Month: August 2021

The Most Serious Fault of the Typical Half-Speed Mastered LP?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Revolver Available Now

The most serious fault of the typical Half-Speed mastered LP is not incorrect tonality or poor bass definition, although you will have a hard time finding one that doesn’t suffer from both.

It’s dead-as-a-doornail sound, plain and simple.

And most Heavy Vinyl pressings coming down the pike these days are as guilty of this sin as their audiophile forerunners from the ’70s. The average Sundazed record I throw on my turntable sounds like it’s playing in another room. What audiophile in his right mind could possibly find that quality appealing?

But Sundazed and other companies just like them keep turning out this crap. Somebody must be buying it.

So how does the famous MoFi pressing of Revolver sound? In a word, clean. Also not as crude as the average British import, and far better than any Japanese or domestic pressing we heard.

But it’s dead, man. It’s just so dead.

The current record holder for Most Compressed Mobile Fidelity Record of All Time? This shockingly bad sounding release, a record I admit to owning and liking back in the ’80s. I had a lot of very expensive equipment back then, but it sure wasn’t helping me recognize how bad some of my records were.

How many audiophiles are where I used to be? Based on what I read on audiophile forums, and the kinds of audiophile pressings I see discussed on youtube videos, it seems that most of them are.

In practically every Hot Stamper listing on the site you will find some standard boilerplate that looks very much like what you see below. These are the qualities we want our records to have. I cannot begin to understand what audiophiles are listening for on these new reissues. Most of them do practically nothing well.

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The Dave Brubeck Quartet / Newport 1958 – Reviewed in 2011

More Dave Brubeck

This is a very nice looking Columbia Six-Eye LP. The sound here is actually pretty good, particularly on side one. It’s open and present, relaxed and natural, with some nice weight to the piano and fairly tight bass. It’s not exactly a knockout, but if you’re looking for a musical and enjoyable copy this one should do the trick. Side two is almost as good, and both sides have been through our extensive cleaning process. 

This is an Older Jazz Review.

Most of the older reviews you see are for records that did not go through the shootout process, the revolutionary approach to finding better sounding pressings we developed in the early 2000s and have since turned into a fine art.

We found the records you see in these older listings by cleaning and playing a pressing or two of the album, which we then described and priced based on how good the sound and surfaces were. (For out Hot Stamper listings, the Sonic Grades and Vinyl Playgrades are listed separately.)

We were often wrong back in those days, something we have no reason to hide. Audio equipment and record cleaning technologies have come a long way since those darker days, a subject we discuss here.

Currently, 99% (or more!) of the records we sell are cleaned, then auditioned under rigorously controlled conditions, up against a number of other pressings. We award them sonic grades, and then condition check them for surface noise.

As you may imagine, this approach requires a great deal of time, effort and skill, which is why we currently have a highly trained staff of about ten. No individual or business without the aid of such a committed group could possibly dig as deep into the sound of records as we have, and it is unlikely that anyone besides us could ever come along to do the kind of work we do.

The term “Hot Stampers” gets thrown around a lot these days, but to us it means only one thing: a record that has been through the shootout process and found to be of exceptionally high quality.

Not just a good sounding record. A record that was played in a shootout and did well.

The result of our labor is the scores of jazz titles seen here, every one of which is unique and guaranteed to be the best sounding copy of the album you have ever heard or you get your money back.

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Bob Simpson Is One of Our Favorite Engineers

Bob Simpson Engineered Albums with Hot Stampers

Bob Simpson Engineered Albums We’ve Reviewed

Bob Simpson is one of our favorite recording and mixing engineers. Click on the links above to find his albums, along with plenty of our famous commentaries. 

He won the Grammy for engineering Belafonte at Carnegie Hall you may recall.

New to the Blog? Start Here

More of Our Favorite Engineers 

John Cougar Mellencamp – Uh-Huh

More John Cougar Mellencamp

  • You’ll find STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound from first note to last on this original pressing of Mellencamp’s 1983 release – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • The sound is HUGE – wide, deep, and open, with a solid bottom end and rhythmic energy to spare
  • 4 1/2 stars: “… the first half — with the dynamic rocker ‘Crumblin’ Down,’ his best protest song, ‘Pink Houses,’ the punky ‘Authority Song,’ the melancholy ‘Warmer Place to Sleep,’ and the garage rocker ‘Play Guitar’ — makes the record his first terrific album.”

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Procol Harum / A Salty Dog (Best Of…)

More of the Music of Robin Trower

This is a very nice looking MFP British Import LP. The vinyl this title was pressed on tends to be somewhat noisy so all the click ‘n’ pop counters out there should probably steer clear of this one as we cleaned and played ten copies (!) and not one was better than Mint Minus Minus!

But the sound tends to be quite good, which means that if you can stand a little surface noise you will be getting quite a bargain here. We love this music and think you will too. 

It turns out that this album is simply The Best Of Procol Harum under a different name.

Why they would rename the album ‘A Salty Dog’ when there already is ‘A Salty Dog’ album, with different songs, is beyond me.

But in a way I’m glad this is the Best Of Procol Harum, because many of their albums are full of filler, and this one is full of nothing but gems. (more…)

Gounod / Ballet Music from Faust – Classic Records Reviewed

More of the music of Georges Bizet (1838-1875)

Reviews and Commentaries for Guonod / Faust Ballet Music

Sonic Grade: C

Classic Records did a passable job with LSC 2449, one of their better efforts, but of course it has almost none of the sweetness, richness and ambience that the best RCA pressings have, and they have them more often than not in abundance.

Their version is not awful, like most of the classical recordings they remastered, and considering that the original goes for many, many hundreds of dollars, might be worth picking up at a reasonable price.

Most audiophiles (including audiophile record reviewers) have never heard a classical recording of the quality of a good original. If they had Classic Records would have gone out of business immediately after producing their first three Living Stereo titles, all of which were dreadful and labeled as such by us way back in 1994, as soon as we had a chance to play them.

I’m not sure why the rest of the audiophile community was so easily fooled (HP, how could you?), but I can say that we weren’t, at least when it came to their classical releases. (We admit to having made plenty of mistaken judgments about their jazz and rock, and we have the We Was Wrong entries to prove it.)

And the fact that so many of them are currently on the TAS List is a sad comment on how far the mighty have fallen.

Classical Living Stereo Titles Available Now

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Bridge Over Troubled Water – The CBS Half-Speed Is Not Bad

More of the Music of Simon and Garfunkel

Reviews and Commentaries for Bridge Over Troubled Water

Sonic Grade: B?

Another Half Speed reviewed and this one’s not bad!

The CBS Half-Speed is actually quite good. It’s been twenty years since I played one but I used to like it. Of course, once you hear the real thing you can never go back, but it blows the doors off the muddy MoFi.

Further Reading on Half-Speed Mastered Records

The best place to start is here:

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

To learn more about records that sound dramatically better than any Half-Speed ever made (with one rare exception, John Klemmer’s Touch), please consult our FAQs:

More Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Below you will find our breakdown of the best and worst Half-Speed mastered records we have auditioned over the years.

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Kansas – Masque

More Kansas

More Prog Rock

  • The band’s 3rd studio album finally makes its Hot Stamper debut here with Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it from start to finish – exceptionally quiet vinyl too  
  • We guarantee there is dramatically more space, richness, vocal presence, and performance energy on this copy than others you’ve heard, and that’s especially true if you made the mistake of buying whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing is currently on the market
  • Features some of the band’s best rock epics, including “Icarus-Borne on Wings of Steel” and “Mysteries and Mayhem”
  • “Musically, Masque foreshadows the tight melodies and instrumental interplay on the next two albums, Leftoverture and Point of Know Return, which together serve as the peak of Kansas’ vision.”

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Donald Byrd – A New Perspective

More Donald Byrd

  • An STUNNING stereo pressing of one of our all-time favorite Blue Note albums with Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound throughout
  • The gospel vocals are amazingly well recorded (thanks RVG!) – with the transparency of this copy, you can easily pick out and follow each voice
  • To hear the real RVG magic, play Beast of Burden on side one – that’s some real audiophile DEMO DISC sound
  • 5 stars: “One of the most successful uses of a gospel choir in a jazz context. This is a memorable effort that is innovative in its own way, a milestone in Donald Byrd’s career.”

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Jimmy Witherspoon – Witherspoon / Mulligan / Webster At The Renaissance

More Jimmy Witherspoon

This is an original Hi-Fi Records Mono LP from 1959. Jimmy is joined on stage by Gerry Mulligan and Ben Webster, with support from Mel Lewis, Leroy Vinnegar and Jimmy Rowles. Now that is some group of top jazz talent.

The sound is decent, but the music is the real thing, as you can imagine from the list of players. There’s also some slight groove distortion which is almost unavoidable on vintage pressings such as this.