Month: March 2024

Stevie Wonder – Songs In The Key Of Life

More Stevie Wonder

  • Tubey Magical Richness, with the immediacy and transparency too few copies offer – here you will find the qualities that are essential to getting the best sound from Stevie’s magnum opus
  • A true musical genius (according to Eddie Murphy) here joins forces with other legends including Herbie Hancock, George Benson, and Deniece Williams
  • 5 stars: “…Stevie Wonder’s longest, most ambitious collection of songs… that — just as the title promised — touched on nearly every issue under the sun, and did it all with ambitious (even for him), wide-ranging arrangements and some of the best performances of Wonder’s career.”
  • Songs In the Key of Life is a Grammy Winning Must Own album from 1976,

Double albums are usually very tedious work for us, but this one had us smiling and tapping our feet all the way through to the end of the last side. I’m sure you don’t need a rundown of why this is such a great album, but the 5 star AMG review is an excellent read for those who want to be reminded. (more…)

Question about Aja: “Are these all original issues from September 1977…?”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Steely Dan Available Now

Got this letter a while back:

Hey Tom,   

I’m very interested in purchasing one of your copies of Steely Dan’s Aja. Are the catalog numbers the same for all 3 albums? Are these all original issue from September 1977 when the album was first released?

I’m new to your website (and vinyl collecting in general) so any commentary you have would be appreciated. $200 is probably the most I can afford for this album.

Thanks,
Joe

Joe, yes, only the early pressings of the album are any good and we would not sell anything else. They would not have all come out in September but they look as original as any others would. You will get a lot of sound and music for your money on this album, and you should hear a world of difference between our copy and any other you may own.

Best, TP

Got it – Can you just confirm the catalog number is AB 1006? I’m specifically looking at the version that’s $199 on your site.

Thanks,
Joe

Dear Joe,

Keep in mind that we’re the guys who are all about sound, not originality.

We discussed it in our FAQ as a matter of fact:

This listing gets to the point:

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The Moody Blues – Seventh Sojourn

More of The Moody Blues

Reviews and Commentaries for The Moody Blues

  • Seventh Sojourn is back on the site for only the second time in thirteen months, here with solid Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER on both sides of this original Threshold pressing
  • Side two was sonically very close to our Shootout Winner – you will be shocked at how big and powerful the sound is
  • Forget the dubby domestic pressings and whatever crappy Heavy Vinyl record they’re making these days – the UK LPs are the only way to fly
  • Great sound isn’t easy to come by for the Moody Blues – it takes a lot of copies to find sound as good as this
  • The Moodies’ biggest success on the American charts – “I’m Just a Singer (In a Rock & Roll Band)” is the killer hit from the album
  • Marks in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you

This pressing is excellent on both sides. It has lovely vocals — sweet and breathy — so critical to the Moodies sound. It’s also spacious and energetic, two qualities that the average copy simply has very little of. To top it all off, this copy rocks about as much as this album, in our experience, CAN rock. Most pressings are shockingly compressed, recessed and murky.

And the domestic copies are made from dubs; they’re brighter but grainy and transistory as hell. They convey NONE of the Moodies magic.

Moody Blues records have a marked tendency to sound somewhat murky and muddy; that’s obviously the sound these guys were going for because you hear it on every album they released.

Compound their “sound” with bad mastering, bad pressing or bad vinyl — not to mention vinyl that hasn’t been cleaned properly — and you will find yourself trying to wade through an impassable sonic swamp. With anything but a Hot Stamper the result is going to be sound so fat, thick, and opaque that it will confound any attempt you might make to hear into it. (more…)

Letter of the Week – “When I think of all the money I’ve spent on those sites…”

Hot Stamper Pressings 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, 

I just wanted to thank you for the expedited shipping for The Stones Exile on Main Street that I recently purchased.

I look forward to my next purchase from you, especially since I never buy from Acoustic Sounds, Music Direct, or eBay anymore. When I think of all the money I’ve spent on those sites…

Cordially,
Christopher

Christopher,

Happy to get you the record quickly, glad UPS is doing its job.

As for the other record dealers you mention, it is indeed sad that so much money is being wasted on so much bad vinyl.

But whose fault is that, really? How many audiophiles have heard of us and yet never tried one of our Hot Stampers?

At least 98% would be my guess.

Mediocrity is the operating principle which governs the world. Most folks will never go beyond the average, and as far as I can tell, that’s just fine by them.

Some come to know better, and it’s good that you are one of those lucky few. Hearing is believing, and once you’ve heard the difference, buying Heavy Vinyl pressings from the hacks who sell them would be like taking a giant step backward in your audio journey.

Almost like starting over, but now with a low ceiling that you will never be able to break through.

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Ravel / Daphnis et Chloé / Monteux

More of the Music of Maurice Ravel

  • Boasting excellent Double Plus (A++) grades or close to them throughout, this vintage Decca Ace of Diamonds pressing was giving us the sound we were looking for on Ravel’s complete Masterpiece
  • The sound is big and rich, lively and open, with tons of depth and huge climaxes that hold together (particularly on side one)
  • The voices in the chorus are clear, natural, separate and full-bodied — this is the hallmark of a vintage Golden Age recording: naturalness
  • We know of no other recording of the work that does as good a job of capturing such a large orchestra and chorus
  • Of course, Monteux is a master of the French idiom – his performance of the complete ballet is definitive in our opinion
  • Even though properly-cleaned, properly-pressed, properly-mastered original Decca pressings are the ones that win our shootouts, we guarantee this 60s reissue will easily beat any copy of the album you can find, at any price
  • There are about 150 orchestral recordings we have found to offer the best performances with the highest quality sound. As card-carrying audiophiles, we naturally insist on both. This record is certainly deserving of a place on that list.

Both sides here are BIG, with the space and depth of the wonderful Kingsway Hall that the LSO perform in. John Culshaw produced the album, which surely accounts for the huge size and space, not to mention quality, of the recording. The sound is dynamic and tonally correct throughout.

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Beethoven / Haydn / The Heifetz-Piatigorsky Concerts

Hot Stamper Pressings Featuring the Violin

Reviews and Commentaries for Recordings Featuring Jascha Heifetz

This is a lovely sounding pressing of cello and violin, with smooth, natural, tonally-correct sound and correctly-sized instruments, something you don’t hear often on recordings with Heifetz. They tend to have huge violins and small orchestras.

In these chamber works perhaps the engineers had an easier time of getting it right.

The sound is transparent, spacious and three-dimensional in the best Living Stereo tradition.

If you love the sound of violin and cello, played by virtuosi of the highest order, this is the record for you.

Side One

Beethoven: Piano Trio, Op. 1, No. 1

Side Two

Haydn: Divertimento for Cello and Orchestra 
Rozsa: Tema con Variazioni

This is an older classical/orchestral review

Most of the older reviews you see are for records that did not go through the shootout process, the revolutionary approach to finding better sounding pressings we started developing in the early 2000s and have since turned into a veritable science.

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The Knack – Get the Knack

More of The Knack

  • A killer copy of The Knack’s debut LP (one of only a handful to hit the site in nearly three years) with a Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side two mated to an excellent Double Plus (A++) side one – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • While doing this shootout, one thing that took us by surprise was how common it was for pressings to be slightly to seriously bass shy — on this album you lose a lot of points for not having enough bass
  • No such problems here, though: “monster drums and bass” was just one of the superlative notes we had on this Shootout Winning side two
  • With plenty of punchy low end, the music comes to life on this pressing like you’ve never heard before
  • Wall to wall live-in-the-studio rock sound to rival Back in Black and Nevermind — “My Sharona” is on this amazing Triple Plus side two, and it rocks
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Get the Knack is at once sleazy, sexist, hook-filled, and endlessly catchy — above all, it’s a guilty pleasure and an exercise in simple fun.”
  • This is clearly the Knack’s best sounding album. Roughly 100 other listings for the best sounding album by an artist or group can be found here
  • In our opinion, Get the Knack is the only Knack record you’ll ever need. Click on this link to see more titles we like to call one and done

This monster Power Pop debut by The Knack is an amazingly well-recorded album, with the kind of wall to wall, big beat, live rock sound that rivals Back in Black and Nevermind — if you’re lucky enough to have a copy that sounds like this! (If you’re not, then it doesn’t.)

“My Sharona” is simply stunning here. You just can’t record drums and bass any better!

And let’s not forget the song “Lucinda.” It’s got exactly the same incredibly meaty, grungy, ballsy sound that Back in Black does, but it managed to do it in 1979, a year earlier.

Mike Chapman produced this album and clearly he is an audiophile production genius. With a pair of Number One charting, amazing sounding Pop albums back to back — Blondie’s Parallel Lines in 1978 and this album early the next year — how much better could he get?

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The Talking Heads Were Hard to Beat in 77

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Talking Heads Available Now

For some recent listings for the album, we noted:

If I were to compile a list of my favorite rock and pop albums from 1977, this album would definitely be on it.

In the four years since we last played it, we’d forgotten how amazing this album can sound on the best pressings. I’d even say that it’s a sonic step up from Fear Of Music and Remain In Light, probably tying with More Songs About Buildings and Food and Little Creatures for top Talking Heads honors.

That seems to have undersold just how good this album can sound on the right pressing. Having just done the shootout in our new custom-built studio, we could not have been more impressed with the recording, as you can see from the notes for the winning copy shown below.

Side One

Here are our notes for side one, for those who have trouble reading our scratch. We started off with track two.

Track two

  • Big, spacious vocals and guitars
  • Very detailed

Track one

  • Fat drums
  • Rich and relaxed

The initial grade was one we often give out, “at least 2.” We knew the sound was great, but how great? We would need to play more copies to see how this one compares to the others that seem to be doing everything right, everything being the operative word. What is everything, and how right can it get?

Yes, that’s right, we needed to answer the most important question in all of audio: Compared to what?

We typically take the two or three best side ones — we call them “contenders” — and listen to them again to see which of them has the real Shootout Winning magic in its grooves, the one that does everything right and then some.

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Robert Brook Has a Question for the Audiophile Community

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.

TOM PORT and Why More Audiophiles Don’t Take His Advice

A GUIDE FOR THE DEDICATED ANALOG AUDIOPHILE

Robert has approached the various problems he’s encountered methodically and carefully along these three fronts:

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Mozart / Eine Kleine Nachtmusik / Munchinger

More of the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

Hot Stamper Classical and Orchestral Imports on Decca & London

  • Stunning sound throughout this vintage London pressing, with both sides earning Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) grades – just shy of our Shootout Winner
  • This copy has the clarity, space and transparency that recreates the live event and really lets you hear into the music
  • Karl Munchinger is of course an expert on Mozart and here he does not disappoint – it’s a top performance with sound to match
  • You will have a very hard time finding a better Eine Kleine Nachtmusik on record, sonically or musically
  • Need we even bother saying it’s guaranteed to beat the pants off of the Speakers Corner pressing of the Decca of the same performance from 1994? No? Okay, we won’t
  • If you’re a Mozart fan — and what audiophile wouldn’t be? — this London from 1961 is surely a Must Own

What to Listen For

On most copies the strings are slightly drier and more steely than one would want, occasionally turning strident in the louder passages. As always, proper VTA adjustment — by ear — is critical to getting the strings to sound their best.

An extended top end helps the harmonics of the stringed instruments immensely.

The more resolving copies will show you more of the hall which adds to the sense that you are listening to live music, not a record.

Is It Live?

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