More of the Music of Cat Stevens
More Stamper and Pressing Information (You’re Welcome!)
The domestic pressings with the stampers shown below, and others similar to them, have not done well in our shootouts for years now. If you own a copy with these stampers, or ones like them, the good news is that we can get you a much better sounding copy of Catch Bull at Four than you have ever heard.
Stamper numbers are not the be-all and end-all in the world of records, a subject we discuss below, but after hearing too many copies with these stampers and decidedly mediocre sound, from now on we are going to focus our attention on the stampers that do well and leave copies with these markings sitting in the bins.
When it comes to stampers, labels, mastering credits, country of origin and the like, we make a point of revealing very little of this information on the site, for a number of good reasons we discuss here.
The idea that the stampers are entirely responsible for the quality of any given record’s sound is a mistaken idea, and a rather convenient one when you stop to think about it. Audiophiles, like most everybody else on this planet, want answers.
But in the world of records, there aren’t many.
There is only the hard work that it takes to come up with the best answer you can under your present circumstances, and by that we mean: your present equipment, your present tweaks, your present room, your present electrical quality, your present listening skills, your present table setup, etcetera, etcetera.
Not to mention your old ears.
With every change to your system, the record you used to like the best could turn out to be second-rate compared to the record you used to think was second-rate but has now become first-rate. What changed? Who knows?
This, of course, drives most audiophiles crazy, so they ignore or downplay their own inconvenient findings. Instead they refuse to believe their own two ears!
The Biz
Being in the shootout business means we have no way to avoid such realities, which is why it is so easy for us to accept them.
The amateurs and professionals alike who review records for audiophiles want there to be clear-cut answers for every album they write about. Uncertainty and trade-offs upset them no end.
We recognized twenty years ago that the empirical pursuit of record knowledge, practiced scientifically, must be understood as incomplete, imperfect, and provisional.
That is not going to change no matter how upsetting anyone may find it.
Catch Bull at Four checks off some important boxes for us here at Better Records:
- It’s a Must Own album from 1974
- It’s a Demo Disc for big speakers that play at loud levels
- It’s a title with only one set of stampers that win shootouts
- It’s an album we think should be more popular with audiophiles
- It’s part of the core collection of well recorded rock & pop albums
Further Reading
- Improving your critical listening skills
- More rock and pop albums we think we know well
- Important lessons we learned from record experiments
