Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Sting and The Police Available Now
And to think we used to actually like the sound of the Nautilus pressings! They suffer from all the same shortcomings other Nautilus and similar half-speeds suffer from: the kind of pretty but lifeless and oh-so-boring sound that we describe in listing after listing.
Three of the Best, Or So We Thought
I just did shootouts with three of the best Nautilus Half-Speeds: Heart, The Police’s Ghost in the Machine, and Little Feat. None of them sound like the real thing, and especially disappointing was one of my former favorites, the Little Feat album.
On the title track the Nautilus is amazingly transparent and sweet sounding. There are no real dynamics or bass on that track, so the “pretty” half-speed does what it does best and shines. But all the other tracks suck in exactly the same way Night and Day does. Cutting the balls off Little Feat is not my idea of hi-fidelity.
We put audiophile beaters up for sale every week. Each and every one of them is a lesson on what makes one record sound better than another. If you want a wall full of good sounding records, we can help you make it happen. In fact it will be our pleasure. Down with audiophile junk and up with Better Records.
These kinds of records used to sound good on the systems of their day, and I should know, I had an old school stereo even into the 90s.
Some of the records that sounded good to me back then don’t sound too good to me anymore.
A Failed Technology
The point of this commentary is simply this: if half-speed mastering is a technology designed to improve the sound of records, it has to be seen as a miserable failure.
There is almost always a non-half-speed-mastered pressing that will be superior to the half-speed. The only exceptions to that rule will be those LPs whose real-time mastering was poor to start with. This is as it should be. You can beat a bad record with a half-speed, but you sure can’t beat a good one. We prove it every week here at Better Records.
Take a look in the Hot Stamper sections and you will find hundreds of records that are dramatically better sounding than any half-speed ever made. We built our reputation and practically our entire business on that simple idea. Furthermore, our philosophy is our commitment to you, the customer. We are happy to refund your money if you don’t see things our way. We’re confident that you will have no trouble recognizing the faults of the half-speed when The Real Thing comes along. We’re sure you’ll agree with us that the real Audiophile Pressing is simply the one that sounds better. And to that we say bring it on — the next shootout is about to begin.
It’s amazing how many records that used to sound bad — or least problematical — now sound pretty darn good. The blog is full of commentaries about them. Here’s a good one.
Every one of them is proof that comments about recordings are of limited value.
The recordings don’t change. Our ability to find, clean and play the pressings made from them does, and that’s what the Hot Stamper Revolution is all about.
You have a choice. You can choose to take the standard audiophile approach, which is to buy the record that is supposed to be the best pressing and consider the case closed.
You did the right thing, you played by the rules. You bought the pressing you were told to buy, the one you read the reviews about, the one on the list, the one they said was made from the master tape, the one supposedly pressed on the best vinyl, and on and on.
Cross that title off and move on to the next, right?
When — sometimes if but usually when — the sound of the record doesn’t live up to the hype surrounding it, you merely accept the fact that the recording itself must be at fault.
Prepare to allot a fair amount of time to complaining about such an unfortunate state of affairs. “If only they had recorded the album better…” you say to yourself as you toddle off to bed, ending your listening session prematurely, fatigued and frustrated with a record that — for some reason — doesn’t sound as good as you remember.
We did it too, more times than I care to admit.
Try It Our Way
Or you can adopt our approach and hear those very same albums sound dramatically better than you ever thought possible. Better than you remember. It happens all the time here at Better Records and it can happen at your house too. Just follow the yellow brick– uh, scratch that, just follow these four steps.
Our approach has the added benefit of freeing up time that would normally be spent bitching about the bad sound of most recordings. This in turn makes more time available for pleasurable listening to the Hot Stamper pressing you discovered on your own or the one we found for you. (It’s the same process whether you do it yourself or we do it for you.)
You also probably won’t feel the need to go on silly audiophile forums to argue the merits of this or that pressing. You will already own the pressing that settles the argument.
Keep in mind that your pressing only settles the argument for you — nobody else will believe it.
And why should they? They have never heard your copy. It would take quite a leap of faith on their part to believe that your copy sounds so much better than the one they own, when the one they own looks just like the one you own. It might even have the same catalog number, the same label, maybe even the same stampers.
But this is precisely what Hot Stampers are all about. Records may look the same but they most assuredly do not sound the same.
It may be a dead horse, but we see no reason to stop beating it: explaining doesn’t work. Only hearing works.