More of the Music of Frank Sinatra
Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Frank Sinatra
Sonic Grade: D
An audiophile hall of shame pressing and another Classic Records popular music LP badly remastered for the benefit of audiophiles looking for easy answers and quick fixes.
There is a boatload of TUBEY MAGIC to be heard on the early pressings, no doubt due to the fact that they are mastered with tube equipment, but you would never know it by playing this barely passable Classic repressing.
The difference is night and day.
It’s been quite a while since I played the Classic pressing, but I remember it as nothing special. Like a lot of the records put out by this label, it’s tonally fine but low-rez and lacking space, warmth and above all, Tubey Magic.
I don’t think I’ve ever played an original that didn’t sound better, and that means that the best grade to give Classic’s pressing is probably a D, for below average. It sounds far too much like a CD.
Who can be bothered to play a record that has so few of the qualities we audiophiles are looking for on vinyl?
Back in 2007 we put the question this way: Why own a turntable if you’re going to play mediocrities like these?
Records are getting awfully expensive these days, and it’s not just our Hot Stampers that seem priced for perfection.
If you are still buying these modern remastered pressings, take the advice of some of our customers and stop throwing your money away on Heavy Vinyl and Half-Speed mastered LPs
At the very least let us send you a Hot Stamper pressing — of any album you choose — that can show you what is wrong with your copy. of the album.
And if for some reason you disagree with us that our record sounds better than yours, we will happily give you all your money back and wish you the best.
Below you will find our reviews and commentaries for the hundreds of Heavy Vinyl pressings we’ve played over the years.
We confess that even as recently as the early 2000s we were still impressed with some of the better Heavy Vinyl pressings. If we’d never made the progress we’ve worked so hard to make over the course of the last twenty or more years, perhaps we would find more merit in the Heavy Vinyl reissues many audiophiles are impressed by these days.
We’ll never know of course; that’s a bell that can be unrung. We did the work, we can’t undo it, and the system that resulted from it is merciless in revealing the truth — that these newer pressings are second-rate at best and much more often than not third-rate or even worse.
Some audiophile records sound so bad, I was pissed off enough to create a special list for them.
Setting higher standards — no, being able to set higher standards — in our minds is a clear mark of progress. Judging by the hundreds of letters we’ve received, we know that our customers see — and hear — things the same way.
