Month: June 2021

Watch What Happens – Now That’s What a Real Drum Kit Sounds Like!

Another Record We’ve Discovered with (Potentially) Excellent Sound…

and One We Will Probably Never Shootout Again

Some records are just too consistently noisy for us to offer to our audiophile customers no matter how good they sound.

We have a section for records that tend to be noisy, and it can be found here.

This is the most realistic drum kit I have heard on a non-jazz album in my life. The drum sound on the first track is exactly the sound we all know from hanging around small clubs and our friends’ garage bands. There is simply no audible processing on any part of the kit. The drums are centered behind the vocals and lead instruments, with what sounds like to me the barest of miking, surrounded by just the right amount of unbaffled studio space.

When the drums come in on the first track on side one you will hear immediately what I mean. The third track on side two has especially good drums as well. The vocals on that third track, Message to Michael, are some of the most natural on the album as well. Lena can strain a bit on some songs in the loudest passages, but on others she can belt it out and stay clean all the way to the top. Listen track by track to hear how well she holds up when the bigger choruses come in.

As music lovers and audiophiles this was a truly marvelous discovery for us years ago. True, we’ve known about the album for a long time, but as a practical matter it’s been impossible to find enough clean copies to do a shootout — until now of course.

Dave Sanders, a name I — and no doubt most audiophiles — was not familiar with, brilliantly engineered the album as well as other favorites of ours, including Szabo’s 1969, Gilberto’s Windy and McFarland’s Does The Sun Really Shine On The Moon? It’s hard to find a recording he did that isn’t full of Tubey Magic, huge studio space and right-on-the-money instrumental timbres. (more…)

Cannonball Adderley Quintet In Chicago – Not Bad on Speakers Corner Heavy Vinyl

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Cannonball Adderley Available Now

Sonic Grade: B?

A fairly good Speakers Corner jazz album (we’re assuming). Years ago we wrote the following:

“This one has excellent sound (in that left-right jazz of the fifties kind of way).”

We can’t be sure that we would still feel the same way (about the excellent sound; the hard left right is not up for debate). My guess is that this is still probably a good record if you can get one for the 30 bucks we used to charge.

Our Hot Stamper pressings will be dramatically more transparent, open, clear and just plain REAL sounding, because these are all the areas in which heavy vinyl pressings tend to fall short, in our experience, our experience coming from hundreds and hundreds of them, as you can see below.

Further Reading

Devo – Duty Now For The Future

More Devo

  • Stunning Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound from start to finish, making this the best copy to hit the site in years!
  • The energy and presence here are off the charts, the bottom end is super solid and punchy, and there’s tons of space around all of the instruments
  • “Devo and their ilk were serious and heartfelt about their goofy sound. They were weird, but weird on their terms. Duty Now for the Future is the perfect example of that. It earns its strangeness with sharp, compelling, and infectiously energetic songs. It crafts a world to travel and never misses a step. And, perhaps most impressively, it sounds just as fresh over 30 [now 40!] years after its original release.” – Pop Matters

GET DEVOLVED! This copy gives you amazing sound for both sides of this fun — and very well-recorded — album. The average copy of this record barely hints at the sound that Ken Scott was clearly able to get on the tape. This one tells a different story, with serious weight down low, a ton of energy, loads of texture to the synths, and wonderful clarity. The lucky man (or woman) who takes this home is sure to get a thrill from it.

The soundfield on these killer sides has a three-dimensional quality that allows all the instruments to be identified and followed with ease. They just don’t get any punchier or livelier, and with music like this, all those elements combine to make this music a FUN listen. (more…)

Leonard Cohen – I’m Your Man

  • This outstanding pressing boasts solid Double Plus (A++) sound from first note to last – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • These sides are doing everything right — big, rich and full of Tubey Magic with a wonderfully extended top end and a more natural sound than most other copies we heard
  • Top tracks here include First We Take Manhattan, Take This Waltz, and the classic Everybody Knows
  • 4 1/2 stars: “A stunningly sophisticated leap into modern musical textures, I’m Your Man re-establishes Leonard Cohen’s mastery….”

(more…)

What We Listen For – These Are the Basics

What Makes This Enya Pressing a Hot Stamper?

Specifically, what are the criteria by which a record like this should be judged?

The criteria we discuss in most of our Hot Stamper listings are a good place to start:

Energy, vocal presence, frequency extension (on both ends), transparency, harmonic textures (freedom from smear is key), rhythmic drive, correct tonality, fullness, space, Tubey Magic, and on and on down through the list.

When we can get all, or most all, of the qualities above to come together on any given side, we provisionally award it a grade of “contender.” Once we’ve been through all our copies on one side we then play the best of the best against each other and arrive at a winner for that side.

Repeat the process for the other side and the shootout is officially over. All that’s left is to see how the sides matched up.

For some records, we offer advice on what to listen for track by track. 

It may not be rocket science, but it is a science of a kind, one with strict protocols that we’ve developed over the course of many years to insure that the results we arrive at are as accurate as we can make them.

The result of all our work speaks for itself. We guarantee you have never heard this music sound better than it does on any of our Hot Stamper pressings — or your money back.

Size

One of the qualities that we don’t talk about on the site nearly enough is the SIZE of the record’s presentation. Some copies of the album just sound small — they don’t extend all the way to the outside edges of the speakers, and they don’t seem to take up all the space from the floor to the ceiling. In addition, the sound can often be recessed, with a lack of presence and immediacy in the center.

Other copies — my notes for these copies often read “BIG and BOLD” — create a huge soundfield, with the music positively jumping out of the speakers. They’re not brighter, they’re not more aggressive, they’re not hyped-up in any way, they’re just bigger and clearer.

When you hear a copy that does all that, it’s an entirely different listening experience. (more…)

I Am the Blues – First Question: How Big Is the Sound?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Soul, Blues and R&B Albums Available Now

It was pretty easy to separate the men from the boys in this shootout. A quick drop of the needle on each side would immediately answer our number one question: “How BIG is the sound?”

The copies that lacked top end extension or heft in the bottom end were just too uninvolving. This is the BLUES, baby — you think it’s supposed to sound small and distant?

Another problem we ran into on many copies was excessive smoothness. When a copy was overly rich or smeary, it usually lacked the “gritty” feel that music like this should have.

I don’t know about you, but if I’m listening to the blues, I am not looking for glossy sound. Give me the raw texture and the detail that was put on the tape. I don’t want the sound to be “fixed” after the fact, and I definitely don’t want it to be modified to give it more audiophile appeal.

The sound and the arrangements here are perfectly suited to Willie’s material. Since most vintage blues recordings leave a lot to be desired sonically, and most modern “hi-fi” blues recordings are less-than-engaging musically, this album is the cure for the blues-lovin’ audiophile’s blues!

The material here is TOP NOTCH — Dixon was one of the blues’ greatest songwriters, responsible for Spoonful, Hoochie Coochie Man, Little Red Rooster, Back Door Man and other songs you’ve probably heard your favorite classic rock band covering.

We had an absolute blast with this one. It’s the rare blues recording that has the audiophile goods, so it was a real treat to hear an album that could deliver authentic blues music with such strong sonics.

(more…)

The Kinks – Misfits

More of The Kinks

  • With seriously good Double Plus (A++) sound or close to it on both sides, this was one of the better copies we heard in our recent Misfits shootout
  • Quite a bit richer and tubier than most of what we auditioned, qualities that helped the acoustic-guitar-based tracks work their magic 
  • The big hit here was Rock and Roll Fantasy and it sounds every bit as good as you hope it would
  • 4 1/2 stars: “The Kinks became arena rockers with Sleepwalker, and its follow-up, Misfits, follows in the same vein, but it’s a considerable improvement on its predecessor…Misfits is a moving record that manages to convey deep emotions while rocking hard. The Kinks hadn’t made a record this good since Muswell Hillbillies.”

(more…)

Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee – A Long Way From Home

More Sonny Terry

More Classic Blues Albums

  • A Long Way From Home makes its Hot Stamper debut here with Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound on both sides of this original Bluesway pressing
  • The sound here is shockingly good – the space is huge, the vocals and instruments clear, and there is a surprising amount of solid, note-like bass, the kind we did not expect to find on a Bluesway album from this era
  • Recorded over two days, this album is basically a live-in-the-studio affair – having neither the time nor the budget to screw up the sound of the band means that this album has the audiophile goods like practically no other Blues album you may have heard
  • 4 stars: “Solid, relaxed, rockin’ grooves are the hallmarks here with both artists in fine form.”

(more…)

Rob Wasserman / Solo – Our Shootout Winner from 2015

More Rob Wasserman

The best sounding copy to ever hit the site, with BY FAR the best sounding side one we have ever played — as good as the sound can be on most copies, side one here took it to another level. Sometimes we call that Four Plus but for not let’s just call it At Least Three Plus. 

And it’s on quiet vinyl, as quiet a record as Rounder knows how to press, I would venture to say.

This copy blew our minds with the quality of its sound. I don’t know when I’ve heard the bass reproduced with this kind of speed and authority.

Last time around for a 2 1/2 copy we wrote:

We frankly don’t know if this record can sound any better than it does here. We erred on the side of caution and chose to award it something short of the full Three Pluses for sound. If you had a big enough stack of copies who knows what you might hear? As we like to say, everything is relative. The monster pressing has to be out there somewhere, even if it takes a hundred copies to find it. Since we’ve had exactly two copies make it to our site, the amazing sound of this copy will have to do for now.

Well, after hearing how good the record can sound I went on a tear picking them up off the internet in order to find that ‘big enough stack.”

I’m glad this copy somehow ended up in the stack — a random process that cannot be predicted of course — because it kicks the recording up a notch above even the best copies we had played previously. Phenomenal sound. A Demo Disc par excellence.

As for the music, solo bass is surely not everyone’s cup of tea, but you can’t argue with the sonics. Wasserman is as gifted a player as I’ve ever heard (and I’ve heard Ray Brown live — that guy was pretty damn gifted too!). (more…)

Ringo Starr – Goodnight Vienna

More Ringo Starr

More by the Beatles

  • Goodnight Vienna finally arrives on the site with outstanding Double Plus (A++) sound from first note to last
  • Another amazing Richard Perry production with sound by Bill Schnee – on a pressing this good, you’ll be blown away
  • Starr partnered with a host of phenomenal writers and musicians here, including John Lennon, Elton John, Bernie Taupin, and Harry Nilsson
  • 4 stars: “Goodnight Vienna was very much a follow-up to Ringo… Richard Perry again produced, bringing his strong pop sensibility to the diverse material… a masterpiece.”

(more…)