We Can Help You Back Up Your Claims

Hot Stamper Shootouts for Heavy Vinyl Pressings

Record Collecting for Audiophiles from A to Z

When we run experiments with Heavy Vinyl records, comparing them to the vintage vinyl pressings we have on hand, the one thing we can say about them is that they are certain to be inferior.

Some are a great deal worse than others, to be sure, but they are all inferior to one degree or another.

We have yet to play a Tone Poets reissue in one of our shootouts. We have a couple of titles scheduled and should be able to report our findings soon.

If you, speaking as an audiophile, want to make the case for the superior quality of the records put out by this label, we are happy to entertain the possibility. The chances of their records having sound we would find acceptable are vanishingly small, but we can’t say they are zero.

Repeating the tiresome truism (aren’t they all?) that because reviews are subjective, your review is as credible as any other, simply will not do.

Back Up Your Claims

If you want your claims to be taken seriously, by us or anybody else, you should consider providing some context for them. Here are some of the things we and no doubt others would like to know.

  • Tell us about your system, room, electricity, etc.. What do you feel are your system’s strengths and weaknesses?
  • Tell us what specific pressings you compared.
  • Tell us if you cleaned them, and if so, by what method.
  • Tell us what protocols you used to make sure the comparison was a fair one.
  • Tell us how you optimized the playback for each pressing, accounting for the difference in vinyl thickness, playback levels and the like.
  • Tell us what specifically you were listening for.
  • Tell us what tracks you played and what about those tracks made them good for testing.
  • Tell us in as much detail as possible the specific strengths and weaknesses of each of the pressings.

Got all that? OK. Please do your best to answer all eight questions and send them to tom@better-records.com.

Let’s be honest.

You are never going to tell us all of these things, because you are never going to do what would be required of you to carry out this kind of serious testing.

Instead, uou are more than likely going to assert that since your opinion is every bit as good as any other — opinions being opinions, not facts — no further effort of the kind described above is required.

What Is Required

But it is required if you want your opinion to be taken seriously by other audiophiles, especially by audiophiles like us, the ones who know the importance of doing all of these things and more. (A small group, but a dedicated one to be sure.)

We encourage everyone who is serious about the sound quality of his records to follow our approach and do the kind of work we do. For us, in order to be sure that the records we offer are objectively superior to all others, we have to follow the strictest protocols and do everything according to the highest standards.

Like Consumer Reports, we design and follow protocols and set clear standards in our testing because that is what gives the tests we carry out credibility. Based on tens of thousands of hours of testing, we are convinced that no other approach can possibly work.

If you’re looking for the best sounding pressings, either we can do this kind of work for you, or you can do the work for yourself, but either way, in order to be successful the work we describe has to be done.

Pretending that one opinion has just as much validity as any other is the most obvious kind of motivated reasoning, born out of pure laziness. It doesn’t get you off the hook.

In fact, by giving you a license to be lazy, it insures that you will never get very far in this hobby. Examples of poorly-constructed comparisons of multiple pressings, carried out by audiophiles with clearly underdeveloped critical listening skills, have never been in short supply.

Because audio is hard. So is finding good sounding records. Very hard. Anyone who thinks otherwise is likely not finding very good sounding records.

Robert Brook is showing everyone the way. He’s on the right path. I happen to be very familiar with the path he’s on because I myself have been on that same path for a more than 20 years.

Read his stuff and learn from it. Do the work he’s doing and you will benefit from the huge improvements he’s achieved, with the promise of many more to come.

Musical thrills far beyond any that you might get from Heavy Vinyl await you.

Further Reading

 

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