Sonic Grade: D
A Polydor Double LP mastered by Robert Ludwig.
The tonal balance is right on the money, but of course, because this is a compilation, it is made from copies of master tapes, not real master tapes themselves, so it will always have that blurry, smeary, recessed, flat, opaque, airless, sub-generation-tape sound. In short, it’s dubby.
Hey, that’s what we hear on most of the Heavy Vinyl we audition, too. Imagine that.
What to listen for:
We play mediocre-to-bad sounding pressings so that you don’t have to, a public service from your record-loving friends at Better Records.
You can find this one in our Hall of Shame, along with others that — in our opinion — are best avoided by audiophiles looking for hi-fidelity sound. Some of these records may have passable sonics, but we found the music less than compelling. These are also records you can safely avoid.
We also have an Audiophile Record Hall of Shame for records that were marketed to audiophiles for their putatively superior sound. If you’ve spent any time on this blog at all, you know that these records are some of the worst sounding pressings we have ever had the displeasure to play.
We routinely play them in our Hot Stamper Shootouts against the vintage records that we offer, and are often surprised at just how bad an “audiophile record” can sound and still be considered an “audiophile record.”
Further Reading