Month: December 2023

This Living Stereo from 1958 Didn’t Make the Grade

Hot Stamper Pressings of Living Stereo Records Available Now

Our notes for this copy of LSC 2177 read “blary, bright, not nearly as good as Anserment’s recordings,” which are the ones we compared it to, both the complete ballet and the highlights.

In other words, it just sounded like an old record.

If you are looking for a top quality pressing with a performance to match, we recommend two:

  1. The complete ballet on three discs with Anserment conducting, and/or
  2. The highlights, on a single disc, again with Ansermet conducting.

This Shaded Dog might be passable on an old school audio system, but it was unpleasant when played on the high quality modern equipment we use.

There are quite a number of other vintage classical releases that we’ve run into over the years with similar shortcomings. For fans of vintage Living Stereo pressings, here are some to avoid.

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These Two Weather Report Albums Didn’t Make the Grade

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Weather Report

These are a couple of the Weather Report albums we’ve auditioned over the years and found to be less than impressive.

Without going into specifics, we’ll just say these albums suffer from weak music, weak sound, or both. They may have some appeal to fans of the band, but audiophiles looking for top quality sound and music — our stock in trade — are best advised to look elsewhere.

We play mediocre-to-bad sounding pressings so that you don’t have to, a free service from your record-loving friends at Better Records.

You can find these two in our hall of shame, along with others that — in our opinion — are best avoided by audiophiles looking for hi-fidelity sound.

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A.C. Jobim – Ramone and Ogerman Work Their Magic

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Antonio Carlos Jobim Available Now

Although I have been a big fan of this album at least since the 90s, it took us years to get around to doing a shootout. We were pleasantly surprised at just how well recorded this album is.

Credit engineer Phil Ramone for correctly capturing the sound of every instrument here: the guitars, piano, flutes, strings, drums, percussion instruments — everything has the natural timbre of the real thing. I used to think this recording erred on the bright side, but not the Hot Stamper copies. They are tonally Right On The Money. (When the balance lacks lower midrange the sound gets lean, which causes the strings to seem brighter than they really are, a not uncommon problem with some of the pressings we played.)

Claus Ogerman

The string arrangements by the phenomenally talented producer/arranger Claus Ogerman surely contribute a great deal to the beauty of this music, and much of its “feel.”. This is the man who made Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim such an original and powerful departure in Sinatra’s body of work. He continued to work with Jobim on a number of follow-up albums, including A Certain Mr. Jobim (1967) and Wave (1967). From 1963-67 he arranged some 60-70 albums for Creed Taylor’s Verve and then went on to work with him extensively at CTI.

And what would “Breezin’” be without Ogerman’s lush strings? Not to be too uinkind, but probably just another George Benson album.

His Best Album

I’m a HUGE fan of Jobim’s music. In my opinion this is the best album he ever made. If you find yourself loving these syncopated beats, you owe it to yourself to check out Sergio Mendes’ music. He did wonderful arrangements of many of Jobim’s songs, and the sound (at least on the Hot Stamper pressings) is out of this world! Astrud Gilberto does wonderful versions too, but her records are very difficult to find in audiophile condition. Believe me, we’ve tried.

Many Distinct Pressings

We’ve played a ton of different versions, including imports, originals, reissues (all stereo), and one lone mono, which was so ridiculously bad sounding we tossed it right out of the competition and into the trade pile.

For those of you playing along at home, we are not going to be much help to you in finding your own Hot Stampers. Every version had strengths and weaknesses and all are represented in the listings we will be putting up on the site.

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Chuck Mangione – Children of Sanchez

  • With roughly Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) grades on all FOUR sides, this copy is close to the BEST we have ever heard, right up there with our Shootout Winner (side three actually won the shootout)
  • These sides are doing practically everything right – they’re rich, clear, undistorted, open, spacious, and have depth and transparency to rival the best recordings you may have heard
  • We’ve called this album a Demo Disc for Bass and any Hot Stamper copy will show you why
  • “Chuck Mangione composed this music for a film soundtrack in 1978, but it quickly took on a life of its own when it was released as a two LP set, garnering a loyalty the film never enjoyed.”
  • “Mangione’s own performance on flügelhorn – sometimes hinting at Miles Davis’s Sketches of Spain transported to harsher terrain – is frequently riveting, a darkly expressive, soulful element that conveys undiluted passion, sorrow, and joy.”

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Sweetnighter Is a Must Own Album of Modern Jazz Fusion

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Weather Report Available Now

We recently compiled a list of records we think every audiophile should get to know better, along the lines of “the 1001 records you need to hear before you die,” with the accent on the joy these amazing audiophile-quality recordings can bring to your life.

The list is purposely wide-ranging. Yes, it includes some well-known albums (Tumbleweed Connection, The Yes Album), but we’ve also gone out of our way to choose excellent titles from famous artists that are less well known (Atlantic Crossing, Kiln House, Dad Loves His Work).

Which simply means that you won’t find Every Picture Tells a Story or Rumours or Sweet Baby James on this list because masterpieces of that caliber should already be in your collection.

Many of these may not be to your taste, but they sure are to ours.

Out of the thousands of records we have auditioned and reviewed, here are a hundred or so that maybe are less well known but have stood the test of time for us. As such, we think they are more than deserving of a serious listen.

Sweetnighter checks off a number of boxes for us here at Better Records

More letters, reviews and commentaries for Sweetnighter.

Brahms / Piano Concerto No. 1 – What to Listen For

Hot Stamper Pressings of of the Music of Brahms Available Now

Our general notes for the recording seen below explain why the typical copy in our shootout fell short.

This is an LP with lots of tube compression, and some added brightness.

Without the added brightness, the piano would probably be mud.

The added brightness and compression results in a piano that always sounds rich and natural in the quieter passages.

The average copy also has some veiling or smearing that make the solo piano parts sound like they are coming fom behind a curtain. On these copies, the big peaks can often get strident and very messy.

It’s difficult to find a copy that has all the top end extension and space required to reproduce both a realistic piano and the massive live sound the orchestra is capable of.

All of which adds up to a difficult shootout in which relatively few copies had the sound we were looking for.

Production and Enginneering

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Who Deserves the Credit for Knocking this Sticky Fingers Pressing Out of the Park?

Hot Stamper Pressing of the Music of The Rolling Stones Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently:

Hey Tom,   

All time world champ.  A cut above unbelievable!  All the magic sans the shrillness so common in the multitudinous copies I’ve heard.  Breathtaking finesse and musicianship exploding in holographic dynamics that are clean and tonally real and penetrating.  

What a copy.  Pure gold.  Thank you Tom.  You knocked it out of the park.

Phil

Dear Phil,

Fantastic news. We loved it too.

A small correction, if I may:

Some mastering engineer knocked it out of the park. All we did was find the ball, grab it and run with it.

And if you want to find the killer pressing that can sail over the back wall with ease, possibly landing in the bed of a pickup truck never to be seen again, there is only one way we know of to do it: by turning over lots of rocks.

Some of the rocks we turned over for our first big shootout many years ago can be seen in the picture below.

It was taken in the early- to mid-2000s. By that time I had been buying up Sticky Fingers in local record stores for more than twenty years. I didn’t have much to show for my efforts, however, as the records were just too noisy, scratched-up, groove-distorted and just plain bad sounding to qualify for a shootout.

It wasn’t until 2007, with the discovery of the Prelude Enzyme Record Cleaning System and the Odyssey record cleaning machine (similar to Keith Monks’ design from the 70s that I used to use) that we were finally able to get Sticky Fingers to sound good enough and play quietly enough to identify the Hot Stamper pressings lurking in the pile of copies you see below.

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Mussorgsky / Pictures at an Exhibition (Piano Version) / Ashkenazy

More of the music of Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881)

  • A superb early London stereo pressing of our favorite solo piano performance of Mussorgsky’s masterful suite, with Double Plus (A++) sound from the first note to the last
  • The weight and warmth of side one’s recording from Kingsway Hall is faithfully captured in all its beauty on this very disc
  • The orchestral performance of the work is squeezed onto the second side of the record, and that is just not going to work with a 30-minute-long piece of music — the sound is compressed and bass-shy

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Talking Heads – More Songs About Buildings and Food

More of the Music of Talking Heads

  • With two solid Double Plus (A++) sides, you’ll have a hard time finding a copy of Talking Heads’ one true masterpiece that sounds remotely as good as this original Sire pressing – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • We guarantee that you have never heard these songs sound as big, bold and alive as they do here – “Take Me to the River” is really rockin’ on this side two
  • With Eno producing and Rhett Davies engineering, every track is (psycho) killer – truly this is a must own from 1978
  • 5 stars: “Brian Eno brought a musical unity that tied the album together, especially in terms of the rhythm section, the sequencing, the pacing, and the mixing.”

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The Vintage Sound of The Genius After Hours

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Ray Charles Available Nowcharlgenius

The first copy of the album I got my hands on and needle-dropped back in 2015 or thereabouts blew me away with its big, clear, solid mono sound. Close to a year later when we had enough copies to do this shootout, sure enough it won. That rarely happens — in a big pile of records there’s almost always something better than whatever we’ve heard — but it happened this time.

Imagine if I had played one of the bad sounding or noisy ones to start with. It’s unlikely I would have been motivated to pursue the title and consequently the shootout we just did would never have happened. Lucky for us all that that first copy was so good.

Side One

Big and clear with a very solid piano and all its harmonic overtones. What piano recording from 1956 sounds like this? None that I know of. And it’s Ray Charles at the keys!

Side Two

The exceptionally dynamic brass that comes jumping out of the soundfield is nonetheless warm and full – what a great sound!

There’s much more space here than on most copies, making it sound less mono.

Proof positive that there is nothing wrong with remastering vintage recordings if you know what you’re doing. These sessions from 1956 (left off of an album that Allmusic liked a whole lot less than this one) were remastered in 1985 and the sound — on the better copies mind you — is correct from top to bottom.

The highest compliment I can pay a pressing such as this is that it doesn’t sound like a modern remastered record.

It sounds like a very high quality mono jazz record from the 50s or 60s.

Unlike modern recuts, it doesn’t sound EQ’d in any way.

It doesn’t lack ambience the way modern records do.

It sounds musical and natural the way modern records rarely do.

If not for the fairly quiet vinyl, you would never know it’s not a vintage record. The only originals we had to play against it were too noisy and worn to evaluate critically. They sounded full, but dark and dull and somewhat opaque.

And although it is obviously a budget reissue, it sure doesn’t sound cheap to these ears.

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