Earl Fatha Hines / Fatha – Now That’s a Dynamic Piano

More Direct to Disc Recordings

Reviews and Commentaries for Direct to Disc Recordings

This review is from 2012, the first time we did a shootout (two copies!) for the album.

Of course, no shootout we would do these days would involve only two copies of an album. If we were to scold ourselves today for this silly exercise from back in 2012, it would look something like this: 

We encourage any audiophile who wants to improve the quality of his record collection to do some shootouts for himself. Freeing up an afternoon to sit down with a pile of cleaned copies of a favorite LP (you won’t make it through any other kind) and play them one after another is by far the best way to learn about records and pressing variations. Doing your own shootout will also help you see just how much work it is.

They are a great deal of work if you do them right. If you have just a few pressings on hand and don’t bother to clean them rigorously, that kind of shootout anyone can do. We would not consider that a real shootout. (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.)

With only a few records to play you probably won’t learn much of value and, worse, you are unlikely to find a top copy, although you may be tempted to convince yourself that you have. As Richard Feynman so famously remarked, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool.”

Our 2012 Review for the Winner

This M&K Direct to Disc SMOKED the copy we played it against — the difference was NIGHT and DAY! The sound is smoother, sweeter, and richer than we are used to hearing for this album. There’s lots of space around the drums, and the tuba sounds awesome.

You aren’t going to believe how DYNAMIC this copy is — when Fatha’s really pounding on the keys, you’re gonna jump out of your chair. The overall sound is clean, clear, lively, and super transparent.

The edgy, hard piano sound that plagued our lesser copy is nowhere to be found.

This is especially good jazz piano music; Earl Hines plays up a storm on this album. The opening track, Birdland, with just a high hat, a tuba and Fatha on piano is worth the price of the disc alone.

Piano Testing

Lately we have been writing quite a bit about how pianos are good for testing your system, room, tweaks, electricity and all the rest, not to mention turntable setup and adjustment.

  • We like our pianos to sound natural (however one chooses to define the term).
  • We like them to be solidly weighted.
  • We like them to be free of smear, a quality that is rarely mentioned in the audiophile record reviews we read.

Side One

Birdland
Blue Monk
Humoresque
Squeeze Me
Ain’t Misbehavin’

Side Two

Sophisticated Lady
Old Fashioned Love
Misty
The Preacher

AMG  Review

Once called ‘the first modern jazz pianist,’ earl hines differed from the stride pianists of the 1920s by breaking up the stride rhythms with unusual accents from his left hand. While his right hand often played octaves so as to ring clearly over ensembles, hines had the trickiest left hand in the business, often suspending time recklessly but without ever losing the beat. One of the all-time great pianists, hines was a major influence on teddy wilson, jess stacy, joe sullivan, nat king cole, and even to an extent on art tatum.

M&k Realtime Commentary

Realtime brings you great music with unrivaled realism. The secret is our exclusive realtime recording process. Conceived and carried out by our own perfectionist audiophile/engineers, it keeps us working at the leading edge of recording technology. Every link in the chain—from microphones through recorders and/or disc-cutting lathe to custom-plating and pressing—is continuously monitored and upgraded to significantly exceed even the highest previous standards.

Our akg microphones are first fitted with akg’s latest capsules, in austria, then further modified by realtime engineers. Microphone output feeds realtime’s own unique, passive mixer. No limiters, compressors, pan pots or other signal-degrading devices are used and the entire length of our signal path is 100% free of transformers. Even our neumann dc-coupled sal/sx-74 600 watt/channel disc-cutting lathe is highly modified. And it is driven by a newly-developed technics direct-drive cutting lathe motor. Disc masters are immediately flown overseas for custom-plating and careful pressing on the finest virgin vinyl available.

Realtime records: the sound of unrivaled realism—so closely mirroring the original performance that any difference is virtually impossible to distinguish. Sample the sound of unrivaled realism on realtime records.

Further Reading

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