What’s the Big Idea?

UPDATE 2026

This commentary about axioms is being reworked. Stay tuned for further developments.

However, you are free to enjoy it for the time-capsule insights from 2021 you will find here. We still agree with practically all of what we wrote, so no worries there.

It’s clear to us now that axiom is not at all the right word to use in describing what it is that we believe to be true about records and audio.

An axiom is often described as one of these three things:

1. A statement accepted as true as the basis for argument or inference.
2. An established rule or principle or a self-evident truth.
3. A maxim widely accepted on its intrinsic merit.

We stumbled upon the term Core Insight not long ago and realized it would be a much better fit for what we think we know.

A version of Core Insights as they apply to Hot Stampers would go something like this:

1. A core insight is a fundamental understanding that helps identify better approaches to finding solutions.
2. Core insights in our case come from testing thousands of record pressings to assess their sonic characteristics.
3. Testing is the main way we acquire useful data about the records we sell.
4. The data is then used to guide future strategies for finding even better sounding records.
5. The underlying patterns or truths about the records we played are revealed through this process.
6. Continuing research helps us understand the records we test at the deepest levels.
7. This understanding allows us to refine our core insights and create new ones.
8. The use of core insights insures that our experiments will continue to become both more revealing and accurate.

So Axioms are out and Core Insights are in!

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Our Commentary from 2019

In an old commentary for a shootout we did for Carole King’s Tapestry album, we took to task both the CBS Half-Speed mastered audiophile pressing and the Classic Heavy Vinyl audiophile pressing, noting that both fell far short of the standard set by the Hot Stamper copies we had discovered over the years.

This finding (and scores of others just like it) prompted us to promulgate the following axioms of audiophile record collecting. (Axiom Number One can be found here.)

Which leads us to Better Records Record Collecting Axiom Number Two

No two records sound the same.

If that weren’t true we’d be out of business. It is in fact the very foundation of our business. We wrote a commentary with that idea firmly in mind under the heading identical stampers + new vinyl = different sound?, which goes into that subject in more detail.

And it’s equally true for Half-Speeds — they’re records, right? — so we have a few entries in our we was wrong. section about those rare copies that actually have sounded good to us over the years.

For example, the chances of there being exceptionally good sounding CBS Half-Speed mastered pressings of Tapestry may be vanishingly small, but we can’t say the chances are zero.

There could be some, but considering how bad the idea of Half-Speed mastering is, would they have much chance of beating our Hot Stampers?

As a practical matter I would have to say the chances are zero.

They can’t beat the right early pressings, properly cleaned. They can beat lots of pressings with the wrong stampers.

There might be some copies that sound better than the mediocre Classic Records pressing, which is tonally fine but suffers from the basic issues most of Bernie Grundman’s remastered records suffer from.