Month: January 2023

Bonnie Raitt – Home Plate

More Music from Women Who Rock

  • An outstanding copy of Home Plate with Double Plus (A++) sound from start to finish – remarkably quiet vinyl too
  • Sound this good means you’re probably hearing the album better than they did when they played back the master tape in the control room — studio monitors being what they are
  • Since this is one of my three favorite Bonnie Raitt albums — the others being Sweet Forgiveness and Nine Lives — and quite possibly the best sounding album she ever made, it goes without saying that this is THE Must Own Bonnie Raitt Hot Stamper Pressing of All Time
  • “. . . a wonderful hybrid of American music, built on a thoroughly impressive set of songs, all delivered with Raitt’s warm, expertly shaded, and undeniably sexy singing.”

This is a classic case of a record that really starts to work when the levels are up. It’s so free from distortion and phony processing it wants to be played loud, and that’s the level this music works at. It’s the level it was no doubt mixed at, and that mix sounds pretty flat at moderate levels. If you want to hear the real rockin’ Bonnie Raitt you gots to turn it up!

Like a lot of the best recordings from the mid-’70s, the production and recording quality are clean and clear, and we mean that in a good way. There is very little processing to the sound of anything here; drums sound like drums, guitars like guitars, and Bonnie sings without the aid of autotuning — because she can sing on-key, and beautifully. Her vocals kill on every song. (Her dad had a pretty good set of pipes too.)

Click here to see more of our favorite Rock and Pop records with relatively unprocessed sound.

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Letter of the Week – “We listened to all of side one the day it came, Magic!”

More of the Music of Return to Forever

Hot Stamper Pressings of Jazz Rock Fusion Albums in Stock

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently:

Hey Tom, 

We know Better Records are big fans of Return to Forever, Romantic Warrior, and so are we.

I saw a white hot copy (Both sides!) on your website, and immediately ran upstairs to tell my son. We both drooled over the listing for a couple minutes, My son turned to me and said ” Dad, I’ll split it with you!” Done!

We listened to all of side one the day it came, Magic! Even better than we imagined! From time to time, we pull the album out and listen to an entire side. Just as great now as it ever was! The gift that keeps on giving!

Charles and Paul S.

Dear Sirs,

Even better than you imagined is what we were going for. Glad to know we succeeded.

The White Hot realm is admittedly an expensive place to hang out, but the quality, as you know, is out of this world.

Thanks for your letter.

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Making Mistakes and Other Advice from Better Records

New to the Blog? Start Here

Record shootouts are the fastest and easiest way to hone your listening skills. We believe that the only way to really learn about records is to gather a big pile of them together, clean them up and listen to them one by one, as critically as you can.

Wise men and women throughout the ages have commented on the value of making mistakes. Here is one of our favorite quotes on the subject.

“Making a different mistake every day is not only acceptable, it is the definition of progress.” Robert Brault

If you have twenty copies of Bridge of Sighs, and most of them are British, you are definitely going to find a Hot Stamper pressing or two, assuming you clean them right and listen to them critically.

Keep in mind that having British pressings in your shootout is absolutely crucial to your success, because those are the only ones that ever win our shootouts, for obvious reasons: they’re made from the master tapes.

The domestic pressings are made from dubs, and yes, I suppose you could shootout twenty of those, but you would only be trying to find the best second-rate pressing of the album out of your twenty, since practically any British pressing will beat even the best domestic pressing.

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Ravel / Daphnis et Chloé / Monteux

More of the Music of Maurice Ravel

  • A vintage UK Decca pressing of Ravel’s complete Masterpiece that was doing everything right, earning INSANELY GOOD Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades throughout. This copy of SXL 2164 is a knockout
  • The sound is big and rich, lively and open, with TONS of depth and huge climaxes that hold together
  • The voices in the chorus are clear, natural, separate and full-bodied — this is the hallmark of a vintage Golden Age recording: naturalness
  • We know of no other recording of the work that does as good a job of capturing such a large orchestra and chorus
  • Of course, Monteux is a master of the French idiom — his performance of the complete ballet here is definitive in our opinion
  • There are about 150 orchestral recordings we think offer the best performance coupled with the highest quality sound. This record is certainly deserving of a place on that list.

Both sides here are BIG, with the space and depth of the wonderful Kingsway Hall that the LSO perform in. John Culshaw produced the album, which surely accounts for the huge size and space, not to mention quality, of the recording. The sound is dynamic and tonally correct throughout.

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Loggins & Messina – Sittin’ In

More Loggins & Messina

  • An outstanding copy of L&M’s debut Masterpiece with Double Plus (A++) grades from first note to last
  • The sound is big, lively, open and clear with Tubey Magical richness that only the best vintage pressings can show you
  • One of our favorite albums, and with every improvement in the system this one just keeps getting better and better
  • Every track on side one is brilliant, from “Nobody But You,” to “Danny’s Song,” to “Vahevala,” to the ending of the ‘Trilogy’ with “Peace of Mind”
  • 4 1/2 stars: “With their infectious blend of country, folk, rock and Caribbean music, L&M started out at the top of their game”
  • If you’re a fan of this remarkable duo, and what audiophile wouldn’t be?, this title from 1971 is clearly one of their best
  • The complete list of titles from 1971 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here.

We love this album and have been playing it regularly since it came out in 1971. That’s a long time, and the good news is it just keeps getting better and better, like all the best records in your collection should. (more…)

Forget Your Theories, Just Get More Data

More Entries in Our Thinking About Records Series

The idea of Hot Stamper pressings make more sense once you have a better understanding of statistical distributions.

Why statistics you ask?

Simple. We can’t tell what a record is going to sound like until we play it.

For all practical purposes, we are buying them randomly and “measuring” them to see where they fall on a curve.

We may be measuring them using a turntable and registering the data aurally, but it’s still very much measurement and it’s still very much data that we are recording (admittedly with a healthy amount of interpretation of the data involved, but that’s what we get paid to do, right?).

Many of these ideas were addressed in the shootout we did many years ago for BS&T’s second album. We played a large number of copies (the data), we found a few amazing ones (the outliers), and we tried to determine how many copies it really takes to find those records that sound so amazing they defy not only conventional wisdom, but our understanding of the recording itself.

We don’t know what causes some copies to sound so good.

(Here are some recent examples of shockingly good sounding pressings we discovered while doing shootouts.)

We know them when we hear them and that’s pretty much all we can say we really know. Everything else is speculation and guesswork.

We have data. What we don’t have is a theory that explains that data.

And it simply won’t do to ignore the data because we can’t explain it. Hot Stamper deniers are those members of the audiophile community who, when faced with something they don’t want to be true, simply manufacture reasons why it can’t be true or shouldn’t be true. That’s not science. It’s the very opposite of science.

Practicing science means following the data wherever it leads.

The truth can only be found in the record’s grooves and nowhere else. 

If you don’t understand record collecting as a science, you won’t be able to do it well and you certainly won’t achieve the success that’s possible by using a scientific approach.

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Letter of the Week – “I swear the hair on the back of my neck stood up!”

More of the Music of Heart

More Music from Women Who Rock

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently:

Hey Tom, 

I put on side one of my A+++/A+++ “Dreamboat Annie.”

I’ve found my new Demo Disc.

The drums are from another world. Cranked to the halfway mark on my preamp, I feel the drums and bass in my chest like they’re right here in my living room.

The guitar solo on “Magic Man” is intoxicating — especially the twisting interplay when the second guitar comes in. And when the synthesizer comes in and slides down the scale to hit that low note, I swear the hair on the back of my neck stood up!

The air around the vocals on “Dreamboat Annie” was unbelievable. There’s an ethereal reverb in the opening stanza, just a hint, that I’d never really noticed before. And then the acoustic guitar on center stage grabs you by the lapels, before moving to the right channel so the drums and bass can take center stage and the electric guitar can come crashing in from the left side. 

I can actually hear the bass so well, I’m convinced now the bass player is using a pick, rather than just strumming with his fingertips.

This just became my new favorite record. At least, that is, until I try another of my White Hot Stampers … ha!

Thanks for all you’re doing to help me build the right system.

Bill P.

Bill,

Thanks for your letter,

Both Little Queen and Dreamboat Annie easily qualify as Rock Demo Discs when played on big speakers at loud levels, which, as you know, is the only way to listen to them.

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Mike Bloomfield & Al Kooper – The Live Adventures Of…

More Al Kooper

  • The Live Adventures Of… is finally back on the site after a twenty-six month hiatus, here with INSANELY GOOD Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound on all FOUR sides of these early 360 Stereo pressings
  • This copy is doing everything right – it’s clean, clear, spacious and present with a big bottom end, just the right sound for this raw, live blues rock music
  • Great material to be found here, including covers of well-known tracks by Paul Simon, The Band, and Traffic
  • Marks in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you
  • 4 stars: “One of the seminal live albums of the late 60s… The idea of musical spontaneity both in live performance and in the recording studio had reached a certain apex in 1968… But it was the union of Bloomfield and Kooper that can truly claim an origination of the phenomenon, and this album takes it to another level entirely.”

Outstanding sound for this double LP of superb live blues-rock! We rarely have a copy of this title on the site, so if you’re a fan of Super Session, you should jump on this one right away.

Some of the tracks here (recorded on the second night) feature none other than Carlos Santana. (more…)

An Exceptionally Natural Piano Recording of Pictures at an Exhibition

More of the music of Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881)

This original London pressing of the solo piano version of Pictures has uncannily natural piano reproduction, which is why we are awarding this side one our highest sonic grade, A Triple Plus.

The fact that the recording takes place in Kingsway Hall in 1967 no doubt plays a large part in the natural sound. The hall is bigger here than on other copies, the piano even more solidly weighted, yet none of this comes at the expense of the clarity of the playing.

The piano has no smear, allowing both the percussive aspects of the instrument and the extended harmonics of the notes to be heard clearly and appreciated fully.

Pianos are very good for testing your system, room, tweaks, electricity and all the rest, not to mention turntable setup and adjustment. More records that are good for testing and improving your playback can be found here.

Side two has Mehta’s performance of the orchestrated work squeezed onto side two, which is never a good idea if one is looking for high quality orchestral sound. The performance itself is mediocre as well.

We are not, and never have been, big fans of Mehta’s work with the Los Angeles Philharmonic on London Records.

The exceptionally rare copy of Mehta’s Planets can sound good, but 90% of them do not — just don’t make the mistake of telling that to the average audiophile who owns one. Harry told him it was the best, he paid good money for it, and until someone tells him otherwise it had better be “the one Planets to own.” (Why audiophiles need someone to tell them what recordings are the best is a mystery. Can’t they just play them and listen for themselves?)

We see one of our roles here at Better Records as being the guys who actually will “tell you different,” and, more importantly, can back up our opinions with the records that make our case for us.

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Robert Brook Hears Something Funny on the MoFi One-Step of B,S&T

Robert Brook has a blog which he calls

A GUIDE FOR THE DEDICATED ANALOG AUDIOPHILE

Below is a link to a review Robert Brook has just written for the MoFi One-Step pressing of one of our favorite albums of all time, BS&T’s second album.

I do not doubt for a minute that it’s every bit as awful as Robert says it is. Probably worse! I made some rather extensive notes in the comments at the end of his review you may find of interest.

Blood, Sweat & Tears: How Do MoFi’s 2 Disc 45 rpm’s STACK UP?

We’ve written quite a bit about the album, played copies of it by the score as a matter of fact, and you can find plenty of our reviews and commentaries for the album on this very blog.

Based on everything I am reading these days from Robert Brook, he has a good stereo, two working ears, and knows plenty about records and what they are supposed to sound like.

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