Month: July 2021

Lou Rawls – Live!

More Lou Rawls

Well Recorded Albums that Should Be More Popular with Audiophiles

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  • Lou Rawls Live! is an amazing recording that really comes to life on the best Hot Stamper pressings
  • The songs are fantastic, the musicians are brilliant, the sound is superb – Stormy Monday & Tobacco Road are highlights, but really, there’s not a bad track here
  • If you could only have one Lou Rawls album, no question it would have to be this one – everything that’s good about the man’s music is fully on display
  • 4 stars: “Lou Rawls gives a riveting performance on Live!, covering standards from Basie/Rushing’s tambourine-jumpin’ ‘Goin’ to Chicago’ to T-Bone Walker’s foot-stompin’ ‘Stormy Monday,’ and whole lot in between.”

What an album! For live soul-infused vocals, we know of none better. (more…)

With a Little Help From My Friends on Speakers Corner

More of the Music of Joe Cocker

Sonic Grade: B

One of the better Speakers Corner Rock and Pop releases. We haven’t played a copy of this record in years, but back in the day we liked it, so let’s call it a “B” with the caveat that the older the review, the more likely we are to have changed our minds. Not sure if we would still agree with what we wrote back in the ’90s when this record came out, but here it is anyway.

“Speakers corner knocks one out of the park with this wonderful reissue! Those conga drums and the back-up singers sound so much better than I remember them! If you’re going to own one Joe Cocker album make it this one. It’s a man-size serving of English Soul.”

Our First and Only Shootout for the DCC Pressing of Pet Sounds

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Beach Boys Available Now

Sonic Grade: D to C+

Not long ago [2014 or so, time flies!] we pulled out the three copies we had in our leftover stock of DCC vinyl and gave them a spin. They weren’t awful, but they weren’t very good either. They sounded like most Heavy Vinyl we’ve played over the years: airless, blurry, smeary, two-dimensional, dull and opaque.

Not surprisingly (to us anyway) one copy was quite a bit better than the other two. I would say that the sound of the three copies would plot on a curve from about a D to maybe a C+, so let’s figure the average would be around a C- or so.

I’d be surprised if the DCC Gold CD didn’t sound better.

More often than not it does. (Kevin Gray’s lousy cutting system would not be involved and that is almost a guarantee that the sound would improve and markedly. We discuss that subject in more depth here.)

If you own the DCC vinyl, buy the CD and find out for yourself if it isn’t better sounding.

The no-longer-surprising thing about our Hot Stamper pressings of Pet Sounds is how completely they trounce the DCC LP. Folks, it’s really no contest. Yes, the DCC is tonally balanced and can sound decent enough, but it can’t compete with the best “mystery” pressings that we sell. It’s missing too much of the presence, intimacy, immediacy and transparency that we’ve discovered on the better Capitol 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.

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Bill Connors – Of Mist And Melting

More Jazz guitar

  • Jazz guitar great Bill Connors makes his debut on the site with this phenomenal sounding copy of Of Mist And Melting
  • This pressing boasts Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound on side two and an outstanding Double Plus side one
  • The sound of this vintage ECM pressing is really quite amazing – fans of adventurous jazz, the kind ECM is known for, should get a lot out of this LP
  • “A beautiful session by the ever searching guitarist Bill Connors… intense, lyrical, and introspective… continued to show his great talents as a composer…

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My Aim Is True – More Heavy Vinyl Trash from Rhino

Hot Stamper Pressings of Elvis’s Albums Available Now

I’m embarrassed to say we used to like the Rhino Heavy Vinyl version, and in our defense let me tell you why: it was (for the most part) tonally correct, fairly low distortion, and had tight punchy bass.

Boy, Was We Ever Wrong. 

Now it sounds positively CRUDE and UNPLEASANT next to the real thing — if by “the real thing” you mean an honest to goodness properly-mastered, properly-pressed copy (also known as a Hot Stamper).

Kevin Gray’s transistory, opaque, airless, low-resolution cutting system did this album no favors.

The average copy of this record is aggressive and unpleasant. 

The British pressings are mud.

You either have to work very hard to find a good domestic pressing (which means buying, cleaning and playing lots and lots of them), or you have to luck into a good one by accident.

Or just buy one from us and save yourself all the trouble.

The Lovin’ Spoonful – John Sebastian Songbook, Vol. 1

More John Sebastian

More Sixties Pop Recordings

  • With STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades on both sides, the sound quality of the tracks on this compilation is impressive
  • Both sides are rich, full-bodied, Tubey Magical, and natural with a solid bottom end – no sign of radio EQ to be found
  • Features most of the band’s best songs, including Do You Believe In Magic, You Didn’t Have To Be So Nice, Six O’clock and Nashville Cats (a personal fave)
  • The Allmusic critic is not too crazy about this album, but the User Rating is 4 1/2 stars, which we think is about right

Great sound for some the biggest hits of The Lovin’ Spoonful, a band I wouldn’t have expected to hear sound good on vinyl if I lived to be a hundred, and yet, here it is. This is one of the rare cases where, in our experience, the hits compilation sounds BETTER than the original records. Why? Who knows? We don’t pretend to have all the answers. What we do have (that no one else has, if that’s not too obvious) are the records that back up the claims we make for them.

How they came to be that way is anyone’s guess. All we know for sure is that, judging by the best copies of this album, somebody got hold of some awfully good tapes and somebody mastered them with uncanny skill to what sounds to these ears like near perfection.

Actually, the mastering engineer for this compilation and the Best of from the same year is a person well known to us record collecting audiophiles — the person that ends up with this record can look in the dead wax for his info and the rest of you are welcome to guess — so it’s really no surprise that this compilation sounds as good as the Best of that we rave about.

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.

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The Captain and Me – A Nautilus Disaster

Hot Stamper Pressing of the Music of The Doobie Brothers Available Now

We actually recommended the Nautilus Half-Speed in the old days, but the last time we played one (2012 maybe?) the sound was Pure Audiophile BS — compressed to death and totally whomp-free.

The average domestic copy is terrible too, but that’s no reason to recommend this crappy remaster.

Stick to the green label originals.  They can rock with the best of them.

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Jethro Tull – Living In The Past

More Jethro Tull

and One We Will Probably Never Shootout Again

  • A stunning Chrysalis British import double LP set with Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them on sides one, two and four and a solid Double Plus (A++) side three
  • You’re gonna love the sound here – clean, clear and full-bodied with great bass and solid midrange presence and energy
  • These are incredibly tough to find with the right sound and surfaces – this is one of the best copies to hit the site in years
  • 4 1/2 stars: “… this collection is seminal and essential to any Tull collection, and the only compilation by the group that is a must-own disc.”
  • 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 set was very difficult to find with audiophile playing surfaces. Many of the copies we bought — at great expense I might add — were so heavily played and marked up they went right into the trade-in bin. This is one of the few that made the cutoff. Mint Minus Minus and a little noisier is about as quiet a copy as we could find.

If you want to hear how amazing Living In The Past can sound and don’t mind some surface problems, this is the copy to get. If for any reason you are not happy with the sound or condition of the album, we are of course happy to take it back for a full refund, including the domestic return postage.

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The 45 RPM Classic Records Repress Is Another in a Long String of Failures

More of the Music of Dave Brubeck

Sonic Grade: F

An Audiophile Hall of Shame pressing and another Classic Records Jazz LP.

Not long ago we found a single disc from the 45 RPM four disc set that Classic Records released in 2002 and decided to give it a listen as part of our shootout for the album.

My notes can be seen below, but for those who have trouble reading my handwriting, here they are:

  • Big but hard
  • Zero (0) warmth
  • A bit thin and definitely boring
  • Unnatural
  • No fun
  • No F***ing Good (NFG)

Does that sound like a record you would enjoy playing? I sure didn’t.

But this is the kind of sound that Bernie Grundman managed to find on Classic Record after Classic Record starting in the mid-90s when he began cutting for them.

We’ve been complaining about the sound of these records for more than twenty years but a great many audiophiles and the reviewers who write for them told us we wrong.  If you have a copy of this album on Classic, at 33 or 45, play it and see if you don’t hear the problems we ascribe to it.

To see what we had to say about the 33 RPM version on Classic many years ago, click here.

Maybe we got a bad 45 and the others are better. That has not been our experience.

In these four words we can describe the sound of the average Classic Records pressing.

Not all of their records are as bad sounding as Time Out. We favorably review some of the better ones here.

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War – Deliver The Word

  • Insanely good Triple Plus (A+++) sound on both sides of this Shootout Winning copy – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • Thanks to the brilliant engineering of Chris Huston, the sound is War at its best: big, rich, smooth and clear, with the kind of low end whomp that few rock records from the era can claim
  • 4 Stars: “A smooth blend of the band’s more progressive jazz-rock fusion, the LP shot to the top of the R&B charts, their second of four number one records in a row. It was a perfect tonic to the mediocre MOR music rampaging its way through the early part of the decade…A magical ride with plenty of surprises to keep the listener on his or her toes, this set is a perfect example of the band at their genre-fusing best.”

Engineered by the brilliant Chris Huston, this recording displays all his trademark gifts. His mixes feature lots of bass; huge, room-filling choruses that get loud without straining or becoming congested; and rhythmic energy that few pop recordings could lay claim to in 1972.

As for the choruses, allow me to paraphrase our listing from Commoner’s Crown.

This is one of the rare pop/rock albums that actually has actual, measurable, serious dynamic contrasts in its levels as it moves from the verses to the choruses of many songs. The first track on side two, Four Cornered Room, is a perfect example. Not only are the choruses noticeably louder than the verses, but later on in the song the choruses get REALLY LOUD, louder than the choruses of 99 out of 100 rock/pop records we audition. It sometimes takes a record like this to open your ears to how compressed practically everything else you own is.

What to Listen For (WTLF)

Richness and weight are key to the sound, but oddly enough an extended top end was almost as crucial to the success of the best copies. When the top end extends, the sound is open and relaxed. When the various songs build to their climaxes, the copies with lots of clean top end had a sense of “ease” that simply was not to be found on the smoother (read: duller) brethren. (more…)