Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Boston
Sonic Grade: D
Lack of weight down low — or as we like to call it, lack of whomp factor [1] — is the main reason Half-Speed mastered records so often come up short when played against their real-time-mastered competition. The highs can be good, the mids can be good, but the bottom end is almost always lacking, which is exactly the problem here.
You can be sure that Boston would not have wanted, nor would they have ever been willing to accept, the kind of anemic sound that the CBS Half-Speed delivers.
The CBS is cut clean from a good tape, so it easily beats the bad domestic pressings, of which there are many.
But it doesn’t rock.
What good is a Boston record that doesn’t rock? It’s a contradiction in terms; they’re a rock band.
The band, as well as their amazingly well recorded debut album, have no other reason to exist.
Transparency is a nice quality, but when it comes at the expense of the energy and power of the music, especially down low, then it comes at too high a price, especially for those of us who have full-range systems and like to play them loud.
We talk about the shortcomings of transparent audiophile records here:
One quality audiophiles tend to like about audiophile pressings is their transparency. Many have zero-distortion, clear, spacious, see-through sound.
But listen past that and what do you hear? Nothing has any weight. Nothing has any solidity. Nothing has any real life. It’s pretty, maybe, but it sure ain’t right.
It’s the kind of sound that shouts out to the world “Hey, look at me, I’m an audiophile record! See how I sound? So clear! So clean!”
There was a time, long ago, when we were impressed by them. Now we find them insufferable.
Here’s what we wrote about this Boston Half-Speed mastered pressing:
This is the best sounding version of this music that I know of. A Better Records recommended pressing!
I wasn’t lying. That was true at the time. Now I know how to find the pressings that sound worlds better.
Some records that I liked back in the old days — say, before 2000 — don’t sound too good to me anymore, and this is one of them.
Which means it’s another case of live and learn.
[1] It’s the WEIGHT and POWER you sense happening down low that translates into whomp factor.
This is the frequency area that screens and small dynamic drivers have the most trouble with. You need to be able to move lots of air under, say, 200 cycles to give the music a sense of real power down below. Few systems I’ve run into can really pull it off.
- More records that are good for testing bass definition
- More records that are good for testing bass and whomp
Further Reading
- New to the Blog? Start here
- More on the subject of Half-Speed mastering
- Record collecting for audiophiles from A to Z
If you are still buying these remastered pressings, making the same mistakes that I was making before I knew better, take the advice of some of our customers and stop throwing your money away on Heavy Vinyl and Half-Speed mastered LPs.
At the very least let us send you a Hot Stamper pressing — of any album you choose — that can show you what is wrong with your copy of the album.
And if for some reason you disagree with us that our record sounds better than yours, we will happily give you all your money back and wish you the very best.
