Hot Stamper Pressings of Miles’s Albums Available Now
One of our good customers, Robert Brook, writes a blog which he calls
A GUIDE FOR THE DEDICATED ANALOG AUDIOPHILE
Below is a link to the review he wrote recently for one of our favorite records, Kind of Blue. (To be clear, we love the album, just not the MoFi pressing of it.)
One of our other good customers had this to say about the Mobile Fidelity pressing:
Last night I listened to my 2015 Mobile Fidelity 45 RPM pressing.
I couldn’t get through the first cut.
Closed, muffled and flat as a pancake. No life or energy whatsoever.
I agreed and added my two cents:
My notes for their pressing read:
- Thick, dark, flat.
- Lacks air, space, presence.
- Not a bad sound but it’s not right.
Later I added:
Having listened to the record more extensively, I see now I was being much too kind.
A longer review will be coming soon I hope. I think I may know why some audiophiles like the sound of this record, and will be exploring that notion in a future commentary.
The last line about the MoFi not having “a bad sound but it’s not right” reminded me of of the mistakes I made in my original review of Santana’s first album on MoFi: we owe you an apology
Kind of Blue is an album we admit to being obsessed with — just look at the number of commentaries we’ve written about it.
Some highlights include:
- Listening tests
- Discussion of the various labels and their sound
- Letters from customers
- Discussion of the Mobile Fidelity pressing (review coming!)
- Our first Hot Stamper listing from 2005
- The story of some audiophiles who go shopping and find a copy in the bins
Kind of Blue checks a lot of boxes for us here at Better Records.
- It’s a core jazz title, one that belongs in any serious audiophile’s record collection
- It’s a jazz masterpiece
- It’s a personal favorite
- It was recorded by one of the greats, Fred Plaut
- It was produced by another one of the greats, Teo Macero
- It was recorded at Columbia’s famed 30th street studio
MoFi is already history.
Please give your thoughts on the “Kind Of Blue” editions by Analogue Productions (the 33 & the 45RPM). This is supposed to be the new star on the horizon.
Anton,
MoFi will be just fine for the simple reason that there is no audiophile label making records today that will go out of business because their records have bad sound.
This is the dirty little secret of the audiophile record world. Good albums remastered incompetently sell just fine. Albums that audiophiles do not care about, no matter how well made, will not sell.
The sound quality of all records marketed to audiophiles is immaterial to the success of their sales.
As for stars on the horizon, has AP ever made a good sounding record? If so, please tell me its name, I would love to know.
Best, TP