Month: February 2022

Forget the Roulette Originals of Dreamy

More of the Music of Sarah Vaughan

The original release for Dreamy is on Roulette, a label we have often found to have problems in the sound department (not to mention notoriously bad vinyl).

The originals we’ve played over the years have much too much honk and hardness in the midrange to be taken seriously, at least by us anyway, and certainly not at the prices we charge. When we stumbled upon these good Emus reissues, the skies opened up and the sun shone down upon Sarah’s wonderful 1960 album of ballads as it had never done before.

This reissue is spacious, open, transparent, rich and sweet. It’s yet another remarkable disc from the Golden Age of Vacuum Tube Recording Technology, with the added benefit of mastering using the more modern cutting equipment of the ’70s. We are of course here referring to the good modern mastering of 30+ years ago, not the dubious modern mastering of today.

The combination of old and new works wonders on this title as you will surely hear for yourself on these superb sides.

We were impressed with the fact that these pressings excel in so many areas of reproduction. What was odd about it — odd to most audiophiles but not necessarily to us — was just how rich and Tubey Magical the reissue can be on the right pressing.

This leads me to think that most of the natural, full-bodied, lively, clear, rich sound of the album is on the tape, and that all one has to do to get that vintage sound on to a record is simply to thread up the tape on the right machine and hit play.

The fact that nobody seems to be able to make a record that sounds this good these days tells me that in fact, I’m wrong to think that such an approach would work. It just seems to me that somebody should have been able to figure out how to do it by now. In our experience that is simply not the case in the modern world of vinyl reissues, and has not been for many years.

Linda Ronstadt – Don’t Cry Now

More of the Music of Linda Ronstadt

  • The transparency and vocal presence here are wonderful – the piano is solid and Linda’s vocals are breathy and heartfelt
  • We love her emotionally powerful interpretations of Desperado, Sail Away and Neil Young’s achingly sublime I Believe in You
  • She really belts it out on this album – it’s what she does best – but only the best copies allow you to turn up the volume good and loud and let her do her thing
  • Rolling Stone raves it’s “the Ronstadt album for which we’ve been waiting.”
  • If you’re a Linda Ronstadt fan, this has to be considered a Must Own Title of hers from 1973.
  • The complete list of titles from 1973 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here.

A key to recognizing the best copies is the fact that they tend to be highly resolving. Two places to check:

Note how breathy her voice is in the quiet passages. Only the least smeared, most transparent copies reproduce that breathy quality in her voice.

Next check out the tambourine on Silver Threads and Golden Needles. If the sound is delicate, not gritty or transistory, you have yourself a winner in the resolution department.

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The Outlaws – Outlaws

  • These superb sides each rating a solid Double Plus (A++) or BETTER give you Top Quality Country Rock sound from first note to last
  • Big, rich and meaty, this pressing shows you just how well recorded their Classic Debut album really is
  • There Goes Another Love Song and Green Grass & High Tides (at almost ten minutes!) sound surprisingly good here
  • “The Outlaws’ debut blew a fresh blast of rock & roll onto a scene increasingly dominated by synthesizers and dance music. It will leave the listener singing along and dreaming about the good ol’ days.” (You got that right)

The sound of the typical copy can best be summed up in one word: brittle. When the sound is thin or hard the fun factor of this country rock drops to zero. Green Grass & High Tides sounds great on the radio, why not on vinyl?

We sure can’t blame Artisan, the original cutting house: all the copies we played — good, bad and otherwise — were originals and mastered by them.

Could it be the Arista vinyl? It could. It could be a lot of things, but speculating about them doesn’t really get us or you anywhere, so I’m going to stop doing it and just say we played a big pile of records and heard a lot of copies with mediocre sound.

This Is Our Sound

It’s easy to spot the good ones. They’re big and rich, never thin nor harsh. They open up on the top end and go down deep on the bottom. They’re smooth and full-bodied in the midrange. The guitars ring out. The energy of the performance drives the music the way you want it to.

In short, the best copies demonstrate what’s good about All American Analog Recording from the mid-’70s, the kind of sound the Doobies had for Toulouse Street, Linda Ronstadt for Simple Dreams and Steely Dan for Pretzel Logic. If you prefer the recordings of Diana Krall, Patricia Barber and Jennifer Warnes, this may not be your sound, but it sure is ours.

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Miles Davis / Sketches of Spain – On the ’70s Red Label?

More Miles Davis

More Columbia 30th Street Studio Recordings

  • This excellent Columbia Red Label stereo pressing boasts Double Plus (A++) sound from first note to last
  • When you get a properly mastered, properly pressed ’70s copy of the album, it may not do everything right, but it does so much right that we have no problem awarding it a sonic grade of Double Plus
  • The good copies capture the realistic sound of Davis’s horn, the body, the breath and the bite (and not a little of the squawk as well)
  • Balanced, clear and undistorted, this 30th Street recording shows just how good Columbia’s engineers were back then
  • 5 stars: “Sketches of Spain is the most luxuriant and stridently romantic recording Davis ever made. To listen to it in the 21st century is still a spine-tingling experience…”
  • If you’re a fan of Classic Jazz, this Columbia from 1960 belongs in your collection.
  • The complete list of titles from 1960 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here.

We talk a fair bit about the Tubey Magic of the original pressings below, and those looking for that very rich, very tubey sound may prefer to pass on this copy.

Only the best originals – cleaned properly of course – will give you every last ounce of that sound.

This copy is balanced, open, clear and undistorted. With Double Plus (A++) sound  it has to be excellent, but super Tubey Magical it is not.

Those with very tubey equipment may actually prefer it to the originals. Either way, your satisfaction is guaranteed.

On the best pressings of this masterpiece, the sound is truly magical. (AMG has that dead right in their review.) It is lively but never strained. Davis’s horn has breath and bite, just like the real thing. What more can you ask for?

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Chopin / The Chopin I Love / Philippe Entremont

More of the music of Frederic Chopin (1810-1849)

More Classical ‘Sleeper” Recordings We’ve Discovered with Demo Disc Sound

  • This original Columbia Masterworks copy boasts INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound on both sides
  • Performed with consummate skill and deep feeling by the legendary Philippe Entremont, a man who knows his Chopin
  • Both musically and sonically this record is stunning – who knew Columbia could record a piano this well as late as 1971?
  • There aren’t many solo piano recordings that sound this right – when you hear one it’s shocking how good it can be
  • Don’t waste your time with the any of the piano concertos Entremont recorded for Columbia– we’ve played plenty of them and never heard a good one
  • If you’re a fan of Entremont’s playing, this title from 1971 is clearly one of his best, and one of his best sounding
  • The complete list of titles from 1971 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here.

This is an undiscovered Columbia gem from 1971. Both musically and sonically this record is stunning. Who knew Columbia could record a piano this well? You could play fifty vintage piano recordings and not find one as good as this! We know, we’ve played plenty, including a number of Entremont’s Columbia records that don’t sound too good to us. Maybe we need to find a Hot Stamper of some of the weaker titles, but it hasn’t happened yet. A word of advice: avoid the piano concertos. We have yet to hear a good one. Those steely Columbia strings are far from our idea of good sound.

These solo piano pieces are performed with consummate skill and deep feeling by the legendary Philippe Entremont. His liner notes are beautifully written and insightful as well — well worth reading.

Fortunately this record has no strings, just a solid, clear piano in a big hall.

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Various Artists / Woodstock Two

More Live Albums

  • This early Cotillion pressing ROCKS with KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or very close to it throughout
  • With Mint Minus Minus vinyl and no marks that can be heard, you will have a VERY hard time finding a copy that plays this well
  • We guarantee there is dramatically more richness, fullness, 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
  • Fifteen amazing live tracks from Jimi Hendrix; Jefferson Airplane; The Butterfield Blues Band; Joan Baez; Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young; Melanie; Mountain; and Canned Heat
  • “If anything, this set, more concise and more focused, is a better bet than its predecessor.” — All Music

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Ray Charles – Love Country Style

More Ray Charles

  • With a Triple Plus (A+++) Shootout Winning side two and a side one right up there with it, this copy is practically as good as it gets
  • This early pressing has killer Hot Stamper sound on both sides – here’s the midrange magic that’s surely missing from whatever 180g reissue has been made from the tapes (or, to be clear, a modern digital master copied from who-knows-what-tapes)
  • Another of Ray’s albums in the style of Modern Sounds In Country & Western Music – maybe not the equal of those classics, but not far from them either
  • All the Amazon User Reviews give the album a Five Star rating – hard to do better than that!

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The Hunter Is Awful on Import Vinyl (and Any Other Way)

More of the Music of Jennifer Warnes

More Records I Could Happily Live Without

Sonic Grade: F

A hall of shame pressing on import vinyl from 1992. Many years ago we wrote:

This is a SUPER RARE Private Music German Import LP. The last two copies of this record listed on eBay went for over $600! 

All of which was true. We left out, however, what an awful record The Hunter is in every way.

If you like your heavily processed big production pop to sound as unnatural as possible, this is the album for you.

Not one instrument sounds remotely like it should, and that is surely an insult to audiophiles of every stripe.

The problem was that so many self-identified audiophiles did not seem bothered by the execrable sound, certainly not to the extent that we were.

Oh, but it’s on vinyl! That should solve all the problems with the recording.

Yes, the CD was bad, but the vinyl was no better. I had them both and couldn’t stand either.

But FBR Is Killer on the Right Pressings

The only album we like of Ms Warnes is Famous Blue Raincoat.

It is her masterpiece, a core collection record, and a clear case of one and done.

When you have a good copy of Famous Blue Raincoat, you have all the Jennifer Warnes we think you will ever need.

Further Reading

Mel Torme & Buddy Rich – Together Again For The First Time on Direct to Disc

Hot Stamper Pressings of Big Band Recordings Available Now

This is a Century Direct-to-Disc featuring Mel Torme fronting the Buddy Rich Big Band. And it’s a pretty big band with four trumpets, three trombones, five saxes and a tuba! One of the best tracks is “Here’s That Rainy Day”, with guest soloist Phil Woods. The beginning is just Mel and Phil, a duet of sorts, with a lovely sense of melancholy.

However, both men seem tired and the session doesn’t swing much.

Or could it be that they’re playing it safe, afraid to make a mistake and then have to start the live-to-disc session over from the top?

Hard to know, but that’s the problem with direct to disc recordings — avoiding mistakes, even engineering ones, can suck the life right out of the music.

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How to Make All Your Records Sound Like MoFi’s – For Free!

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Doors Available Now

The Doors first album is yet another obvious example of MoFi’s predilection for a sucked-out midrange.

Scooping out the middle of the midrange has the effect of creating an artificial sense of depth where none belongs. Play any original Bruce Botnick engineered album by Love or The Doors and you will notice immediately that the vocals are front and center.

When the DCC Doors first album was released on vinyl, we noted that the vocals were finally back where they belonged. After having lived with the MoFi for so many years, we’d almost forgotten.

And now of course we can’t tolerate the smear and opacity of the DCC. We like to think we’re simply setting higher standards these days.

The midrange suckout effect is easily reproducible in your very own listening room.

Pull your speakers farther out into the room, and also farther apart, and you can get that MoFi sound on every record you play. I’ve been hearing it in the various audiophile systems I’ve been exposed to for years.

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