Month: June 2023

Letter of the Week – “…it is smooth, lush, and virtually free of the usual gritty, grainy harshness…’

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

Hey Tom,  

I’ve not written in a while and wanted to share a few thoughts. Upper most in my mind is a new perspective on The Beatles’ White Album. I’ve long been a proponent of a particular school of thought regarding this particular record. You may have heard it before. It goes like this: “If one removed all of the filler from this record, it would make one pretty killer Beatles single LP”.

I now must confess this is a fallacious argument, as it is most certainly based on having only heard the common Capital orange and black label pressings. I now stand corrected and happily enlightened. 

Not only is the overall sound of this Hot Stamper copy so superior tonally, it is smooth, lush, and virtually free of the usual gritty, grainy harshness – the sound jumps out of the speakers. It has a wide, deep sound stage and lots of deep, tight bass.

After the initial pleasant shock of the sound in general, what emerges is a plethora of overlaid tracks and instruments I’d no idea were even there in the first place. To my ears it is quite apparent that every track was carefully, even lovingly made.

This reminds me of a comment somewhere on your site where it is pointed out that hearing a really good pressing of a song you never thought you liked before can suddenly make you a convert. That is definitely the case with this one. All of the Paul and Ringo songs I always thought were lame filler now emerge as really excellent.

Imagine my dismay!

Robert B.

Robert,

That’s the kind of dismay we are going for with our Hot Stampers. When the sound is right, what really improves is the music.

Best, TP

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Stanley Turrentine – Rough ‘N Tumble

More Stanley Turrentine

More Albums on Blue Note

  • Boasting INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it from first note to last, we guarantee you’ve never heard this kind of life and energy on any other Stanley Turrentine album – remarkably quiet vinyl too
  • It’s rare for us to find New York label stereo pressings in audiophile playing condition, but here’s a killer one, and it simply takes the recording (and the music) to another level
  • This session boasts all the top players: Blue Mitchell, Pepper Adams, McCoy Tyner, Grant Green, Bob Cranshaw, and Mickey Roker and more
  • “…the star of the show is Turrentine, and his warmth and playing make this a necessity, especially for fans ’60s pre-funk Blue Note jazz.”
  • If you’re a fan of Stanley’s, this title from 1966 is clearly one of his best, and one of his best sounding

This vintage Blue Note stereo pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records can barely BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing signs of coming back. If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to “see” the performers, and feeling as if you are sitting in the studio with the band, this is the record for you. It’s what vintage all analog recordings are known for — this sound.

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Speakers Corner Ruins a Classic Mercury, Part One

More of the Music of Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943)

This commentary was written in 2004.

We carried Heavy Vinyl back then, and for that, knowing what I know now, I can only apologize.

Back then, I thought I knew a great deal more about records and  how to reproduce them than I actually did.  Yes, I have to admit it: I suffered from the Dunning-Kruger effect.

On the bright side, there is one very powerful benefit that I gained from being so mistaken. Having failed to recognize my own shortcomings, the signs that someone thinks they know more than they do are easy for me to spot. Here is one of my favorite examples. I link to it a lot.

If you want to see the effect played out in the cyber world, go to any audiophile forum and start reading any thread about records you find there. The D-K effect is hard to miss. Some of the experts on these forums have even convinced themselves that they know things that cannot be known, which is always a sure sign they know a great deal less than they think they do.  

Our Old Commentary

Some thoughts on the new 180 gram Mercury reissues by Speakers Corner and a bunch of other record related stuff.

The Absolute Sound weighed in with their view of the series:

Speakers Corner has given these recordings the respect they deserve. The packaging is gorgeous: a black album titled “The Living Presence of 20th Century Music” and displaying the Mercury logo holds the three records with their original covers and liner notes. In addition, there are informative annotations on the music and Dorati, and a history of Mercury Living Presence…They sound at least as good and in some ways better than the originals…There are no negatives and not enough superlatives to describe these magnificent reissues. It’s rare that performance, sound, and musical value combine at this level in a recording.

Arthur B. Lintgen, The Absolute Sound, February/March 2004

Let me start by saying that I have not listened to a single one of the new Mercury titles.

Now that that’s out of the way, let me state for the record that the chances of the above statements being true are so close to zero that they cannot be calculated by anything but the latest Cray computer.

Has Speakers Corner produced a single classical record that’s better than a well-mastered, properly-pressed vintage pressing? One or two. Maybe. [These days we would say zero is the right number.]  So what are the chances they did so with these? Almost none I would say.

The above review reminds me of the nonsense I read in TAS and elsewhere in the mid-’90s regarding the supposed superiority of the Classic Living Stereo reissues. After playing their first three titles: 1806, 1817 and 2222, I could find no resemblance between the reviews I read and the actual sound of the records I heard.

The sound was, in a word, awful. To this day I consider them to be the Single Worst Reissue Series in the History of the World. [Presently there are too many contenders for that title to hold that view anymore.]

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Donald Byrd – Electric Byrd

  • You’ll find outstanding Double Plus (A++) sound or close to it throughout this vintage Blue Note pressing – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Side two is clean, clear and natural sounding with a lovely bottom end and lots of space around all of the players, and side one is not far behind in all those areas
  • If you want to hear the Tubey Magic, size and energy of this wonderful session from 1970 – recorded by none other than Rudy Van Gelder – this copy will let you do that (particularly on side two)
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Donald Byrd’s transitional sessions from 1969-1971 are actually some of the trumpeter’s most intriguing work, balancing accessible, funky, Davis-style fusion with legitimate jazz improvisation. Electric Byrd, from 1970, is the best of the bunch, as Byrd absorbs the innovations of Bitches Brew and comes up with one of his most consistent fusion sets of any flavor… indisputably challenging, high-quality fusion.”

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Holst – The Planets / Previn – Our 2022 Shootout Winner

More of the Music of Gustav Holst

  • This early British EMI pressing is guaranteed to be the best copy of Holst’s Magnum Opus you have ever heard, with both sides earning top quality sonic grades
  • The vinyl on these mid-70s EMI pressings is never as quiet as we would like – with such a dynamic recording, one with so many quiet sections, lightly ticky vinyl is unavoidable
  • Previn’s and the LSO’s performances are without peer in our estimation
  • These sides are rich, clear and dynamic, with weighty brass, and the kind of dynamic power that lifts the energy level right into space
  • A TAS List Super Disc, with a performance that’s as spectacular as the recording (thanks to the work of the two Christophers)
  • This link will take you to more of our favorite orchestral performances with top quality sound

These sides have some of the best sound we have ever heard for the work, and that’s saying something considering the scores of recordings we have played of this famous and famously well-loved piece.

Fortunately for audiophiles who love The Planets but are disappointed by most performances, a group that includes us to be sure, the amazing sound found on this copy is coupled with a superb performance.

As you might imagine, on a big system this would make for a powerful listening experience, which is exactly the experience we ourselves had during our recent shootout. This copy actually deserves its place on the TAS List.

Both sides earned strong grades for their powerful energy and orchestral excitement, especially from the brass section, a subject we discuss at length below. (more…)

Robert Brook Makes History with the First Shootout Video Ever Posted on Youtube

Hot Stamper Pressings of Revolver Available Now

One of our good customers, Robert Brook, writes a blog which he calls A GUIDE FOR THE BUDDING ANALOG AUDIOPHILE. You can find it by clicking the link below.

Welcome to The Broken Record!

We recently loaned Robert some copies of Revolver so that he could do the first youtube-acceptable Record Shootout video in the history of mankind. He had three copies of his own to play along with the five we loaned him, plenty to work with.

We hope to be able to discuss the experience of doing the shootout and the video with him soon, but for now, let’s just enjoy the first of its kind.

Robert now knows firsthand something few audiophiles have made the effort to learn:

Shootouts are a great deal of work if you take the time to do them right.

If you have just a few pressings on hand and don’t bother to clean them carefully, or follow rigorous testing protocols, that kind of shootout anyone can do. You can find those kinds of shootouts on youtube, but we have never seen fit to take them seriously.

The results of shootouts that are not carried out in the serious way that we do and the way that Robert did cannot be trusted, for reasons that anyone reading this blog should find obvious.

Art Dudley illustrates this approach, but you could pick any reviewer you like — none of them have ever undertaken a shootout worthy of the name to our knowledge.

Here is an especially egregious example of how to go about it all wrong.

We ourselves struggled back in the old days. in 2005, our attempted shootout for Blue could not get off the ground. Two years and scores of shootouts later, we had been able to find and clean some amazing sounding copies, which is how we were able to tell how far off the mark this pressing was.

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Grover Washington – Winelight

More Grover Washington Jr

More Bill Withers

  • Superb sound throughout this wonderful Elektra pressing
  • Both sides here are rich, full-bodied and musical – this is the sound of Analog that we fell in love with all those years ago (57 and counting in my case)
  • We’ve called this album a Demo Disc for Bass and any Hot Stamper copy will show you why
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Winelight is one of his finest albums, and not primarily because of the Bill Withers hit “Just the Two of Us.” It is the five instrumentals that find Washington (on soprano, alto, and tenor) really stretching out…”

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Beethoven’s Violin Concerto – Classic Records Reviewed

Hot Stamper Pressings Featuring the Violin

An Audiophile Hall of Shame pressing and another Classic Records Classical LP we found seriously lacking in some of the most important qualities we listen for on the classical and orchestral recordings we audition.

The Classic pressing of this album does not present the listener with the sound of a real, wood instrument, bowed by horsehair, in a physical space.

It is an airless fraud, a cheap fake reproduction that’s incapable of fooling anyone currently in possession of two good ears, a properly set up hi-fi system and a decent collection of Golden Age violin concerto recordings.

The fact that a great many writers identifying themselves as audiophiles embraced Classic’s mediocre-at-best reissues tells me that they were lacking some or all of the above.

Notes from a Recent Hot Stamper Pressing (more…)

Julie London – These Early 60s Releases Didn’t Make the Grade

More of the Music of Julie London

Hot Stamper Pressings of Vocal Albums Available Now

The early sixties were not good for the sound of Julie London’s albums. As far as we can tell, her last good sounding album came out in 1961.

The album at the top is from 1963 and the one below it it is from 1964.

We have never played a copy of either album that was especially good sounding, certainly not good enough to charge the kind of money we charge.

We love Female Vocal recordings, but these two are just not good enough to make the grade.

There are many male and female vocal albums that actually did make the grade, most often by going through a shootout, and here are some of the categories we have separated them into:

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 these two 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.

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Letter of the Week – “The 3+ sides really light up the room and at times have me shaking my head in disbelief at the musical presentation. Holy smokes!”

More Hot Stamper Testimonial Letters

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

Hey Tom,  

You know I am a Better Records believer having purchased hot stampers over the past decade and having over 90% of my collection hot stampers.

I only play vinyl and recently got some upgrades to the system. I’ll save you all the audiophile jargon and simply state my system sounds better.

What I have noticed, as good as the albums have been, I’m hearing an even greater delineation in the grading. The 2+ and 2.5+ are good, but the 3+ sides really light up the room and at times have me shaking my head in disbelief at the musical presentation. .

Holy smokes! Thanks, Tom

Mike

Dear Mike,

Glad to know you made improvements to your stereo and things are cookin’ now, so much so that the White Hots truly shine the way they should. They sure shine over here.

It took us a long time to get to get them to sound that way, forty plus years of messing around with equipment and rooms and cleaning techniques.

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