Month: June 2021

The Crusaders / Chain Reaction – MoFi Reviewed

More of the Music of The Crusaders

More Jazz Fusion Records with Hot Stampers

This is a Mobile Fidelity LP with relatively good sound. We did a mini-shootout many years ago and this copy apparently killed the competition. 

However…

When you play the MoFi against an actual honest-to-goodness properly mastered and pressed vintage LP – we call them Hot Stampers – the audiophile version of the album reeks of phony top end EQ, compression and sloppy bass.

Of course, what half-speed mastered record doesn’t?

Further Reading

The best place to start is here:

How come you guys don’t like Half-Speed Mastered records?

(more…)

Classic Records – More of the Same Old Same Old

More of the Music of Cannonball Adderley

More of the Music of Miles Davis

Reviews and Commentaries for Somethin’ Else

Sonic Grade: C

Another Classic Records LP that’s hard to get excited about.

There are certainly some incredible sounding pressings of this album out there, but who has the resources it takes to find them? Most of the original Blue Notes we come across these days turn out to have mediocre sound, and many of them have severely damaged inner grooves. Even the mintiest looking copies often turn out to be too noisy for most audiophiles, Blue Note vinyl being what it is.

This is of course why the hacks at Classic Records did so well for themselves [until they went under] hawking remastered versions of classic albums pressed on new, quieter vinyl.

The problem is that most of their stuff just doesn’t sound all that hot, this album included. We’ve played it; it’s decent, but any Hot Stamper will show you just how much music you are missing.

If you want to hear this album with amazing fidelity but don’t want to spend the time, money and energy collecting, cleaning, and playing mostly mediocre copies until you luck into a good quiet one, a Hot Stamper pressing is the only way to go.

Further Reading on Heavy Vinyl

The Moody Blues – Seventh Sojourn

More of The Moody Blues

Reviews and Commentaries for The Moody Blues

  • An outstanding copy with Double Plus (A+++) sound or BETTER from start to finish
  • Forget the dubby domestic pressings and whatever crappy Heavy Vinyl record they’re making these days – the UK LPs are the only way to fly on Seventh Sojourn
  • Great sound isn’t easy to come by for the Moody Blues — it takes a lot of copies to find sound as good as this
  • The Moodies’ biggest success on the American charts – I’m Just a Singer (In a Rock & Roll Band) is the killer hit from the album

This pressing is excellent on both sides. It has lovely vocals — sweet and breathy — so critical to the Moodies sound. It’s also spacious and energetic, two qualities that the average copy simply has very little of. To top it all off, this copy rocks about as much as this album, in our experience, CAN rock. Most pressings are shockingly compressed, recessed and murky.

And the domestic copies are made from dubs; they’re brighter but grainy and transistory as hell. They convey NONE of the Moodies magic.

Moody Blues records have a marked tendency to sound somewhat murky and muddy; that’s obviously the sound these guys were going for because you hear it on every album they released.

Compound their “sound” with bad mastering, bad pressing or bad vinyl — not to mention vinyl that hasn’t been cleaned properly — and you will find yourself trying to wade through an impassable sonic swamp. With anything but a Hot Stamper the result is going to be sound so fat, thick, and opaque that it will confound any attempt you might make to hear into it. (more…)

It’s A Beautiful Day – Self-Titled

More Psych Rock

  • Superb sound from start to finish for this Columbia 360 label pressing with both sides earning Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) grades – just shy of our Shootout Winner
  • One of our favorite ’60s Psych Rock albums, a true Demo Disc for three-dimensional space, and a Desert Island Disc for musical originality
  • Full and rich, detailed and transparent, this copy is doing absolutely EVERYTHING we could ask it to do
  • 4 stars: “It’s a Beautiful Day remains as a timepiece and evidence of how sophisticated rock & roll had become in the fertile environs of the San Francisco music scene.”

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Chopin / 24 Etudes / Vasary – A Demo Disc for Solo Piano on DG

More of the music of Frederic Chopin (1810-1849)

More Classical ‘Sleeper” Recordings with Demo Disc Sound

  • This stunning album of some of Chopin’s greatest piano pieces has superb sound, boasting a Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side two mated to an outstanding Double Plus (A++) side one
  • This magnificent sounding (and surprisingly hard to find) pressing is yet another example of a classical “sleeper,” one that can hold its own with practically any solo piano recording you have ever heard
  • As expected, Vasary performs with consummate skill, bringing out nuances in the work that may have escaped others – the results are captivating
  • “… an extraordinarily impassioned work, belying its technical utility.”

I had wanted to do big shootout for this title from the moment I heard a killer copy that a friend sold me. You will have a hard time finding a better sounding solo piano record, I can tell you that.

I managed to get a couple more copies, but then my luck ran out. For more than a year I could not find the record at a good price — one has to assume that at least some of the copies will not sound good enough to sell and will end up being total losses — and some came in too noisy.

Eventually I gave up and just played the three or four I had.

Here we present the winner! Absolutely amazing piano reproduction. (more…)

The Rolling Stones / Aftermath – Surprisingly Good Domestic Pressings Do Exist

More Rolling Stones

We’ve paired up a Double Plus (A++) copy for each side to create this Super Hot 2-pack, which is the only way we were able to find good sound for the whole album. Paint It Black is missing from the Brit version, but it’s here and it sounds wonderful.

A big surprise — domestic Super Hot Stamper sound for Aftermath! We didn’t even know it was possible, but on a lark we pulled a big stack of these out of the back and played them against our best imports. We were blown away when the best domestic copies held their own and delivered some seriously good early Stones sound!

Both sides are richer and smoother than we expected. You get lots of presence and energy, a very solid bottom end, and impressive transparency. The best Brit copies give you a little more clarity, but the best domestics like the two Double Plus sides of this 2-pack were cut very well and can actually rock a bit harder. (more…)

Cat Stevens and His Sparkling Acoustic Guitars?

More Records Perfectly Suited for Stone Age Stereos of the ’70s

More of the Music of Cat Stevens

More Reviews and Commentaries for Tea for the Tillerman

In the commentary for America’s first album we noted that:

The guitars on this record are a true test of stereo fidelity. … most of the pressings of this record do not get the guitars to sound right. … on a copy with a bit too much top end they will have an unnatural hi-fi-ish sparkle. 

This kind of sparkle can be heard on many records Mobile Fidelity made in the ’70s and ’80s. Tea for the Tillerman, Sundown, Year of the Cat, Finger Paintings, Byrd at the Gate, Quarter Moon in a 10 Cent Town — the list of MoFis with sparkling acoustic guitars would be very long indeed, and these are just the records with prominent acoustic guitars!

(On a side note, if you want a very different sounding Mobile Fidelity record, try anything mastered by Jack Hunt. They are every bit as wrong, but in the tonally opposite direction: murky, fat and way too smooth. This is the sound favored by another audiophile label, this one, and the fact that audiophiles actually buy into this kind of third-rate sound is confounding to say the least.)

Next time you drop the needle on a Mobile Fidelity record — one of the ones pressed in Japan and mastered by Stan Ricker; the Anadisq series tends to have the opposite problem, no top end at all — listen carefully to the acoustic guitars and tell me if you don’t think they sound a tad sparkly.

We’ve all heard acoustic guitars up close, at parties and coffee shops and what-have-you. They don’t really sound like that, do they? I should hope not.

How come you guys don’t like Half-Speed Mastered records?

(more…)

Frank Sinatra – Cycles

More Frank Sinatra

  • A STUNNING copy of Cycles with Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound from first note to last
  • Big, full-bodied and musical, with exceptional presence for the most important element of the recording, Sinatra’s clear, richly expressive bourbon baritone
  • The midrange reproduction is superb – breathy and natural, with dramatically more Tubey Magic than you will hear on any other copy you can find, guaranteed
  • “Cycles was Frank Sinatra’s first full-fledged pop/rock-oriented album, concentrating on a more orchestrated variation on the popular folk-rock of the late ’60s.”

(more…)

The Rolling Stones – It’s Only Rock ‘N’ Roll

More Rolling Stones

  • A KILLER early pressing of this Rolling Stones classic of Stripped Down Rock and Roll, with Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound on both sides
  • What earned this pressing Top Grades was its extraordinarily textured, practically grain- and grit-free midrange – the bad copies tend to be smeary and gritty in the midrange (where the music is) and that’s just not our sound
  • The superbly talented Andy Johns engineered, so you can be sure that this is the sound the Stones were aiming for
  • “Throughout, the Stones wear their title as the “World’s Greatest Rock & Roll Band” with a defiant smirk, which makes the bitter cynicism of “If You Can’t Rock Me” and the title track all the more striking, and the reggae experimentation… all the more enjoyable.”

It’s Only Rock ‘N’ Roll is a consistently good, straight-ahead, no-frills rock album from the Stones with Mick Taylor still in the band. It was the last of its kind for a while; their next release was the reggae-influenced Black and Blue. The sound can be a bit gritty and grainy at times, but you gotta believe that that’s precisely the sound the Stones heard in the booth and were totally cool with. Andy Johns engineered and he’s made as many super-tubey, super-rich and super-smooth recordings as anybody this side of Bill Porter.

The Stones didn’t want that sound this time around. The Stones wanted this sound.

This album may have some of the best The Rolling Stones music, but those looking for top quality sonics for the Stones should head in the direction of Beggars Banquet, Sticky Fingers, or Let It Bleed. They’re simply more audiophile-friendly recordings. (more…)