Month: April 2024

Thoughts on a Direct to Disc Recording, Its Strengths and Weaknesses

Hot Stamper Pressings of Direct-to-Disc Recordings Available Now

Reviews and Commentaries for Direct to Disc Recordings

In a shootout we conducted more than ten years ago, two White Hot Stamper pressings tied for the best side two we had ever heard.

In the final round it simply came down to the fact that the other copy was a little more clear, this one is a little richer.

They were both so amazing we couldn’t decide which we preferred so we gave them both White Hot Stamper grades.

In our experience this rarely happens.

Most of the time one side of one of the records in the shootout will show itself to be the clear winner, doing everything — or almost everything; there is no such thing as a perfect record — right.

When you play enough copies, eventually you run into the one that shows you how the music wants to be heard, what kind of sound seems to work for it the best. The two side twos we liked were variations, and fairly subtle ones at that, on a theme — a little richer here, a little clearer there, but both so good.

To be honest, most copies of this title were quite good. Few didn’t do most things at least well enough to earn a Hot Stamper grade. This has not been the case with many of the Sheffield pressings we’ve done shootouts for in the past. Often the weaker copies have little going for them. They don’t even sound like Direct Discs.

Some copies lack energy, some lack presence, most suffer from some amount of smear on the transients.

But wait a minute. This is a direct disc. How can it be compressed, or lack transients? Aren’t those tape recorder problems that are supposed to be eliminated by the direct to disc process?

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Miles Davis – In Person: Saturday Night At The Blackhawk, Volume II

More of the Music of Miles Davis

  • This superb 6-Eye Stereo pressing boasts relaxed, full bodied, three-dimensional Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER from start to finish
  • Both of these sides are huge, spacious, lively, transparent and above all real – you won’t believe how good the live sonics captured on this album is (until you play it anyway)
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Davis himself has never played with more intensity and muscularity on record than he does here. Miles fans will need both [sets] to fully appreciate how special this engagement with this particular band was.”

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Harry James and His Big Band – Comin’ From a Good Place

More Direct to Disc Recordings

More Large Group Jazz Recordings

  • The Hot Stamper debut of James’s 1977 release, here with incredible Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) sound throughout this original Sheffield pressing, just shy of ourShootout Winner – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Both of these German-pressed sides are Tubey Magical, lively and clear, with three-dimensionality that will fill your listening room from wall to wall
  • This copy has loads of presence, with richness and fullness that showed us just how good the direct to disc medium can be at its best

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Letter of the Week – “It has been a long time since I’ve connected with whatever it was that I connected with on this LP.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Stephen Stills Available Now

One of our good customers wrote us a letter recently about his Stephen Stills Hot Stamper pressing.

You can read his first letter here.

About a week later he followed up with this one. It seems he fell in love with it. That can happen when you play a good sounding copy after nearing nothing but junk your whole life.

Hi Tom,
That NWHS [more here] of Stills’ first is EPIC! It is now in my top ten desert island discs.

I no longer have words… it’s just f**king epic. Obviously, I had no idea… not a clue.

After closed eyes listening to the last song on side 1, I was like WTF, that was really really intense… vocals… guitars.

So when it was done I looked at the back of the cover to see what was what… aha… Clapton!

It has been a long time since I’ve connected with whatever it was that I connected with on this LP.

What a gift. Simply outrageous sound.

Michel

Michel,

You and I both know that the connection you speak of is the only one that matters when listening to music.

That Stills record is definitely going to my desert island too. I bought mine in 1970 and I listen to it to this very day.

I’ve written a fair amount about the album. Used to use it as a test disc, something I have not discussed on this blog because there are not enough hours in the day to talk about all the records I have used as test discs. But this album make a great test disc if you’ve got big speakers and like to play them good and loud.

Here is an excerpt from an older commentary discussing Bill Halverson‘s superb engineering.

Some of the most sought-after records in the world, as well as the most difficult to find with high quality sound, are those involving the various groupings of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.

This album is no exception. It’s Stills’ masterpiece, a record I’ve been playing since I was in high school. The sound on the LPs I bought over the years has been pretty consistently disappointing. It’s refreshing to actually find a copy like this that lets you hear the album the way you remember it.

There’s a very good chance — bordering on a certainty — that the copy you played back then was no doubt just as poor sounding, but you remember it sounding good.

That, more than anything else, is why we audiophiles keep chasing after so many classic albums from our younger days. We’re trying to find the record that can give us the musical satisfaction in the present that we achieved so easily in the past, before we knew anything about audio and record pressings.

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Rodrigo / Concierto Andaluz & Concierto de Aranjuez

More TAS Super Disc Recordings

  • An original Mercury pressing of this wonderful TAS-approved recording (the first to hit the site in years) with incredible Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) grades from top to bottom – just shy of our Shootout Winner
  • Our last shootout was in 2010 — we really dropped the ball on this one!
  • This is a TAS list title that deserves its place on a list of Super Discs, as long as you are talking about one that sounds the way this one does
  • The vinyl was a problem with many of our better copies — those of you who are fans of later Mercs, perhaps the Starker titles, just to take one example, know what I am talking about with the less-than-audiophile-quality surfaces so common to these pressings
  • These sides are exceptionally transparent and full of energy, with the lush strings of the guitars more textured and real than on practically all other copies we played
  • The orchestra sounds rich and sweet, yet the guitars are clear, present and appropriately placed relative to the surrounding ensemble

These Nearly White Hot Stamper pressings have top-quality sound that’s often surprisingly close to our White Hots, but they sell at substantial discounts to our Shootout Winners, making them a relative bargain in the world of Hot Stampers (“relative” meaning relative considering the prices we charge). We feel you get what you pay for here at Better Records, and if ever you don’t agree, please feel free to return the record for a full refund, no questions asked.

This is a wonderful record and fully deserving of its place on Harry’s TAS list. The performance here by the first family of guitar is legendary. More importantly, the music is delightful and belongs in any serious classical collection. (Others that belong that category can be found here.)

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Art Pepper / Meets The Rhythm Section – OJC style

More Art Pepper

More Contemporary Label Jazz Recordings

  • A vintage Contemporary recording pressed on OJC vinyl, here with very good Hot Stamper sound from first note to last
  • True, this reissue earned a minimal Hot Stamper grade of 1.5+, but we still guarantee that it will beat the pants off any Heavy Vinyl reissue, because every one of those that we played was opaque, muddy and thick enough to have us crying “uncle” after five minutes
  • Many consider this to be the best record Art Pepper ever made, along with Art Pepper + Eleven, and I agree completely
  • 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
  • 5 stars: “… this recording convinced [Pepper] that emotion was the paramount impulse of jazz performance… a diamond of recorded jazz history.”
  • This is a Must Own jazz album from 1957 that belongs in every jazz-loving audiophile’s collection

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You Can Do a Lot Better than this Tchaikovsky 5th

Hot Stamper Classical and Orchestral Pressings Available Now

We played a few copies of the album we had sitting in the backroom and none of them quite worked for us.  The sound was somewhat veiled and dry. (The 1s/1s pressing was the worst of the bunch, by the way.)

A decent record, not much more than that, and not really not worth putting in a shootout with the better pressings of the work we have discovered over the years. The best of the bunch might earn a grade of 1.5+, so why even bother?

Yes, we still have no Hot Stamper pressings of the work to offer, but we know they are coming, someday. Our current favorite is a performance by Mravinsky on DG from 1961.

It’s a “good, not great” vintage classical record, best played on an old school stereo system that can hide its shortcomings.

The much more revealing systems of today, like the one we employed to audition this very copy, simply make it too easy to spot its many faults.

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Letter of the Week – “Smokes the best of my three UK 1st press red apple covers I have collected.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of Let It Be Available Now

Our customer Michael S. wrote to tell us how much he likes his Hot Stamper pressing of Let It Be.

Hi guys,

The Let It Be 3+/3+ I bought from you few weeks ago is an absolute stunner that smokes the best of my three UK 1st press red apple covers I have collected over the last few years. Thanks again and keep’em coming!

All the best,

Michael S.

Michael,

Thanks for writing. That’s great to hear.

You could buy fifty of those original pressings and the White Hot Stamper pressing we sent you would smoke every last one of them.

We don’t bother with them because we know which pressings can beat them, so why waste the money for the so-called “original” when the reissue is — as you now know — superior sounding?

The conventional wisdom that the original is the way to go with most Beatles records is something we learned was mistaken more than 30 years ago and nothing has changed our minds about it since then, and that’s after having played literally hundreds and hundreds of Beatles records in the ensuing years.

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Frank Sinatra – Come Dance With Me!

More Frank Sinatra

  • Come Dance With Me! returns to the site for only the second time in three years, here with superb Double Plus (A++) sound throughout this early Capitol stereo LP
  • This pressing was doing pretty much everything we wanted it to — and on both sides — with an abundance of energy and the kind of immediacy that can put Frank Sinatra front and center right in your very own listening room
  • One of the more fun Sinatra albums we’ve had the pleasure of playing recently, and this is a copy that delivers big time
  • It also plays about as quiet as we can find them, and finding one without marks that play is practically a miracle
  • 5 stars: “Working with Billy May again, Frank Sinatra recorded his hardest swing album ever with Come Dance with Me! . . . an intoxicating rush of invigorating dance songs.”

Get ready to swing with the Chairman of the Board on this superb pressing of his classic album from 1959! Billy May and his orchestra back Frank with wonderful arrangements here, and a copy like this lets you appreciate everyone’s hard work. On the better pressings, the brass blasts on side two are to die for!

It’s tough to find good-sounding copies of almost any Sinatra album, finding amazing copies of his most classic albums like this one is a ridiculously tough task. Even for us, the guys who do nothing but search for and audition records all day every day! So we were thrilled to play a copy like this one that did just what we wanted from music like this.

If you never thought you’d hear a Sinatra record sound as powerful as the man himself came across — this is the pressing that you’ve been looking for. Most copies were either smeary or edgy, but this one was wonderfully smooth with impressive clarity.

Sinatra fans, don’t miss out — we don’t find records like this too often.

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We Get Letters – “The first time I listened, that moment elicited an involuntary cry, ‘Wow!’”

More of the music of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)

Dear Tom and Fred,

I just got through listening to my latest haul of records, including a few Pink Floyd White Hot Stampers. They are just fantastic. As is the SRV The Sky is Crying, and every other record I’ve bought from you. They are transformative.

One that deserves special mention is the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto I just got. I expected the violin to sound amazing, and it does. I did not expect to be blown away when the full orchestra joins in. The first time I listened, that moment elicited an involuntary cry, ‘Wow!’

The second time I listened, it evoked the same response. It’s simply magical. Thank you.

Finally, I got a WHS of the Beatles Help! I really love the album. Nearly every song is great. One song that did not move me as I hoped was Yesterday. I read on your blog that some German pressings have amazing versions of Yesterday. Even if the rest sound like crap, I’d be very interested to buy one if you have it laying around.

Thanks again for all you do. I should mention that another of your loyal customers, ab_ba, turned me on to your work, and is largely responsible for helping me find my way.

Dear Bill,

Some thoughts:

As for the Tchaikovsky, glad to hear you liked it so much. Finding a recording that gets the orchestra right is ten times harder than finding a record with a good sounding violin. This we have learned through experience.

I used to think these Heifetz records were a bit crude, but now I realize I just couldn’t play them right back in those days.

As for Help!, we don’t buy the German pressings anymore because it is just too hard to sell a record at the prices we charge in which only one song sounds great. You can find them easily enough if you want to go that route.

As for ab_ba, glad he was able to help you find a better way.

We both owe him a debt of gratitude in that respect.

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