Are Hot Stampers for real, or are they for the birds?
(That’s a question I see asked a lot by audiophiles. You will have no trouble guessing what the answer tends to be.)
Below you will find some of the text from an email exchange I had with Robert, one of hundreds we’ve sent to each other as we found ourselves winding through the thicket of records and audiophile equipment.
It’s one we are constantly struggling to understand, in my case even after 40 years.
In this email he recounts a personal story about a yoga friend, exploring his reaction to an incident that occurred with a fellow yoga practioner and some of the psychological lessons he learned from it. What he learned, he has now come to realize, helped him see more clearly some of the things that are going on in analog audio, especially when it comes to the credibility of yours truly.
He also points out that I am not always as tactful as I should be, and I don’t doubt for a minute that he is right about that. Not my strong suit. I’m more in favor of the “tough love” approach, but after rereading some of my old emails, it’s often shocking — even to me — how blunt I can be. I’ll try to do better.
Please to enjoy Robert’s story.
A GUIDE FOR THE DEDICATED ANALOG AUDIOPHILE
Robert has approached the various problems he’s encountered methodically and carefully along these three fronts:
- Improving his equipment,
- Teaching himself how to do a better job of dialing in his turntable setup, and
- Learning how to do controlled shootouts for his favorite albums.
More on Robert’s system here. You may notice that it has a lot in common with the one we use. This is clearly not an accident.
And it is also no accident that these two systems just happen to be very good at showing their owners the manifold shortcomings of the modern remastered LP, as well as the benefits to be gained by doing shootouts in order to find dramatically better sounding pressings to play.
Further Reading