Month: June 2023

Sarah Vaughan – After Hours on Emus

More Sarah Vaughan

More Pop and Jazz Vocal Recordings

  • STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it on both sides of this vintage pressing put the living, breathing Divine One right between our speakers
  • With simple arrangements, featuring Mundell Lowe’s guitar and George Duvivier’s double bass, Vaughan’s soulful voice can take center stage
  • “…a quiet and intimate affair, with Vaughan more subtle than she sometimes was… some fine jazz singing.”
  • If you’re a fan of Sarah’s, or Live Jazz Club Recordings in general, this Top Title from 1961 belongs in your collection.

This early Emus Stereo pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records cannot even 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, this is the record for you. It’s what Vintage Records are known for — this sound.

If you exclusively play modern repressings of vintage recordings, I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it — not often, and certainly not always — but maybe one out of a hundred new records do, and those are some pretty long odds. (more…)

Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong – Porgy and Bess

More of the Music of Ella Fitzgerald

More of the Music of Louis Armstrong

  • Amazing sound throughout these original Stereo Verve pressings, with INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound on all FOUR sides this Ella and Louis classic
  • Spacious, full-bodied and Tubey Magical, with Ella and Louis front and center, this is the sound you want for their brilliant collaboration from 1958
  • Two vocal giants came together to perform Gershwin’s timeless opera, revered by both music lovers and audiophiles to this day
  • If you’ve never heard exceptionally well recorded male and female vocals from the 50s, this is a great opportunity to have your mind blown
  • 4 1/2 stars: “What’s really great about the Ella and Louis version is Ella, who handles each aria with disarming delicacy, clarion intensity, or usually a blend of both.”

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Aerosmith – Draw The Line

More Aerosmith

    • An incredible pressing of Aerosmith’s fifth studio album with Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it throughout – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
    • These sides were richer, fuller, with better bass and more Tubey Magic than all other copies we played in our recent shootout
    • “1977’s Draw the Line managed to be another down-and-dirty Aerosmith release… Draw the Line catches fire more times than not. Unlike their most recent album successes, the band shies away from studio experimenting and dabbling in different styles; instead they return to simple, straight-ahead hard rock.”

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Letter of the Week – “I break out into a cold sweat whenever I think about the fact that I was willing to shell out $2000 for one record.”

More of the Music of Led Zeppelin

One of our good customers had some questions about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently. We’ve added an addendum to the bottom of his letter because it turns out he traded in his $2000 copy for a $2500 copy.

This Zeppelin 2 hot stamper is killing me, Tom. I love it. It’s not perfect, but it’s significantly better than almost any other copies I’ve heard. Enough that I’d stop my quest with this one, I really believe.

But, I break out into a cold sweat whenever I think about the fact that I was willing to shell out $2000 for one record. I never saw this coming. But then, I play it, I love it, and I can’t think of letting it go. (I rationalize the expenditure by reminding myself of all the ~$2000 audio purchases that bring me less joy than this one record does – headphones, cartridges, preamps, etc.)

It’s not like I’m a surgeon or a dentist – I’ve got a limit, and I’m past it. I’m inclined to keep it, but would you please help me conceptualize this? I have some questions maybe you won’t mind answering:

Is this the most expensive record you’ve ever sold?

I don’t recall any record selling for more than that, so yes, probably.

I actually think this thing might hold some of its value. This record in this condition might sell for $700+ on ebay or discogs, even if people can’t actually listen to it. I wonder what this record in this good shape will be selling for in ten years.

This copy might sell for $2000 today! I have seen them go for more than that. The right guy will pay it because it is unlike 90+% of the copies that come up for sale, which are groove-damaged, noisy and scratched.

Have you got “super hot stampers” or other white hots of Zep II on-hand to list?

If so, will the prices be significantly less than the $2K I just paid?

I don’t want to end up feeling even more buyer’s remorse if I felt like something nearly as good was available for significantly less…

There will probably never be a time when the price of that record comes down, unless you are talking about a copy with serious condition issues.

The prices we pay preclude any lowering of prices for good copies. If anything we are going to have to charge more, and that goes for all the big titles. Harvest? Used to be 500-600. Now? 800-1200. This is the world we live in now, and if we can’t charge those prices, we won’t do the shootouts and we won’t have copies to sell of those titles.

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What, You’re Selling Your TAS Super Disc List LPs? Say It Isn’t So!

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of David Crosby Available Now

UPDATE 2025

The bulk of this listing was written more than ten years ago and updated last year. Please to enjoy!

Also, whatever you do, don’t buy the Super Saver pressing of David Crosby’s debut like the one you see pictured, assuming you want to hear the album sound the way it should. Original only, and the right one of course.

We ran across a website years ago that confirmed our worst prejudices regarding audiophiles and their apparent desire to rely on gurus such as Harry Pearson to tell them which recordings sound good and which don’t.

This flies in the face of everything we stand for here at Better Records.

Since no two records sound the same, a list of so-called Super Discs is practically meaningless.

“Practically meaningless” hits the nail right on the head as far as we are concerned.

Picture yourself standing in your local record store with a record in your hands, one you happen to know is on the TAS List. This knowledge makes the record slightly more likely to sound better than any other record you might have randomly picked up in the store. Insignificantly, trivially more likely. In other words, as a practical matter, not all that much more likely.

Why is this? Three reasons:

  1. Many Super Discs are not on the TAS List;
  2. Some of the records on the TAS List are not deserving of Super Disc status; and most importantly,
  3. Most pressings of titles on the TAS List don’t sound especially good — only the right ones do. (I pictured the David Crosby album you see above with the cover you definitely don’t want in order to hammer home that point.)

But that’s not even the point. Ask yourself this:

Why on earth would anyone want to collect the records on The TAS List, when most of those records contain music that appeals to a very small group of people not named Harry Pearson?

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Tuning and Tweaking Are Key to Improving Your Critical Listening Skills

More on Developing Your Tuning and Tweaking Skills

Improving your critical listening skills is what allows you to make audio progress.

More to the point for readers of this blog, better quality audio allows you to collect better sounding records.

Since we play all kinds of records all day as part of our regular shootout regimen, tweaking and tuning are much easier for us to do than they would be for most audiophiles. As I have told many in this hobby over the years, if you don’t do the work, the only person who doesn’t get to hear better sound is you.

I can come home to my good sounding stereo — I’ve put in the work — but you’re stuck listening to all the problems you haven’t solved, right?

There’s no problem with an untweaked stereo or an untreated room as long as you don’t mind sound that falls far short of its potential to immerse you completely in the music you are playing.

If you actually want good sound, you have to learn how to tweak your stereo and you have to learn how to treat your room.

Neither one can be ignored. You have to learn how to do both.

And doing both is what teaches you how to listen, which is a skill that’s very hard to acquire any other way. This explains why so many audiophiles have such poor listening skills. They simply never developed them because they never needed them. Think about it: Listening to music for enjoyment requires the exercise of no skills whatsoever.

Such is obviously not the case with tweaking. Tweaking your system requires that you listen carefully and critically in order to make the fine judgments that are essential to making progress. Progress in audio from tweaking often occurs in small, almost imperceptible increments.

Being so subtle, these changes force you as a listener to concentrate, to focus your attention, to bring to bear all your critical listening skills.

Naturally, these skills, like any skills, having been exercised, start to improve, and continue to improve as you continue to exercise them.

Going About It

Everybody knows that practicing and challenging yourself will make you better at whatever you are trying to do.

But where have you ever seen those concepts applied to bettering your own audio skills (other than on this blog)? Just how would you go about challenging yourself as an audiophile?

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