Month: August 2021

Julie Is Her Name – Listen for Barney Kessel’s Guitar Tone

More of the Music of Julie London

More Recordings Engineered by John Krauss

On the first track of side one, focus on how rich the bottom end is on Barney Kessel’s guitar. The Tubey Magic on this side is off the charts. Some copies can be dry, but that is clearly not a problem on the best pressings.

Now compare the sound of that guitar — just the guitar, nothing else — you hear on a good original pressing to the sound of the same guitar on the awful Boxcar Heavy Remaster.

We think there is a very good chance you will be quite shocked.

Unsurprisingly, everything else is worse on the Boxcar record as well. It has no reason to exist. The CD is likely better.

So Natural

The naturalness of the presentation puts this album right at the top of best sounding female vocal albums of all time.

To take nothing away from her performance, which got better with every copy we played. Julie’s rendition of Cry Me a River may be definitive.

If only Ella Fitzgerald on Clap Hands got this kind of sound! As good as the best copies of that album are, this record takes the concept of intimate female vocals to an entirely new level. (more…)

Paul Gonsalves – Tell It The Way It Is!

More Saxophone Jazz

More Recordings Engineered by Bob Simpson

  • You’ll find solid Double Plus (A++) sound on both sides of this outstanding copy of Tell It The Way It Is!
  • The sound is huge and spacious with richness and Tubey Magic like nothing you’ve heard
  • Engineered by the great Bob Simpson, this album has it going on – musically and sonically
  • Gonsalves was Ellington’s tenor man, and his wonderfully expressive tone is what makes many of Ellington’s recordings the joy they are to this day

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Autoamerican (and Lots of Other Records) Need Their Space, Man

More of the Music of Blondie

More Records that Are Good for Testing Ambience, Size and Space

The Space in the Middle

Allow us to present a key finding we discovered while playing so many of these LPs. I’m sure you’ve noticed this effect on some of your favorite recordings as well. In this case it’s the one quality that allowed some copies to soar while others were left grounded.

About halfway through the session I noticed that the copies with the most top end extension and the deepest bass had another quality which was even more involving: they left more SPACE in the middle for every other element of the mix to occupy.

There was no CROWDING in other words. This may be the result of less compression in the mastering phase; compression tends to richen up the sound, but it has an unfortunate tendency to jam it all together in the middle as well.

Or it just may be higher resolution, so that the space around all the elements is clearly reproduced.

Or it may be equalization, so that the higher parts of the bass stay down and the lower parts of the highs stay up, keeping both from seeping into the midrange.

Who knows what it is? One thing I can tell you is this: it sure is easy to HEAR it. Big as life, with spaciousness and three-dimensionality to beat the band, the sound on this “open middle” copy simply was in a league of its own.

Perhaps you know that sound from your own favorite recordings. It’s the kind of thing that turns a good pop album into a Demo Disc. (more…)

Guns N’ Roses – Appetite For Destruction

More Guns N’ Roses

  • A KILLER copy of band’s debut with Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or very close to it on both sides – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Hard rockin’ energy to spare, the kind you will be hard-pressed to find on any modern Heavy Vinyl reissue these days – Appetite for Destruction is big and bold and simply amazing here
  • Turn this one up – on a pressing this good, the louder you play it, the better it sounds
  • 5 stars: “. . . as good as Rose’s lyrics and screeching vocals are, they wouldn’t be nearly as effective without the twin-guitar interplay of Slash and Izzy Stradlin, who spit out riffs and solos better than any band since the Rolling Stones, and that’s what makes Appetite for Destruction the best metal record of the late ’80s.”

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MoFi Thought the Guitars on Sundown Could Use More “Sparkle”

Another Record Better Suited to the Stereos of the Seventies

Sonic Grade: F

An audiophile hall of shame pressing and another MoFi LP reviewed and found wanting.

I comment below about the ridiculous sound of the MoFi pressing of this album.

When you have a recording that is already plenty bright, adding more top end and taking out more lower midrange is the last thing in the world you should be doing.

Since that is standard operating procedure for MoFi (as well as most other Half-Speed mastering outfits), that’s exactly the approach they ended up taking.

Those of you who have had the opportunity to play the Mobile Fidelity pressing of this record should know what a disaster it is.

His voice sounds so phony on the MoFi that you’d swear it’s a bad CD.

But it’s not a bad CD. It’s an expensive audiophile record!

If you’ve spent any time on this blog, you should know by now that many audiophile records sound WORSE than the typical CD.

The typical CD does not have an equalization curve resembling a smile. The classic smile curve starts up high on the left, gets low in the middle, and rises again at the end, resulting in boosted bass, boosted top end, and a sucked out midrange — the Mobile Fidelity formula in a nutshell. (more…)

Phil Ramone Is One of Our Favorite Producer-Engineers

Phil Ramone one of our favorite engineers and producers.

Click on the links below to find our in-stock Phil Ramone engineered or produced albums, along with plenty of our famous commentaries. 

Phil Ramone Engineered or Produced Albums with Hot Stampers

Phil Ramone Engineered Albums We’ve Reviewed

Phil Ramone Produced Albums We’ve Reviewed

More of Our Favorite Engineers

 

 

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