More of The KinksSonic Grade: F
HALL OF SHAME PRESSINGS, EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM
Some of the worst sound I have ever heard on Heavy Vinyl. The average cassette sounds better than these vinyl pieces of crap. I see the label went under in 2011. Good riddance.
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:
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
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.”
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.
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.”
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…)
DCC + RTI = Audio Enervation
More of the Music of Bonnie Raitt
Reviews and Commentaries for Bonnie Raitt’s Albums
This commentary was the first one I wrote criticizing the sound of DCC vinyl, probably around 2008 or so.
During our shootout for Bonnie’s first Capitol album, we found that the DCC pressing was lacking in so many ways that I felt compelled to spell out for our customers what its shortcomings were.
I had enthusiastically recommended the album in 1996 when it came out, but our first big shootout had shown me how wrong that judgment turned out to be. Our complete commentary from 2008 is reproduced below.
The no-longer-surprising thing about our Hot Stamper pressings of Nick Of Time is how completely they MURDER the DCC LP. Folks, it’s really no contest.
Yes, the DCC is tonally balanced and can sound very good, but it can’t compete with the best original pressings. It’s missing too much of the presence, intimacy, immediacy and transparency that we’ve discovered on the better original pressings.
As is the case with practically every record pressed on Heavy Vinyl over the last twenty years, there is a suffocating loss of ambience throughout, a pronounced sterility to the sound.
Modern remastered records just do not BREATHE like the real thing.
Good EQ or Bad EQ, they all suffer to one degree or another from a bad case of audio enervation. Where is the life of the music? You can try turning up the volume on these remastered LPs all you want; they simply refuse to come to life.
We play albums like this VERY LOUD. I’ve seen Bonnie Raitt live a number of times and although I can’t begin to get her to play as loud in my listening room as she did on stage, I can try. To do less is to do her a disservice.
The DCC Approach
The DCC is too damn smooth. It’s an understandable approach for DCC to take, since this recording is more hyped-up than any of Bonnie’s earlier work, but this album actually has loads of personality and nuance. Just because an album sounds polished and maybe a bit too “clean,” it’s foolish to think that it lacks intensity or passion.
You listen to a track like “Thing Called Love” on the DCC, and it sounds good — the tambourine sounds like a tambourine, the bass sounds like a bass. The problem is you don’t hear the jingles of the tambourine hitting each other; the bass doesn’t smack you in the chest. When these elements are veiled, the life and, for lack of a better term, the point of the music go with them.
When I’m listening to Bonnie perform on a Hot Stamper pressing, I’m not merely hearing her singing the songs and nodding along with the beat, I’m being enveloped by her voice and transported to another place, as though she were in my living room, or I in her studio (something to do with Newton’s third law I believe). Although the DCC is very good, it doesn’t give us enough of what we’re looking for from an album like Nick of Time. It feels compromised, and you should never compromise the life of the music on an album that you love. (This is why I rail against panels and screens for speakers. Where is the life? The energy? The sound they produce bores me to tears.)
The Rules
As a general rule, this Heavy Vinyl pressing will fall short in some or all of the following areas when played head to head against the vintage pressings we offer:
- It will tend to lack Ambience, Size and Space.
- It will tend to have more Compression.
- It will tend to lack Energy.
- It will tend to have more Smear.
- It will tend to lack Transparency.
Further Reading
Here are some of our reviews and commentaries concerning the many Heavy Vinyl pressings we’ve played over the years, well over 200 at this stage of the game. Feel free to pick your poison.
A Confession
Even as recently as the early 2000s we were still somewhat impressed with many of the better Heavy Vinyl pressings. If we had never made the progress we’ve worked so hard to make over the course of the last twenty or more years, perhaps we would find more merit in the Heavy Vinyl reissues so many audiophiles seem impressed by.
We’ll never know of course; that’s a bell that can be unrung. We did the work, we can’t undo it, and the system that resulted from it is merciless in revealing the truth — that these newer pressings are second-rate at best and much more often than not third-rate and even worse.
Some audiophile records have such poor sound, they had me so pissed off I was motivated to create a special ring of hell for them.
Setting higher standards — no, being able to set higher standards — in our minds is a clear mark of progress. Judging by the hundreds of letters we’ve received, especially the ones comparing our records to their Heavy Vinyl and Half-Speed Mastered counterparts, we know that our customers see things the same way.