Month: March 2024

How Can the Best Stampers Also Be the Worst Stampers?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Contemporary Jazz Available Now

Reviews and Commentaries for Contemporary Jazz Albums

Recently we conducted a shootout for a superb Contemporary recording, one that we had auditioned a couple of times before and one which we felt we knew the music and the quality of the sound well.

It’s not the record you see pictured. For now we’re keeping the title a mystery, consistent with the idea that we give out lots of bad stampers on this blog, but almost never do we give out the good ones.

Why, you ask?

The cost of discovering the right stampers is usually high, can take decades, and is fundamental at the heart of how we make our money: by finding amazing sounding pressings with stampers we know to be good, cleaning them up, playing them, and offering those that, for whatever mysterious reasons that no one has yet to figure out, including us, have the best sounding grooves.

This time around we kept track of the stamper numbers for all the pressings we played, something we are making a habit of doing these days and using to highlight discoveries in the sound of the records we play.

In this case, we discovered an anomaly we thought we would bring to the audiophile world’s attention: the fact that the stampers for the best souding pressing were also the stampers for the worst sounding pressing, because they were the stampers for all the pressings.

One copy earned our White Hot Stamper grade, our highest, for its clearly superior sound, and another one earned our lowest Hot Stamper grade of 1.5+. The rest were quite good, in between those two, which is a very common outcome for most of our shootouts: lots of records in the middle of the distribution, some winners at the top and some losers at the bottom.

Note that the OJC of this title is one we have liked in the past. It didn’t do so well this time around, and that is mostly because we found out about some stampers we like even better. We will probably not being buying the OJC anymore; it’s probably more trouble than it’s worth.

However, the key takeaway from this stamper sheet is the fact that it beat one of the real Contemporary label pressings in the shootout.

So the question an audiophile record collector might ask himself is this one: is the OJC better or worse than the real Contemporary pressing with D9/D6 stampers?

The obvious answer is that it is better than some and worse than others.

But how would one arrive at that conclusion without a sufficiently large group of records to work with (not cheap), as well as the time to clean them (not insignificant), followed by the effort to play them in a rigorously controlled, blinded audition (not easy)?

The only comparison that might be doable — we can’t really call it a shootout — would be between one OJC pressing and one Contemporary pressing, and depending on the copies at hand, either one could win.

Once the winner has been declared, all that would be left to do is go up to the Hoffman forum and report your findings to help guide other like-minded audiophiles in finding the best sounding pressings, even though you really don’t know what pressing is better than what other pressing because you didn’t do your shootout right.

We do things differently here at Better Records, and I think I can safely say we get better results.

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Tchaikovsky – Swan Lake Ballet Complete / Ansermet

More of the music of Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)

More Records on Decca and London

  • This stunning 2 LP set of Ansermet and the Suisse Romande‘s definitive performance boasts excellent Double Plus (A++) grades or close to them on all FOUR sides
  • 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
  • Lovely string tone and texture, rich bass, a big hall, lovely transparency – the sound here is hard to fault (particularly on sides one and two)
  • That gorgeous clarinet says it all, so rich and Tubey Magical (also particularly on sides one and two) – few copies have that sound the way this copy does
  • The miking is tasteful, with much less spotlighting than most of the classical recordings we play
  • If you are looking for a shootout winning copy, let us know – with music and sound like this, we hope to be able to do this shootout again soon
  • If you love the music of Tchaikovsky — and what audiophile doesn’t? — this London from 1959 is surely a Must Own

This London UK import 2 LP set put every other recording of Swan Lake to shame. This is the one, folks, assuming you want a nearly complete performance of the work. (We have had some single LP highlight pressings on the site before. The Fistoulari on London can be especially good on the right pressing.)

I rank the performance here by Ansermet and the Suisse Romande second to none.

Ansermet is surely the man for this music, and the famously huge hall he recorded in just as surely contributes much to the wonderful sound here. (The Royal Gala Ballet is a good example. If you have the two grand to spend we highly recommend you find yourself a good one. And don’t waste your money on the Classic no matter what you may have read elsewhere.)

Production and Engineering

I believe, though have not been able to confirm, that James Walker was the producer and Roy Wallace the engineer for these sessions from 1958 in Geneva’s glorious-sounding Victoria Hall. It’s yet another remarkable disc from the Golden Age of Vacuum Tube Recording.

The gorgeous hall the Suisse Romande recorded in was possibly the best recording venue of its day, possibly of all time; more amazing sounding recordings were made there than any other hall we know of. There is a richness to the sound that exceeds all others, yet clarity and transparency are not sacrificed in the least. It’s as wide, deep, and three-dimensional as any, which is, of course, all to the good, but what makes the sound of these recordings so special is the weight and power of the brass and the timbral accuracy of the instruments in every section.

These are the kind of records that will make you want to take all your heavy vinyl classical pressings and put them in storage. None of them, I repeat not a single one of them, can ever begin to sound the way this record sounds.

Quality record production is a lost art, and it’s been lost for a very long time.

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Beethoven / Symphony No. 6 (Pastoral) – Ansermet

More of the music of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

More Classical Recordings

  • A vintage London pressing of Beethoven’s Sixth with superb grades from top to bottom
  • 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
  • The texture on the strings is captured perfectly – this is an area in which modern pressings fail almost completely
  • Recorded in Geneva’s exquisite Victoria Hall in 1959, this is a top performance from Ansermet and the Suisse Romande, the best we know of
  • There are about 150 orchestral recordings we think offer the best performances with the highest quality sound. This record is certainly deserving of a place on that list.
  • If you love the symphonic music of Beethoven — and what audiophile doesn’t? — this London from 1959 is surely a Must Own as well as our pick for the best recording of any of the nine Beethoven symphonies

In our opinion, this is the best sounding Beethoven 6th Symphony ever recorded. It is the most beautiful of them all, and has long been my personal favorite of the nine Beethoven composed.

Ansermet’s performance is clearly definitive to my ear as well. The gorgeous hall the Suisse Romande recorded in was possibly the best recording venue of its day, possibly of all time; more amazing sounding recordings were made there than any other hall we know of. There is a richness to the sound that exceeds all others, yet clarity and transparency are not sacrificed in the least. It’s as wide, deep and three-dimensional as any, which is of course all to the good, but what makes the sound of these recordings so special is the weight and power of the brass and the timbral accuracy of the instruments in every section.

Everything sounds so right on this record, so much like live music, there is practically nothing to say about the sound other than You Are There.

This is the kind of record that will make you want to take all your heavy vinyl classical pressings and put them in storage. None of them, I repeat none of them, will ever begin to sound the way this record sounds. Quality record production is a lost art, and it’s been lost for a very long time.

The texture on the strings is captured perfectly; this is, by the way, an area in which modern pressings fail almost completely. We have discussed this subject extensively on the site. The “rosin on the horsehair” is a sound that is apparently impossible to encode on modern vinyl.

Other Pressings

The best pressings from the Readers Digest set with Leibowitz conducting were very good but no match for Ansermet and the legendary Orchestre De La Suisse Romande and the lovely Victoria Hall in which they recorded.

We have liked Monteux on RCA for the 6th in the past. We do not believe the best pressings are competitive with this London.

The ’60s Decca/London cycle with Schmidt-Isserstedt and the Vienna Phil has always sounded flat and modern to us on every pressing we’ve played.

Production and Engineering

James Walker was the producer, Roy Wallace the engineer for these sessions from October of 1959 in Geneva’s glorious Victoria Hall. Released in 1960, it’s yet another remarkable disc from the Golden Age of Vacuum Tube Recording.

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Letter of the Week – “The White Hot stamper just pulled you into those songs, so you could feel every little dynamic shift and tonal change…”

More of the Music of Steely Dan

More of the Music of Cat Stevens

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently. [The bolding has been added by us.]

Hey Tom,   

A friend and I just did a shootout of 16 copies of Aja, plus one of your White Stampers, which easily trounced them all (including some DJ 12″ singles from the album) [1], and in exactly those areas that you cover in some of the WTLF descriptions you have for that album. Just a great big, open and lovely-sounding record–what a thrill!. And thanks very much for those notes–they help clarify the critical listening process.

We also listened to 16 copies of Tea for the Tillerman. Among those (UK pink rims, German, Japanese, and many US labels) were two excellent early brown label A&M pressings, which I saved for the end of the shootout.

And we had the Analogue Productions 33 rpm pressing, which has been a big disappointment since I first heard it. [2] Those two original A&Ms both sound so much more natural, with more delicacy, extension, air, presence and energy than the AP version. My listening buddy said they sounded as if they were cut at 45 rpm; and neither of us really expected your White Hot UK pink-rim pressing could be a significant improvement over those.

But, as good as those are, it was also obvious that your WHS brought the music several steps closer. The A&M brown labels both added some thickness and over-emphasized the low range of his voice–which (until we heard your WHS) was a pleasant coloration.

But as you frequently mention, the biggest issue, once you’ve heard a great copy, is how much more energy and flow the music has. The WHS stamper just pulled you into those songs, so you could feel every little dynamic shift and tonal change that the musicians were bringing to the table. It allowed that music to breathe in a way I’ve never heard before. What a record!

The BIG thing your Hot Stampers do is present the music in a perfectly balanced way — no frequency range is emphasized, which also means none are compromised. I think this is why you can always turn up the volume on a Hot Stamper. If you’ve got a bad mastering or bad pressing, at some point, turning up the volume only make parts of the recording more unlistenable. Turning up a Hot stamper makes it a bit louder, sure. But it also brings you further into the studio, and closer to the music — and that’s we really want, right?

Ivan

Ivan,

Quite a shootout! I see you learned a lot. That’s what shootouts are for, to teach you what the good copies do well that the other copies do not do so well. As you well know, going deep into the sound the way you did is a thrill, one we get to enjoy on a regular basis. Maybe not every day — not every record is as good as Tea for the Tillerman – but multiple times a week. It’s what make the coming to work every day fun for those of us on the listening panels.

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Level 42 – World Machine Is Back

More Rock and Pop

More Records We Only Sell on Import Vinyl

  • World Machine is finally back on the site, here with stunning Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) grades on both sides of this original UK pressing, just shy of our Shootout Winner – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • The sound is huge — far richer, bigger, clearer and more open than practically all other copies we played
  • A Better Records favorite for more than thirty years, the rare 80s album that holds up today
  • The big hit “Something About You” rocks on this copy – only these British originals let you turn it up and hear it right
  • 4 stars: “World Machine pushes their newfound radio-friendly sound into the forefront, and the result is one of the finest pop albums of the mid-80s. ‘Something About You’ exemplifies Level 42’s sound at the peak of its success.”

This British Polydor pressing of Level 42’s BEST ALBUM makes a mockery of most of what’s out there — who knew the sound could be this good? Punchy bass, breathy vocals, snappy drums; it’s all here and it reallyl comes JUMPIN’ out of the speakers on this pressing.

What was striking this time around was just how smooth, rich and tubey the sound was on the best copies. It’s been a few years since we last did this shootout and it’s amazing to us how much better this title has gotten in that short span of time.

Of course, the recording very likely got no better at all, but our system, set-up, room, electricity and who-know-what-else sure did.

A Favorite Since 1985

World Machine has been a personal favorite of mine since I first played it way back in 1985. Of course in 1985 I had only a domestic pressing, and if you want to hear what happens when you use a dub of the British master tape and then brighten the hell out of it in the mastering process, I heartily recommend you find yourself a copy, there’s one sitting in every record store in town. The grain and the grunge on the domestic LPs is hard to believe — yet somehow I actually used to put up with that sound!

I could listen to it then but I sure couldn’t listen to it now. No doubt you have your share of records like that.

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Lena Horne / Harry Belafonte – Porgy and Bess

More Harry Belafonte

More Pop and Jazz Vocal Recordings

  • This wonderful recording from 1959 returns to the site for the first time in years, here with INSANELY GOOD Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) Living Stereo sound throughout this original pressing
  • The notes for our top copy on side one are all raves, “big, dynamic and rich vocals / very full and rich,” etc.
  • For side two, track one, the notes read, “So sweet and rich, can’t complain” followed by “This is a serious step up! crazy good.”
  • If you want to hear a record with sound like that, focus your attention on the pressings made in 1959 – that’s where that sound can be found, and you will have a hard time finding it on any record made in the last 50 years, no matter what anybody may tell you
  • If someone disagrees with that assessment, have them play you the record that beats this one, something they will have a devil of a time trying to do
  • “The first of Belafonte’s duet albums with female performers, this one paired two attractive black American singers at the peak of their respective talents.”

A Living Stereo knockout! We often forget to spend time with records like this when there are Zeppelin and Floyd records to play. We’ve always enjoyed Belafonte At Carnegie Hall, but when we’ve dug further into his catalog we’ve been left cold more often than not. However, when we finally got around to dropping the needle on a few of these we were very impressed by the music and blown away by the sound on the better pressings.

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Seriously, This is Your Idea of Analog?

Audiophile Quality Pressings of Orchestral Music Available Now

Well Recorded Classical Albums from The Core Collection Available Now

Whether made by Klavier or any other label, starting at some point in the mid-90s, many Heavy Vinyl pressings started to have a shortcoming that nowadays we find insufferable: they are just too damn smooth.

Smeary, thick, dull, opaque, and lacking in ambience, this record has all the hallmarks of the modern Heavy Vinyl reissue.

The sound is smeary, thick and opaque because, among other things, the record was mastered by Doug Sax from a copy tape, and not all that well either.

It is yet another murky audiophile piece of trash from the mastering lathe of the formerly brilliant Doug Sax. He used to cut the best sounding records in the world. Then he started working for Analogue Productions and never cut a good record again as far as I know.

On this record, in Doug’s defense it’s only fair to point out that he had dub tapes to work with, which is neither here nor there as these pressings are not worth the dime’s worth of vinyl used to make them.

Maybe the hearing-challenged Chad Kassem wanted this sound — almost all his remastered titles have the same faults as this Klavier — and simply asked that Doug cut it to sound real good like analog spossed to sound in the mind of this kingpin, which meant smooth, fat, thick and smeary.

Yes, this is exactly what some folks think analog should sound like.

Just ask whoever mastered the Beatles records in 2014. Somebody boosted the bass and smoothed out the upper midrange, and I don’t think they did that by accident. They actually thought it was good idea.

Harry Moss obviously would not have agreed, but he’s not around anymore to do the job right.

Here is the cover for the real EMI. No idea if the sound is any good, but it has to be better than the awful Klavier, doesn’t it?

Below are some thoughts from a recent classical listing that we hope will shed some light on our longstanding aversion to the sound of these modern remastered records.

What is lost in these newly remastered recordings? Lots of things, but the most obvious and bothersome is transparency.

Modern records are just so damn opaque.

We can’s stand that sound. It drives us crazy. Important musical information — the kind we hear on even second-rate regular pressings — is simply nowhere to be found.

That audiophiles as a whole — including those that pass themselves off as the champions of analog in the audio press — do not notice these failings does not speak well for either their equipment or their critical listening skills.

It is our contention that no one alive today makes records that sound as good as the ones we sell. Once you hear our Hot Stamper pressing, those 180 gram records you own may never sound right to you again. They sure don’t sound right to us, but we are in the enviable position of being able to play the best properly cleaned older pressings (reissues included) side by side with the new ones, where the faults of the current reissues become much more recognizable, even obvious. When you can hear them that way, head to head, there really is no comparison.

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Offenbach – Overtures / Fremaux

More Classical and Orchestral Recordings

More music conduced by Louis Fremaux

  • Overtures appears on the site for only the second time ever, here with INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them on both sides of this original British EMI pressing
  • Both of these sides are exceptionally big, clear and dynamic with an abundance of Tubey Magical richness to rival the best recordings you may have heard
  • The notes for side one of our best copy, with sound similar to this side two, read: breathy and rich flutes / fully extending up high / very weighty and powerful and tubey / so fun / spacious
  • If that sounds like the kind of record you might want to hear for yourself in your very own listening room, this one is currently available for just that purpose
  • This shootout has been many years in the making – we’ve been trying to do these wonderful overtures for about five years, which just goes to show how hard it is to find these kinds of records in audiophile playing condition nowadays
  • We also just debuted a recording with Ansermet at the helm for Decca which features two of the pieces found here that’s every bit as good
  • Which one is better is probably a matter of taste as they are both head and shoulders better than any other recordings we have come across in the last five or more years

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Louis Armstrong – I’ve Got The World On A String

More Louis Armstrong

More Pop and Jazz Vocals

  • This superb Verve stereo pressing boasts excellent sound from the first note to the last
  • These two sides are big and rich, yet clean, clear and present, with virtually none of the midrange edginess that plagues so many copies
  • If you were buying records in the 90s, you might have picked up the Classic Records pressing, and if you did, we guarantee this Verve reissue is dramatically superior in every way
  • “Armstrong finds the essence of each tune, bending and projecting them with his patented joie de vivre and gravel-voiced warmth every time.”

I first heard this album on the wonderful Classic Records pressing from the ’90s. I remember really enjoying the music and liking the sound of Bernie Grundman’s remaster very much. We reviewed and recommended the album (along with Under the Stars) in our old paper catalogs.

I have no idea what I would think of their version these days — well, to be honest I do actually have some idea of what I would think of it — but their version is at least good enough to make the case that Russell Garcia’s orchestral arrangements and Louis Armstrong’s sublime skills interpreting The Great American Songbook are a match made in heaven.

You may have seen Russell Garcia’s name on one of the landmark recordings of the ’50s: Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong’s recording of Porgy and Bess for Verve in the previous year, 1959.

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Heretics and True Believers Clash on the Battlefield in Cyberspace, Part Two

More Letters from Customers and Critics Alike

Part one of this conversation can be found here. [Some bolding and such added.]

Hi, Tom,

Are there other great-sounding stereos out there? I’m sure there are. Just as there are great-sounding records still to be found out in the wild.

But, the stereo I’ve built by rapidly copying what you did painstakingly over decades is giving me better sound from recorded music than I’ve encountered almost anywhere else, including on far more expensive systems. It’s also more honest, direct, and revealing than stereos usually are.

First, I trusted you on records, and you were right. Then, I trusted you on stereos, and you were right again.

As for how people can find great-sounding records. I expressed three pieces of the advice I’ve come to realize are true. All controversial enough, apparently, to get a thread shut down.

First, they can buy records from you.

If they don’t yield sound commensurate with price, just return the darned thing. A couple Better Records a year will probably build somebody a better-sounding vinyl collection than the same amount of money dumped in a shop or on Discogs. Tom, I have never encountered a disappointed *customer* of yours.

Second, don’t ascribe to hard and fast rules.

No, it is not true that all records from a given pressing house or mastering engineer are the definitive versions. There are better-sounding copies sitting in bins at used shops. Not all of them, but some, and they are often cheaper. This is a reality that is hard to find online, because it turns out it is hard to state it online.

Third, if you want to find great-sounding records on your own, plan to buy lots of copies of a particular title.

Avoid original pressings – those are not guaranteed to sound better, and they come at a premium.

[I take issue with this idea, see below.]

Play them all, pick your favorite (one, in my experience, is likely to stand out). Then, hope that your local shop takes returns, or that you are able to unload them on Discogs. Might somebody save themselves some money doing it this way, compared to buying a record from you? Maybe? But then, if they decide to “check their work” by buying a record from you, yours is going to sound better.

When I offered this advice on that forum, I got told I was wrong. Instead, those guys have a formula that works for them. I’d say it’s a formula for ending up with Pretty Good Records. First, you search the forums to find the deadwax for a copy that somebody has commented is THE one to have.

They usually don’t mention what type of equipment they have, or how many other copies of that record they’ve heard, or even what in particular about it sounds good. For me, going after pressings recommended online has never been a reliable way to find a great-sounding record.

And, when I get a Better Record, I check to see if it is a stamper that’s already known to sound good. Almost always, there’s no mention of it anywhere. Second piece of accepted wisdom on the forums: NM always sounds better than VG+. Here’s something I said that seemed to really piss people off: Good-sounding records got played a lot. Somebody really took me to task for suggesting that I had purchased from you a copy of a record I love that would probably grade VG+ based on the appearance of its surfaces, but that was delivering sound so good, I had zero desire to hunt for another copy, even the same deadwax in NM condition. Sure, I’d buy it if I ever came across it, but I would not expect it to sound better than the copy I already had. So, even among a group of seasoned vinyl listeners that understand certain truths they still seem to live by certain principles in collecting records that simply do not work consistently.

I’ve spent a lot of time blaming myself for the money and time I wasted on pretty-good records, played on a pretty-good stereo. I trusted the magazines and the salesmen. I don’t think they were being disingenuous; I just think they didn’t know any better. I trusted the splashy websites, the satisfied customer reviews, the youtube gushes, and the forum posters. This many people can’t all be wrong. They must know what they are talking about. And, I wasn’t hearing any other information.

Now I know why I wasn’t hearing any countervailing views – they get deleted. For somebody who wants to attain better sound, there’s your shop, and more importantly, your blog. I know the vast majority of people who come across either of these will dismiss them outright. Their loss. A few will return, and be better off for it – even, financially.

The most painful accusation I encountered on the forum was that I am doing people a disservice by leading them to spend their money and not get anything in return. It hurt to read that. Of course, I would never want to do that. To anybody who becomes your customer because I said they should give it a try, I’d give them the same advice you gave me early on: Take it slow. Once you discover how good these records can sound, there’s a real urge to start snapping them up. Instead, just take it slow. Enjoy each one. Better Records isn’t going anywhere.

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