We played a KILLER MoFi pressing many years ago. (Yes, we admit it. As much as we dislike most of their records, the truth is the truth. Some can actually sound good. You can count them on the fingers of one hand, but they do exist.) This bit of commentary from the Hot Stamper MoFi shootout we had done previously discusses some of its characteristic traits:
How About the Brit Copies?
If one were to pick some nits, one could say that it’s still a tiny bit hot around 6k. The reason I know that is because the early British pressings have a smoother midrange compared to practically anything else out there. You may have noticed that good British copies never make it to the site, and there’s a simple explanation for that. Most early British copies (and later ones too) just do not sound good. On top of that, they are rarely quiet enough to play and enjoy. I can’t tell you how many British COTC pressings I’ve heard in the last 5 years that didn’t sound good or were noisy and groove damaged. But it’s a lot.
We get these MOFIs in on a regular basis, and they usually sound as phony and wrong as can be. They’re the perfect example of a hyped-up audiophile record that appeals to people with lifeless stereos, the kind that need amped-up records to get them going.
Listen to the vocals at the end of Dreamer. If they are bright, the bells at the end of the song sound super-extended and harmonically rich. But at what price? The vocals are TOO BRIGHT. Which is more important: good vocals or good bells? There has to be a BALANCE. This is something audiophiles and audiophile labels — even worse, they should know better — often have trouble understanding.
Things Have Changed
As we never tire of saying, in audio, if you’re doing it right, things change. With better cleaning technologies, better playback, better all the other stuff we talk about on the site, records that used to be practically impossible to get to sound right can suddenly — if a year or two of hard work and experimentation can be considered “sudden” — start to come alive and show us the MAGIC that’s been locked away for all this time inside their grooves.
To Quote The Rutles, Let’s Be Natural
Case in point: The vocals here sound AMAZING — natural and correct with lots of texture. Even the best MoFi copies are going to sound a bit phony when played against a killer copy such as this. Of course it’s a high-definition, high-resolution sound cut with super low distortion; it has to be to sound this good. Folks, this is the copy that lets you appreciate every last detail of the recording without hitting you over the head with “sonic effects”. It’s musical in a way that no audiophile pressing ever seems to be.
And of course the bass is AWESOME. Loud levels and big woofers will have your house quaking. Add to that the kind of ENERGY that the best pressings have in their grooves and you have an album that is guaranteed to bring the average audiophile system to its knees, begging for mercy. This is The Audio Challenge before you. If you don’t have a system designed to play records with this kind of SONIC POWER, steer clear of Crime of the Century. It wants to rock your world, and that’s exactly what Hot Stamper pressings like this one are here to do.
It’s ALIVE! It has BIG, PUNCHY sound that will fill up your living room and then some. It’s exceptionally transparent with superb clarity and lots of extension on the top end. (The typical Brit copy is dull, and that quality just takes all the magic out of the recording. The three dimensional space and clarity of the recording rely heavily on the quality of the top end. The MoFi, on the best copies, shows you what is missing from the typical Brit, domestic or other import LP. This is what impressed me back in the ’70s when I bought my MoFi. It was only years later that I realized what was missing and what was wrong.)
Last time around the best copies were British. That was NOT the case this time except on side two, where one British copy was competitive, but not better than, our best domestic pressing.
FOUR INCREDIBLE SIDES! We had a huge shootout for this famous double album and this copy blew our minds with a pair each of White Hot and Super Hot sides and quiet vinyl throughout. In the high-stakes game of Better Records Double Album Poker, that’s a full house, my man! Sides one and three earned the A+++ grades while sides two and four were close behind at A++. This one gives you the kind of YOU ARE THERE immediacy and transparency that put you front and center for a late ’70s jazzy Joni Mitchell show. Not too many copies will do that!
If you’re a fan of Joni’s more experimental work from the mid to late ’70s, this album is a must-own. She takes a top-notch crew of musicians including Pat Metheny, Jaco Pastorious and Michael Brecker through a set including many of her best album tracks from the era.
Sides one and three were absolutely top-notch, earning the top grade of A+++. The sound is full-bodied, lively and very DYNAMIC. On so many copies the sax sounds thin and hard, but on a Hot Stamper like this one you get fuller, smoother sound for the instrument. Joni’s voice is breathy and present with real texture, and the three-dimensional imaging gives the music a real sense of SPACE — just like you’d get at a concert. This helps convey the intimacy of the songs and the performances, and isn’t that what we audiophiles got in this crazy hobby for in the first place? (more…)
This very nice looking Island Sunray British Import LP has AMAZING SOUND ON BOTH SIDES (with caveats!). Side one is super rich and full of tubey magic. It can be ever so slightly grainy and strained but when the sound is this good who cares!? Andy Johns is the man behind the console here, which explains why the album is so well recorded. If you’re a fan of Black Sabbath you’ll find much to like here; this is psych rock at its best.
Now for the caveats! Side two has great sound as well, rating A++, but it’s pretty beat up. The third track is full of crackles and pops. Basically we’re giving away this side for free. (more…)
More of the Music of Led Zeppelin
Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Led Zeppelin
One of our early shootouts taught us a lot about this album.
On a super transparent, super low distortion copy, all the subtleties really come to life.
Too many copies we played were a bit grainy — you could really hear it on the cymbal crashes. This copy is as smooth and sweet as you could ever ask for.
It’s open and spacious, and the vocals are tonally correct. The bottom end has deep, well-defined bass and an exceptionally punchy kick drum sound.
There’s lots of extension up top and a silky quality to the vocals and cymbals.
The presence is staggering — the guitar solo on All My Love positively JUMPS out of the speakers.
Musically this certainly isn’t Zep’s best work, but there is still some really great material.
We found the best sounding tracks to be “Fool In The Rain” on side one and “All My Love” on side two.
“In The Evening” can rock with the best of them, “South Bound Saurez” can be very rich and sweet, and “I’m Gonna Crawl” can sound out of this world.
In fact, after playing two knockout copies we found back to back, I am a bigger fan of this album than I ever was.
Zep II it ain’t, but it’s still Zep, and that oughta tell you plenty.
Turn It Up
In our review for this album we debunked the Classic Records pressing using a very simple test which you may want to try at home.
The test we stumbled upon is actually quite an easy one to use — a copy that makes you want to turn up the volume is likely to be a winner. The Classic does not pass that test.
We threw one on and just couldn’t deal with the edgy vocals and upper-midrange boost. We wanted to turn down the volume as quickly as we could get our hands on the knob. As far as we’re concerned there’s no substitute for The Real Thing. As hard as it is to find great sounding copies of this album, it’s even harder for us to sit through a sub-par version like the Classic.
And boy were our faces red. We used to think the Classic version was pretty decent, but the best originals SLAUGHTER it! We had never done a shootout for this album before 2007. We didn’t feel up to the challenge, because the typical pressing tends to be miserable — gritty, grainy, hard sounding, congested mids, dull, and so on. But once we did, the Classic crashed and burned, along with 90% of the other copies we played.
Try the Turn Up the Volume Test and see if your copy makes the grade or makes you want to turn it right back down. I’m guessing the latter, unless you were lucky enough to get one of our Hot Stampers from the last shootout. There sure weren’t enough to go around.
This Decca Phase 4 record from 1962 has Demo Disc sound of a sort on side one. Super Hot sonics, coupled with the Super Phase 4 “jumping out of the speakers” recording techniques that were employed, mean that this is one LIVELY record!
The pianos can get to be a bit much, but when they are under control, the huge stage and the effect of all the percussion that jumps out of the soundfield is really quite something to behold.
Zero smear on this side too, which is what makes it work — the blunting of all those transients would quickly ruin the fun.
Which is what happens on side two; the smear and hardness of the typical Phase 4 pressing are evident and do spoil all the fun.
Try tracks 1, 2, 4 and 6 – talk about immediacy and explosive dynamics.
This is an Older Review.
Most of the older reviews you see are for records that did not go through the shootout process, the revolutionary approach to finding better sounding pressings we developed in the early 2000s and have since turned into a fine art.
We found the records you see in these older listings by cleaning and playing a pressing or two of the album, which we then described and priced based on how good the sound and surfaces were. (For out Hot Stamper listings, the Sonic Grades and Vinyl Playgrades are listed separately.)
We were often wrong back in those days, something we have no reason to hide. Audio equipment and record cleaning technologies have come a long way since those darker days, a subject we discuss here.
Currently, 99% (or more!) of the records we sell are cleaned, then auditioned under rigorously controlled conditions, up against a number of other pressings. We award them sonic grades, and then condition check them for surface noise.
As you may imagine, this approach requires a great deal of time, effort and skill, which is why we currently have a highly trained staff of about ten. No individual or business without the aid of such a committed group could possibly dig as deep into the sound of records as we have, and it is unlikely that anyone besides us could ever come along to do the kind of work we do.
The term “Hot Stampers” gets thrown around a lot these days, but to us it means only one thing: a record that has been through the shootout process and found to be of exceptionally high quality.
The result of our labor is the hundreds of titles seen here, every one of which is unique and guaranteed to be the best sounding copy of the album you have ever heard or you get your money back.