Month: January 2024

Letter of the Week – “I was truly beside myself. I felt like I was in the studio.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Stephen Stills Available Now

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

Hi Tom,

I need to write you about the Stephen Stills LP I just listened to. I picked up a copy one day long ago in the past, and it never wowed me.

So later, following the crowd, I purchased the Classic. I remember cranking Black Queen. It sounded audiophile-ish. But I was not taken aback by the sound, filed it, and then virtually never listened to it.

Down deep I knew that it was no good, but I figured it was the music, not so much the pressing.

Now for BR. So once again my mind is totally blown with no wiggle room.

For me this album is really about the last 3 songs on both sides. I have never heard this music how it was intended to sound, ever!

But now I have.

Church was better than phenomenal. Old Times Good Times — the organ on this one is through the roof good and Go Back Home — the guitars and the vocal had such beautiful tones… simply amazing.

Black Queen — Holy Cow… I am just speechless… the guitar tones, the grit in it along with the grit in the vocal… so raw and powerful I found myself making faces… I was truly beside myself. I felt like I was in the studio. Truly an amazing experience for me as I have loved this song for a very long time but never liked how it sounded on my LPs.

But wait there’s more.

Cherokee… Massive instant major warm bass filled the air and the room expanded from the super boomy tubey horns etc… I was screaming (yelping) with joy! What an unbelievable experience for me…. truly amazing. Words just don’t do the experience justice.

You can take that Classic Records copy and chuck it! Some ‘audiophile’ dude will be very happy to buy it when I start selling LPs again which I need to do since they are piling up.

Once again…. so many thanks to all at BR as these sounds are some of best joys in my life.

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A Short Primer for Some of the Qualities We’re Listening For

Record Shootouts Are Tricky – Here Are Some of the Lessons We’ve Learned

For our last Hot Stamper pressing of Shepherd Moons, we noted:

This may not be our favorite music in the world, but it’s hard to argue with sound as good as this.

We went on to add:

The sound here is airy, open, spacious, and transparent, as well as tonally correct, clear and present.

Those are the qualities of our shootout winning pressings that we found to be the most compelling.

But is that everything we were listening for? Of course not.

So precisely what are the criteria by which a record like Shepard Moons should be judged?

Pretty much the ones we discuss in most of our Hot Stamper listings:

  • energy,
  • vocal presence,
  • frequency extension (on both ends),
  • transparency,
  • harmonic textures (freedom from smear is key),
  • rhythmic drive,
  • tonal correctness,
  • fullness,
  • size,
  • space, and
  • Tubey Magic.

When we can get all, or almost all, of the qualities above to come together on any given side, we provisionally award it a grade of “contender.”

Once we’ve been through all our copies on one side, we then play the best of the best against each other and arrive at a winner for that side.

Repeat the process for the other side and the shootout is officially over. All that’s left is to see how the sides matched up.

It may not be rocket science, but it is a science of a kind, one with strict protocols that we’ve developed over the course of many years to insure that the results we arrive at are as accurate as we can make them.

The result of all our work speaks for itself. We guarantee you have never heard this music — really, any music — sound better than it does on one of our Hot Stamper pressings, or your money back.

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Bruch & Mozart Violin Concertos / Heifetz in 2010

Hot Stamper Pressings with Jascha Heifetz Performing

Years ago we wrote:

This is a very old review, probably from the early 2010s, so take it for what it’s worth. I suspect we could find a much better sounding copy of the album today than we could back then, before we had the cleaning systems and playback equipment we do now.

All that turned out to be true.

In 2024 we did another shootout for the album, our first in more than ten years! I am happy to say the sound was a knockout on the best copies, some of the finest violin concerto sound we have ever heard.

Live and learn is our motto, and progress in audio is a feature, not a bug, of record collecting at the most advanced levels. (“Advanced” is a code word for having little to no interest in any remastered pressing marketed to the audiophile community. If you want to avoid the worst of them, we are happy to help you do that.)

Our comments from 2010:

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James Taylor – Gorilla

More James Taylor

More of Our Favorite Pure Pop Recordings

  • Soulful JT at his best, an underappreciated album by the man who single-handedly created a new genre of music
  • “Mexico,” “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)” and “I Was A Fool To Care” are standouts – but, honestly, there simply are no weak tracks to be found on either side
  • Rolling Stone notes, “With Gorilla, Taylor is well on his way to staking out new ground. What he’s hit upon is the unlikely mating of his familiar low-keyed, acoustic guitar-dominated style with L.A. harmony rock and the sweet, sexy school of rhythm and blues.”
  • We’ve 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 an accent on the joy these amazing audiophile-quality recordings can bring to your life. Gorilla is a good example of a record audiophiles may not know well but should benefit from getting to know better, at least those who can find a place in their hearts for some exceptionally well-written and well-produced love songs
  • If I were to compile a list of Must Own Rock and Pop Albums from 1975, this album would definitely be on it

This is soft rock at its best, made up primarily of love songs, and helped immensely by the harmonically-gifted backing vocals of Graham Nash and David Crosby.

To be honest, the recording of Gorilla itself cannot compete with the likes of Sweet Baby James or JT, both of which are Top 100 Titles. It can be a good sounding record, not a great one, certainly not in the same league as those two.

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The Carmen Ballet – As Tough a Test Disc As Any We Know

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Georges Bizet Available Now

If I had only one record to bring to someone’s house in order to evaluate their equipment, a killer copy of this Bizet-Shchedrin record would certainly be at the top of my list. (Here are some others.)

If you can make this record sound the way it should, your stereo is cookin’.

If you are having problems, this record will show them to you in short order.

Many copies are bright in the upper-midrange, sounding as nasally and artificial as a bad Mercury or London. Many lack weight down low. The lower strings and heavier percussion play a crucial role in balancing out the upper strings and lighter percussion, so without enough going on down low, the sound skews upwards in an artificial way.

If your copy has either of these problems don’t use it to set up or tweak anything in your system.

Use one of our Hot Stampers, the hotter the better.

The sound of the best copies is rich, full-bodied, incredibly spacious, and exceptionally extended up top. There is a prodigious amount of musical information spread across the soundstage, much of it difficult to reproduce. Musicians are banging on so many different percussive devices (often at the back of the stage, exactly where they should be) that getting each one’s sonic character to clearly come through is a challenge. And when you’ve met it, a thrill.

If you’ve done your homework with VTA, Azimuth, Anti-Skate and Tracking Weight, this is the record that will make clear just how much you’ve accomplished.

The recording has tremendous transients and dynamics. Be prepared to have trouble tracking it. In that respect it’s a prime candidate for table, cartridge and system tweaking.

If you have the kind of big system that a record like this demands, when you drop the needle on the best of our Hot Stamper pressings, you are going to hear some amazing sound.

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By 2007 We Had Changed Our Minds about the Classic Who’s Next

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Who Available Now

Here is our review from 2005.

After doing our next shootout for Who’s Next in 2007, and replaying the Classic afterwards, we changed our minds about Classic’s version of the album.

Apparently, a surprising amount of audio progress was made from 2005 to 2007, reflected in this review as well as dozens of others.

Looking back, 2007 seems to have been a milestone year  for us here at Better Records, although we certainly had no idea at the time that such dramatic changes had been put in motion.

For example, later that same year we swore off Heavy Vinyl (prompted by the less-than-enchanting sound of the Rhino pressing of Blue) and committed ourselves to doing record shootouts of vintage pressings full time. To accomplish this we eventually ended up doubling the staff.

(Cleaning and playing every record you see on our site turned out to very time consuming. No one man band can begin to fathom the complex and random nature of the vinyl LP, which explains why the audiophile reviewers of the world are right about as often as the proverbially stopped clock.)

Live and learn is our motto, and progress in audio is a feature, not a bug, of record collecting at the most advanced levels. (“Advanced” is a code word for having no interest in any remastered pressing marketed to the audiophile community. There is nothing advanced about these deceptively-packaged mediocrities if you have the stereo to reveal their shortcomings. After spending fifty years in audio (1975-2025, we do. )

This is how good Who’s Next sounds these days, when we have them, which is not often.

In 2007 we did a big shootout for Who’s Next, and as is so often the case, the shortcomings of the Heavy Vinyl version were mercilessly revealed when played head to head with The Right Vintage Pressing. (And not the original Track by the way.)

Oddly enough, and contrary to expectation, even the domestic Decca label copies had amazing sound, not just the British Track label pressings I had favored for so long. (To keep from being influenced by biases of any kind, when we do these shootouts the listeners have no idea which pressing they are evaluating.)

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Listening in Depth to Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme

More of the Music of Simon and Garfunkel

Presenting another entry in our extensive listening in depth series with advice on what to listen for as you critically evaluate your copy of Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme.

Here are some albums currently on our site with similar track by track breakdowns.

Side One

Scarborough Fair/Canticle

Listen carefully to the voices on this track, one of our favorites to test with. On the best copies they sound exceptionally delicate yet full-bodied.

Patterns

The percussion on this track is a great test for smear, a problem that plagues most pressings to one degree or another. On the better copies you’ll distinctly hear the sound of the drummer’s hands hitting the skins of the bongos, as well as lots of ambience and echo around the drums.

Note also that every stereo copy we’ve ever played spits at least a little on this song.

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The Rolling Stones – Dirty Work

More of The Rolling Stones

 More Rock and Pop

  • Boasting KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it throughout, this original pressing could not be beat
  • Both of these sides had the presence, bass, and dynamics that were missing from practically all other copies we played
  • “…a handful of songs have a spry, vigorous attack – ‘One Hit (To the Body)’ is a classic, and ‘Winning Ugly’ and ‘Had It With You’ have a similar aggression.”

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Destination Stereo – A Living Stereo Demo Disc

Hot Stamper Pressings of Living Stereo Titles Available Now

Your Destination — Stereo!

“Your passport to great music in new sound by the world’s greatest artists.”

This review was written about ten years ago.

This reasonably quiet RCA Shaded Dog LP has DEMONSTRATION QUALITY SOUND on BOTH sides. It is without a doubt THE best sounding copy we have ever heard*.

Side one is White Hot, with some of the best 1959 Living Stereo we’ve ever heard. Explosive dynamics, HUGE space and size, with unerringly correct tonality, this is a Demo Disc like no other.

When “in-the-know” audiophiles discuss three-dimensionality, soundstaging and depth, they should be talking about a record that sounds like this.

Shockingly real – proof positive that the cutting systems of the day are capable of much better sound than many might think. 

(We admit that we have made the mistake of wrongthink in this regard.)

This record is designed to show off the Living Stereo sound at its best and it succeeds magnificently. The full range of colors of the orchestra are here presented with remarkable clarity, dynamic contrast, spaciousness, sweetness, and timbral accuracy.

If you want to demonstrate to a novice listener why modern recordings are unsatisfactory, all you have to do is play this record for them. No CD ever sounded like this.

Just play Gnomus to hear The Power of the Orchestra, Living Stereo style.

The fourth and fifth movements of Capriccio Espagnol, the second track on side one, sound superb, CLEARLY better here than on the Shaded Dog pressings of the original album we played about a year ago (which were terrible and never made it to the site. Great performance but bad mastering of what obviously was a very good master tape).

You can also hear the Living Stereo sound especially well on the excerpt from “The Fourth of July” performed by Morton Gould. It’s one of the best sounding tracks here.

I don’t think the RCA engineers can cut this record much better — it has all the Living Stereo magic one could ask for, as well as the bass and dynamics that are missing from so many other vintage Golden Age records.

This is as good as it gets, folks.

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Mussorgsky-Ravel / Pictures at an Exhibition / Reiner

More of the Music of Modest Mussorgsky

  • For fans of Reiner’s performance from 1958, we here present a Shaded Dog pressing of this TAS Super Disc, here with outstanding Double Plus (A++) sound from start to finish
  • It’s also fairly quiet at Mint Minus Minus, a grade that even our most well-cared-for vintage classical titles have trouble playing at
  • Both of these sides are remarkably open and natural in the best Living Stereo tradition, with rich lower strings that have little Golden Age smear.
  • Spacious, rich and smooth – only vintage analog seems capable of reproducing all three of these qualities without sacrificing resolution, staging, imaging or presence

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