Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Supertramp Available Now
The review for the WHS copy here is well over ten years old, so take it with a very large grain of salt.
Back in those days we still had not found the right British stampers for Crime of the Century, which turned out to have numbers that we thought would not be competitive with the earlier stampers.
It turns out that our foolish bias against the later stampers was nothing more than an embarrassing case of mistaken audiophile thinking.
Up until 2020, the right domestic pressings could still win shootouts.
Now we believe the Brits have the potential for the best sound. A recent example that went for big bucks. All it takes is for the right domestic pressing to win a shootout and we will be back to saying what is probably the best way to think about the album — both domestics and imports can sound amazingly good. It all comes down to the copies you have on hand, how you clean them and how well you can play them.
Our review from about ten years ago follows:
Amazing White Hot Stampers for the greatest Ken Scott production in history. This is his (and the band’s) Masterpiece, and now we have a pressing that allows us to revel in the glory that is Crime of the Century!
Case in point: The vocals here sound amazing — natural and correct with lots of texture. Even the best MoFi copies are going to sound a bit phony when played against a killer copy such as this. Of course it’s a high-definition, high-resolution sound cut with super low distortion; it has to be to sound this good. Folks, this is the copy that lets you appreciate every last detail of the recording without hitting you over the head with “sonic effects”. It’s musical in a way that no audiophile pressing ever seems to be.
And of course the bass is awesome. Loud levels and big woofers will have your house quaking. Add to that the kind of ENERGY that the best pressings have in their grooves and you have an album that is guaranteed to bring the average audiophile system to its knees, begging for mercy. This is The Audio Challenge before you. If you don’t have a system designed to play records with this kind of SONIC POWER, steer clear of Crime of the Century. It wants to rock your world, and that’s exactly what Hot Stamper pressings like this one are here to do.
It’s ALIVE! It has BIG, PUNCHY sound that will fill up your living room and then some. It’s exceptionally transparent with superb clarity and lots of extension on the top end.
The typical Brit copy is dull, and that quality just takes all the magic out of the recording. The three dimensional space and clarity of the recording rely heavily on the quality of the top end.
The MoFi, on the best copies, shows you what is missing from the typical Brit, domestic or other import LP. This is what impressed me back in the 70s when I bought my MoFi. It was only years later that I realized what was missing and what was wrong.
Last time around the best copies were British. That was not the case this time except on side two, where one British copy was competitive, but not better than, our best domestic pressing.
Side One
White Hot A Triple Plus Sound! BIG and BOLD like crazy. When track one finishes you will ask yourself, as we did, “how can it get any better?”
The answer will come quickly enough. Track two has a bit of edge to the vocals in some places, but with MONSTROUS size and energy, and prodigious bass power, we still had to call it A+++. It’s not perfect but it is so amazing that picking nits simply misses the point. This side is ALIVE.
Side Two
Side two gets rid of any edge problems in the vocals — the sound is exceptionally full and rich, with HUGE and solid drums like practically none you have ever heard. (Ken Scott can record toms like nobody else in the studio. If you have the system to play it, this album is all the proof you will ever need.)
Huge amounts of space, the MOST top end extension and the LEAST phony sound of any copy we played make this a side two that simply cannot be beat. One Brit copy was as good, albeit in different ways of course, but no copy was better.