Month: July 2023

Albeniz / Suite Espanola – Speakers Corner Reviewed

More of the music of Isaac Albeniz (1860-1909)

Years ago we wrote the review you see below. Not sure we would still find the record as good sounding as we did back then, in the ’90s, so take it for what it’s worth. (What I couldn’t hear on my system back in those days may be of interest to some of you.)

If you can pick one up for cheap, it’s probably a good record for the price.

One of the better Speakers Corner Deccas! Excellent sound and lovely music. This pressing also sounds much better than the Super Analogue pressing of the same music.

When you get the right original pressing — London or Decca — they’re even better, but they sure are hard to find on quiet vinyl.

That last part we definitely agree with.

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Charles Mingus – Mingus Dynasty

More Charles Mingus

More Jazz Recordings

  • An original 6-Eye Stereo copy with superb Double Plus (A++) sound on both sides
  • Exceptionally quiet vinyl for an early stereo pressing – unscratched, well-cared-for copies such as this one are getting awfully hard to find nowadays
  • This pressing is rich and tubey, yet still clear and spacious, with a notably solid and articulate bottom end that does a superb job of capturing the beauty of Mingus’s double bass
  • Bucketfuls of studio ambience, and Tubey Magic to die for – this 30th Street recording shows just how good Columbia’s engineers were back then
  • Best be warned – a Demo Disc such as this mayl make all your Heavy Vinyl pressings sound as lo-rez, lifeless and veiled as we know them to be, a reality you may not want to confront, but a reality all the same
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Mingus Dynasty is still an excellent album; in fact, it’s a testament to just how high a level Mingus was working on that an album of this caliber could have gotten lost in the shuffle.”
  • If you’re a fan of jazz from the Golden Age of the ’50s and ’60s, this Columbia from 1960 undoubtedly belongs in your collection

This is a wonderful example of the kind of record that makes record collecting FUN.

If innovative Large Group Jazz is your thing, you should get a big kick out of this one. If you like the sound of relaxed, tube-mastered jazz — and what red blooded audiophile doesn’t? — you can’t do much better than the Mingus recordings on Columbia from this era. (We’ve now done shootouts for the album before this one and the one to follow. Both are amazing, musically and sonically.) The warmth and immediacy of the sound here are guaranteed to blow practically any record of this kind you own right out of the water.

Both sides of this very special pressing are huge, rich, tubey and clear. As soon as the band got going we knew that this was absolutely the right sound for this music. 

Amazing Tubey Magic

For we audiophiles, both the sound and the music here are enchanting. If you’re looking to demonstrate just how good 1960 All Tube Analog sound can be, this killer copy should be just the record for you.

It’s spacious, sweet and positively dripping with ambience. Talk about Tubey Magic, the liquidity of the sound here is positively uncanny. This is vintage analog at its best, so full-bodied and relaxed you’ll wonder how it ever came to be that anyone seriously contemplated trying to improve it.

This is the sound of Tubey Magic. No recordings will ever be made like this again, and no CD will ever capture what is in the grooves of this record. There is of course a CD of the album, but those of us in possession of a working turntable could care less.

We played a handful of later pressings that didn’t really do it for us. They offer improved clarity, but can’t deliver the tubey goodness that you’ll hear on the best early pressings. We won’t be bothering with them anymore. It’s tubes or nothing on this album.

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We Owe You a Really Big Apology

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Santana Available Now

Sonic Grade: F

Santana is a record we admit to having liked when it came out back in 2007. Since then we have changed our minds. As embarrassing as it may be, and let’s be clear, this pressing is very embarrassing, We got this one wrong and there is no sense trying to deny it.

It’s just so damn compressed and lifeless.

The whomp factor on this pressing is zero. Since whomp is critical to the sound of Santana’s music, it’s Game Over for us. The review below is exactly what we wrote at the time the record came in.

We tried to like it, but it’s clear to us now that we tried to like it too hard. Please accept our apologies.

I noted in my [now discontinued] blog on the site: “But now I would have to say that the MoFi LP is far too lifeless to be acceptable to anyone, even those with the worst kinds of Audiophile BS systems.”

And I noted that the Abraxas they remastered never got past the first elimination round. It had to have been one of the worst half-speeds I have ever heard. 

We also mentioned a while back (4/29/08, time flies) on our blog how bad the latest crop of MoFi vinyl was, with the heading: “Mobile Fidelity, Ouch.” Please to enjoy:

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The Recordings of Milt Jackson – These Are Some that Didn’t Make the Grade

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Mile Jackson

Hot Stamper Pressings of Jazz Recordings Available Now

Pictured to the left are a couple of the Milt Jackson albums we’ve auditioned over the years, both on Pablo, a label we like very much.

Without going into specifics, we’ll just say these albums suffer from weak music, weak sound, or both. They may have some appeal to fans of the man, but audiophiles looking for top quality sound and music — our stock in trade — are best advised to look elsewhere.

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.

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The Paradox of ‘Pleasurable Sadness’: Why Do We like Sad Music?

An enjoyable read from Medium.com. from Mason Kissell.

An excerpt:

Despite the recent surge in the number of studies on the beauty of sad music, researchers admit that the “paradox of pleasurable sadness” remains unsolved.

While future investigations may gain a deeper insight into the appeal of gloomy melodies, it could also be argued that the power and value of music lie in its ability to connect the listeners to their inner selves, thus creating a transcendent experience that defies explanation.

An AI Summary

This is a compelling exploration of the “sadness paradox”—how the human brain transforms melancholic experiences into sources of reward, introspection, and empathy.

Here is a quick breakdown of the key neurological mechanisms and clinical insights highlighted in your essay:

  • The Reward Paradox: Melancholic stimuli (like sad music) activate reward centers like the nucleus accumbens, ventral striatum, and medial orbitofrontal cortex through dopamine pathways, treating emotional depth as intrinsically valuable.

  • Emotional Rehearsal: Processing sadness engages the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), serving as low-risk practice for coping with loss and constructing coherent personal narratives.

  • Neural Empathy: Shifted levels of oxytocin and serotonin, combined with the mirror neuron system, allow us to internalize others’ sorrow, deepening emotional literacy and social bonding.

  • Therapeutic Function: For individuals with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), sad media doesn’t necessarily worsen symptoms; instead, engaging reward and emotion networks can help reactivate blunted emotional systems.

You’re Gonna Get it – Spitty and Gritty? Too Lean and Clean?

More of the Music of Tom Petty

Notes from an early shootout. Scroll down to the bottom for our advice on what to look for when buying a copy of the album.

Big and punchy with great energy, this copy really rocks.

And rockin’ is what this album is all about — this is fun, high-energy music, but it takes a Hot Stamper copy like this to bring it life.

This is the classic first album, with two of their best songs: Breakdown and American Girl. It’s straight ahead rock and roll, with sonics to match.

The sound is a little spitty and transistory as a rule. But when you find a copy with Hot Stampers, the elements start to work together, and the good far outweighs the bad. If somebody tried to EQ this album differently, they’d probably end up taking away some of the Raw Rock Energy.

(By the way, American Girl never sounds all that great. That song needs more whomp! No copy had quite what we were looking on that song, but the Hot Stamper copies were at very least lively, musical, and not overly transistory.)

Breakdown is KILLER!

I mentioned above that Breakdown is one of the best songs on the album; fortunately, it’s also probably the best sounding song. On this great side one, it’s rich and full-bodied with real energy and presence. The overall sound is open and transparent, with more depth to the soundfield than we heard elsewhere. We were surprised how much these guys could sound like Steely Dan — just listen to the intro!

On many copies we played, Petty’s vocals were a bit lean for our tastes, and the guitars were a bit too clean — both of those elements really robbed the music of its power. Here, the voice is fuller, and you can really hear the meaty texture to the electric guitar; you can tell these guys were really rockin’ out! We didn’t hear sound this lively on any other side one we played, which made this our shootout champion at A+++.

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Listening in Depth to Sticky Fingers

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Rolling Stones Available Now

Presenting another entry in our extensive listening in depth series with advice on what to listen for as you critically evaluate your copy of Sticky Fingers.

Here are some albums on our site you can buy with similar Track by Track breakdowns.

Side One

Brown Sugar

If Brown Sugar makes you want to turn up your volume, you have a good copy! It’s a song that tends to be just plain irritating on most copies. You need a properly mastered, properly pressed, properly cleaned pressing and a pair of big speakers to play at the level the Stones wanted you to, which is LOUD.

One reason the Turn Up Your Volume Test is such a great test is that the louder the problem, the harder it is to ignore.

Sway
Wild Horses

Demonstration Quality Sound! Listen to those choruses. When have the Stones’ voices been recorded better? Never! None more times.

Can’t You Hear Me Knocking

My favorite test track for side one. The Stones have never been better. If you have a copy with rock solid bass and a transparent midrange, you have yourself a real Demo Track here. (Assuming you have the big speakers with plenty of power needed to play it.)

You Gotta Move

Side Two

Bitch

Drop the needle on Bitch if you have a great copy and want to see what’s great about the sound of this album. It’s got everything you could ask for: big deep bass, huge lively vocals, meaty guitars and all the life and energy you could possibly want.

When you place the needle on the edge of this side (and have your volume plenty high, of course) nothing will prepare you for what you are about to hear.

I Got The Blues

One of the best sounding Rolling Stones songs of all time. In previous listings I’ve mentioned how good this song sounds — thanks to Glyn Johns, of course — but on these amazing Hot Stamper copies it is OUT OF THIS WORLD.

The organ solo that the late Billy Preston launches into midway into the track gets my vote for the most intense 8 bar keyboard solo of all time. I can hear every note of it in my head as I write this, it’s that powerful and memorable.

Listen also for the interplay between the two guitarists at the opening of this track. It’s pure magic. This is the Stones at their zenith. They’re still a great rock band these days, don’t get me wrong, but they’re not the great rock band that made this album. That was thirty years ago. Like the saying goes, you’re not getting better, you’re getting older.

Sister Morphine
Dead Flowers
Moonlight Mile

Eric Clapton – Slowhand

More Eric Clapton

  • Slowhand is finally back on the site, here with superb Double Plus (A++) grades on both sides of this vintage RSO pressing
  • One of our favorite Clapton albums, but one that is notoriously difficult to find with top quality sound and audiophile quality playing surfaces
  • With Glyn Johns behind the board, you can be sure the sound will be exceptionally rich, smooth, sweet and above all ANALOG
  • 4 1/2 stars: “This is laid-back virtuosity — although Clapton and his band are never flashy, their playing is masterful and assured. That assurance and the album’s eclectic material make Slowhand rank with 461 Ocean Boulevard as one of Eric Clapton’s best albums.”

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The UK Imports of On the Third Day Are Made from Dubs

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Electric Light Orchestra Available Now

It’s obvious, or should be, that the British vinyl pressings are made from sub-generation copy tapes.

The imports make it sound as if someone threw a blanket over your speakers.

We know this because we had a bunch of them cleaned up for our shootout many years ago and they all sucked.

We tend to buy Electric Light Orchestra records on import vinyl; those are the ones that have proven themselves to have the best sound.

Most of the domestic pressings of their albums sound as though they were mastered from dub tapes.

But On The Third Day is proof that this is not always the case, just as Siren proves that the best Roxy Music albums are not always British.

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John Coltrane – Coltrane’s Sound

More John Coltrane

More Jazz Recordings Featuring the Saxophone

  • This early pressing boasts two excellent Double Plus (A++) or BETTER sides – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • An authentic Green and Blue Atlantic stereo pressing, the only version of the album that has the potential for Hot Stamper sound, which explains why this is one of the few copies to have hit the site since 2011
  • If this price seems high, keep in mind that the top copy from our most recent shootout went for $1000, and the vinyl was about as quiet
  • Our last shootout was in 2018, would should tell you when to expect us to find another copy of this quality: 2028!
  • “This is one of the most highly underrated entries in Coltrane’s voluminous catalog. Although the same overwhelming attention bestowed upon My Favorite Things was not given to Coltrane’s Sound upon its initial release, both were actually recorded during the same three-day period in the fall of 1960… these recordings remain among Trane’s finest.”
  • Coltrane’s Sound, recorded in 1960 but not released until four years later, is a Must Own Jazz Album from 1964

This is yet another superb Tom Dowd recording of Coltrane in his prime, with support from the brilliant McCoy Tyner and Elvin Jones.

Forget the later Red and Green Atlantic pressings. Every one we’ve ever played was flat, dry, and thin. They sound like the cheap reissues that Atlantic churned out in the ’70s. Don’t get me wrong; there are some good sounding records on the Red and Green label, but you really have to know what you are doing — or be really lucky — to find them.

We’ve played them by the score, and found relatively few winners among a slough of losers. If you want to take your chances on some, knock yourself out, more power to you, but expect to come up with nothing to show for your time and money almost every time. That’s been our experience anyway.

And be very thankful if you happen to run into one of these early Atlantic stereo pressings, especially if it plays as quietly as this one does. Few Classic Coltrane albums survived the jazz lovers of the day and their awful turntables.

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