Hot Stamper Pressings of Piano Jazz Albums Available Now
Hot Stamper Pressings on Contemporary Available Now
The mastering choices of the cutting engineers for these two recordings did them no favors.
Like so many of the early OJC pressings we’ve played over the years, we found that both of these reissues tended to be somewhat thin tonally, with a brittle top end, which can clearly be heard in the tizzy quality of the cymbals.
This is not remotely the right sound for a vintage Contemporary recording.
When doing the shootouts for these albums, warmth turned out to be key to the sound of the best copies.
When the piano sounds warm and smooth, everything else in the recording seems to fall into place.
We play mediocre-to-bad sounding pressings so that you don’t have to, a public service from your record-loving friends at Better Records.
You can find this one in our Hall of Shame, along with others that — in our opinion — are best avoided by audiophiles looking for hi-fidelity sound. Some of these records may have passable sonics, but we found the music less than compelling. These are also records you can safely avoid.
We also have an Audiophile Record Hall of Shame for records that were marketed to audiophiles for their putatively superior sound. If you’ve spent any time on this blog at all, you know that these records are some of the worst sounding pressings we have ever had the displeasure to play.
We routinely play them in our Hot Stamper Shootouts against the vintage records that we offer, and are often surprised at just how bad an “audiophile record” can sound and still be considered an “audiophile record.”
Further Reading