Month: August 2023

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.

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Red Garland Trio – Bright And Breezy

More Red Garland

  • This vintage copy was doing practically everything right, with both sides earning STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • The sound is clear, spacious, relaxed, and full-bodied, with Tubey Magical richness and analog smoothness that only the better vintage pressings can offer
  • The typical copies are thin, lean, and lifeless, but we managed to unearth some copies that really get it right and here is a knockout one
  • “During 1961-1962…pianist Red Garland recorded four LPs for the Jazzland label. [T]his trio set with bassist Sam Jones and drummer Charlie Persip…is very much up to par. An enjoyable straight-ahead session.”

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Gene Harris All Star Big Band – Tribute To Count Basie

More Jazz Recordings

  • With seriously good Double Plus (A++) sound from first note to last, this original Concord LP is doing just about everything right
  • Gene Harris, one of my favorite pianists, leads an all star crew on a series of tracks performed in the spirit of Count Basie
  • One of the better sounding Concord records we’ve ever played – this is one of the real sleepers from the label, with plenty of Big Band ENERGY in the grooves
  • Concord turns out consistently boring jazz 98% of the time, but here’s a record that fits into that 2% slice and is guaranteed to make you sit up and pay attention
  • “Harris’ 16-piece orchestra does bring back the spirit of Basie’s band…with a lightly but steadily swinging rhythm section and such soloists as trumpeters Conte Candoli and Jon Faddis and tenors Plas Johnson and Bob Cooper.”

Since when did Concord learn to make a record that sounds as good as this one, with inspired, energetic performances from this solid group of veterans of the jazz wars no less?

Where is the typical Concord sub-gen, opaque, closed-in, compressed and lifeless sound we’ve been hearing all our lives? This is one jazz label that has done almost nothing of any real interest from the very start, and yet somehow they not only managed to get Gene Harris and his band of All Stars to play with tremendous enthusiasm and skill, they actually managed to capture, with considerable fidelity I might add, the prodigious big band energy they produced onto a reel of analog tape. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t heard it with my own two ears.

Not only is the sound EXCELLENT, but the big band really swings. They pull out all the stops. Gene Harris, one of my favorite pianists, leads an all star crew on a series of tracks performed in the spirit of Count Basie. Not a slavish recreation, but an inspired performance in his style. This has to be one of the best sounding Concord records I’ve ever heard. Without a doubt one of the real sleepers from the label.

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Listening in Depth to Please Please Me

More of the Music of The Beatles

More Reviews and Commentaries for Please Please Me

The Beatles’ first album is nothing short of amazing. It’s clearly the best recording of their first five releases.

Naturally, it’s a founding member of our Top 100 Rock and Pop List, along with five other Beatles classics: Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt. Pepper, Magical Mystery Tour and Abbey Road.

Please Please Me (in awesome twin-track stereo no less) captures more of the live sound of these four guys playing together as a rock and roll band than any record they ever made again. (Let It Be gets some of that live quality too and makes a great bookend for the group.)

If you are interested in digging deeper, our Listening in Depth commentaries have extensive track by track breakdowns for some of the better-known albums that have gone through a number of shootouts.

For most of the major titles by The Beatles, scores of shootouts have been done, with our earliest efforts stretching all the way back to 2005.

Side One

I Saw Her Standing There

Like any of the boys’ most radio ready singles, this song tends to be a bit bright. If this track sounds at all dull, there’s probably no hope for the rest of this side.

Misery

This track should sound lively and punchy. The best copies have excellent bass definition and superb clarity, allowing you to appreciate how the wonderful bounce of the rhythm section really energizes the song.

Anna (Go to Him)

Does it get any better? This is the real Beatles magic baby!

Chains

Note that the vocals on this track are not as well recorded as they are on the track above. As a rule they’re a bit edgier and not as transparent.

Go back and forth between the two songs a number of times and we think you will hear exactly what we mean. Although this difference is more audible on the better copies, it should still be noticeable on any Hot Stamper pressing.

Side Two

P.S. I Love You

Another track with a bit of that “mixed for radio” sound. On most pressings this song tends to be bright, thin, and grainy.

Baby It’s You

Listen carefully to the middle eight section — you can hear the rhythm track levels turned down at the first bar and then back up at the last.

Some of the most Tubey Magical sound on the album — we love this song!

This is the real Beatles All-Tube-Recording-Chain Magic, Parts Three through Seven. Every track from here on out is killer.

Do You Want to Know a Secret

Even richer and more Tubey Magical. How can it be this good!?

If you know someone who doesn’t understand why anyone in his right mind would still bother with a turntable and old records in this day and age, play these songs for him. No CD can begin to do what a good pressing of this album can do.

A Taste of Honey
There’s a Place
Twist and Shout

Further Reading

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Felipe De La Rosa – Flamenco Fever

More Audiophile Records

  • Boasting INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them from start to finish, this copy could not be beat
  • The sound is breathtakingly real – you are there in the club with the flamenco guitarist, his drummer, and a trio of stomping, clapping dancers
  • This is a Direct to Disc Demo Disc like nothing you’ve heard – when you turn up the volume on this bad boy the natural acoustic space in the room becomes huge and palpable
  • If you have the power to drive big speakers, the dynamics and bass transients of this copy might just rock your world, literally
  • Marks in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you

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Saint-Saens / Symphony No. 3 (“Organ”) / Fremaux

More of the music of Camille Saint-Saens (1835-1921)

More Classical and Orchestral Recordings

  • Clear and transparent and natural – your ability to suspend disbelief requires practically no effort at all
  • What this copy did better than practically any other was show us just how rich, smooth and Tubey Magical 1973 EMI sound could be
  • “The whole work is a magnificent and fantastical symphonic machine that’s an apotheosis of the orchestral technology of the late 19th century.”
  • There are about 150 orchestral recordings we’ve awarded the honor of offering the Best Performances with the Highest Quality Sound, and this record certainly deserve a place on that list.

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A Cosmo’s Factory Shootout from Way Back When

More of the Music of Creedence Clearwater Revival

More Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Creedence Clearwater Revival

This is a very old commentary describing a shootout we had done more than a decade ago. Some of what you see below would probably still be true. The cutting system used to make the AP pressing no doubt lacked Tubey Magic. It’s also true that many of the records mastered on it were as lifeless and boring as we describe.

The only way to be clear about what is going on with the audiophile pressings in this group is to do another shootout with them, and we just can’t see taking the time to do that when there are so many good vintage pressings we don’t have time to play as it is.

There are only so many hours in the day, why waste them playing this crap?

We do occasionally throw the modern remastered pressings we happen to have on hand into our shootouts when time permits. You can read all about the half-speeds we’ve reviewed here and some of the heavy vinyl pressings we’ve played here.

Our latest thinking about this Analogue Productions repress can be found here.

Now, on to our old shootout.

Years ago a customer sent me his copy of the Analogue Productions LP (mastered by Hoffman and Gray) in order to carry out a little shootout I had planned among the five copies I could pull together: two MoFi’s, the Fantasy ORC reissue, a blue label original, the AP, and another reissue. 

Let’s just say there were no real winners, but there sure were some losers.

My take on the Hoffman version is simply this: it has virtually no trace of Tubey Analog Magic. None to speak of anyway.

It sounds like a clean, tonally correct but fairly bass-shy CD.

No pressing I played managed to be so tonally correct and so boring at the same time.

The MoFi has plenty of weird EQ colorations, the kind that bug the hell out of me on 98% of their crappy catalog, but at least it sounds like analog. It’s warm, rich and sweet.

The AP copy has none of those qualities.

More pointless 180 gram vinyl sound, to my ear anyway. I couldn’t sit through it with a gun to my head.

You would need a lot of vintage tubes in your system to get the AP record to sound right, and then every properly mastered record in your collection would sound worse.

The approach we recommend now?

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Antonio Carlos Jobim – Wave

More Antonio Carlos Jobim

More Bossa Nova

  • Wave FINALLY returns to the site after about a ten year absence, here with excellent Double Plus (A++) sound throughout – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Both of these sides are remarkably full-bodied, natural and present, with tight bass and lots of space around all of the players
  • We love the music of Antonio Carlos Jobim here at Better Records and we think this album is one of his best — no serious jazz collection should be without it
  • 5 stars: “When Creed Taylor left Verve/MGM for his own label under the auspices of A&M, he quickly signed Antonio Carlos Jobim and they picked up right where they left off with this stunningly seductive record, possibly Jobim’s best.”

This vintage A&M/CTI 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.

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.

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Stravinsky / The Rite of Spring – The Ultimate Recording of the Work

More of the music of Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)

More music conducted by Pierre Monteux

  • An outstanding Shaded Dog pressing with superb sound from start to finish
  • Perhaps the greatest performance ever, certainly our favorite for performance and sound – this is not an easy piece of music to record judging by how many awful sounding versions exist — we should know, we played them
  • Monteux knows the work as well as anyone — he himself conducted the premier in 1913!
  • Mind boggling in its power to move the listener – a classic Decca Tree recording from 1956 by the master, Mr. Kenneth Wilkinson
  • There are about 150 orchestral recordings we’ve awarded the honor of having the Best Performances with Top Quality Sound, and this recording certainly deserve a place on that list, close to the top I would think

It takes us three years — and a lot of hard work and a fair amount of luck — to get a shootout like this going.

The tympani and bass drum on this recording have few equals in our experience. This is the way HUGE and POWERFUL drums sound in concert. Those of you who go to classical concerts regularly will recognize that sound immediately. You probably also know that finding Golden Age recordings with this kind of deep bass is unusual to say the least.

The space and dynamic power of these sides are really something to hear on this groundbreaking work. Lush when quiet, clear and undistorted when loud, not many copies of Rite of Spring can do what these two sides can.

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Better Electricity Took Robert Brook’s Stereo to the Next Level

Robert Brook has a blog which he calls

A GUIDE FOR THE DEDICATED ANALOG AUDIOPHILE

Below you will find a link to Robert’s story about the improvements he heard in his stereo by doing some experiments we had recommended he do, experiments which, for reasons unknown to the wider audiophile community and generally dismissed by same, managed to take his system to places he never expected it could go.

All at the cost of exactly zero dollars. It’s quite a ride, check it out:

BETTER ELECTRICITY: Small Changes Yield Some VERY BIG RESULTS!

We have written a fair amount about the benefits of feeding the system better juice ourselves:

The value of experimenting with electricity is part and parcel of tweaking and tuning your system to reveal the many levels of improved sound locked within it. As we noted in our discussion of the Pareto effect:

The amount of tweaking you do with your setup, components, room, electricity and the like is the only thing that can take you to the highest levels of audio.

The unfortunate reality audiophiles must eventually come to grips with in their journey to higher quality sound is thatyou cannot buy equipment that will get you there.

You can only teach yourself, painstakingly, over the course of many, many years, how to tweak your equipment — regardless of cost or quality — to get to the highest levels of audio fidelity.

And tweaking and tuning your equipment has other, fundamentally more important benefits in addition to its original purpose of making your stereo sound better.

At most 20% of the sound of your stereo is what you bought.

At least 80% is what you’ve done with it.

Based on my experience, I would put the number closer to 90%.

I suspect that Robert Brook, having heard for himself the remarkable improvements he achieved by simply throwing a few breakers in his home, would be the first to agree with Mr. Pareto.

In a nutshell, Brook’s main goal in audio is to get the recordings that mean the most to him to come alive in his home.

Like me, he is a thrillseeeker, and proud of it. Getting better stereo sound has been my life’s work. It’s not just at the heart of our business, it’s the very reason we created a business in the first place. Our goal from the start was to offer the audiophile public the finest sounding pressings ever made. (We didn’t really know how to do that for the first fifteen years of our business, but that is a story for another time.)

Robert has approached the various problems he’s encountered scientifically, methodically and carefully, along these three fronts:

“Bravo” to a job well done.

More on Robert’s system here. You may notice that it has a lot in common with the one we use. This is not an accident.

And it is also no accident that these two systems just happen to be very good at showing their owners the manifold shortcomings of the modern remastered LP, as well as the benefits to be gained by doing shootouts in order to find dramatically better sounding pressings to play.

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