Robert Brook has a blog which he calls
A GUIDE FOR THE DEDICATED ANALOG AUDIOPHILE
Below is a link to the commentary he’s written about his experience as a guest on The Audiophile Roundtable.
(He’s the fellow in the lower right corner.)
All?
Wouldn’t it be better to pose the question as “Do any audiophile represses sound better?”
But better than what? That’s the $64,000 question. No one seemed interested in answering that one. Or even noticing that it needed answering.
A fellow in the comments section asked:
Here’s a question to Robert, because he said he didn’t like the sound of the Tone Poets he heard… compared to what?
I don’t remember what Robert said but here’s my answer:
Compared to the hundreds of great sounding jazz records you’ve played! Compared to Way Out West if we have to pick one.
Robert and I have many things in common.
The most important one, from my point of view, is the fact that we are not much interested in records that sound good, or are musical and enjoyable, or are priced fairly, as seems to be the case with these fellows and their channel.
No, we are looking for the kinds of records that sound amazing, the way live music sounds amazing.
Records that blow our minds.
Records that give us a thrill.
Robert spent a fair amount of time trying to explain this concept to his fellow panel members. None of them seemed to understand or appreciate his recent Way Out West experience. He told them how exhilarated he felt after having just played a ‘I can’t believe it’s a record” record, but they apparently were not interested as no one followed up.
Based on what I’ve seen on youtube lately, I’ve come to the conclusion that there are thrill seekers and there are record collectors, and that these two groups do not seem to have much in common.
Obsession is key to the pursuit of thrills. We write a lot about records that we are obsessed with, to wit:
The albums you see here played an important role in helping me improve my stereo, some of them starting as far back as the mid-’70s.
By the 2000s, we had a heavily-treated, dedicated room, and later still a custom built studio. The challenges posed by these recordings were instrumental in helping us make improvements in every aspect of playback.
The better the stereo got, the more these records showed us just how amazing the right pressings (we call them Hot Stampers) could sound.
Having played so many copies of these albums over the course of so many years, I credit them with teaching me most of what I know about records and equipment.
Does anyone on this panel seem obsessed with records? Any records? Even one record? If they are, I have yet to see any evidence of it.
To be fair, why should they be? Why should they be more like Robert and me? Why should they want to pursue the kinds of records, and the kinds of audio experiences, that drive obsessive types like us?
Obviously they shouldn’t. They should do exactly what they like to do, which is to collect records, mostly of the audiophile variety. They like doing it, and who is to say what they like to do is any better or any worse than what I like or what Robert likes to do? To each his own.
I admit that for the longest time I had difficulty understanding this video channel.
What is the point of discussing the latest batch of audiophile releases with other like-minded souls?
And even if you and your friends like talking about these kinds of records, why would anyone watch? What could they possibly be getting out of it?
The approach that I could see having real value would be for everyone to have copies of the same audiophile pressings. Each panel member would play them, evaluate them, make notes on their sonic qualities, compare them to whatever other pressings each of them had on hand, and then each member of the panel would take turns talking about their experience with the record, perhaps with the aim of reaching a general consensus as to the merits of the new pressings vis a vis all the others that had been critically evaluated.
You know, like what we do in our shootouts, but with a panel of four or five guys instead of our panel of two.
Clearly this rather obvious idea holds no interest to Steve and his friends, nor should we expect it to.
They are doing their collecting thing the way they enjoy doing it, and more power to them.
Robert and I have other goals in mind. We each have a blog devoted to helping audiophiles get to the next level, based on our own efforts to get to that next level.
On this blog there are 3000 reviews for records that we’ve auditioned, most of them through shootouts. (I may have played double or triple that, but I’ve only written about 3000.)
However, there are more than 5000 entries in total.
This means there are 2000 listings and commentaries that are there to explain something we’ve learned about records or audio over the course of the last 58 years that I’ve been playing them, the last 36 of them professionally and obsessively.
Robert has many listings of this nature, some that I’ve linked to here. I advise everyone who is looking to make progress in this devilishly difficult hobby to read them and experiment with records and equipment the way he has.
They are not for everybody. Neither are the 2000 I’ve written. They are mostly for the benefit of those, like Robert and me, who are in search of the perfect sound.
Further Reading