Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Bob Dylan Available Now
Maybe if the scale goes from 1 to 100, sure, I could see it. Yeah, 10 out of 100 sounds about right.
But the scale goes to 11, which makes a grade of 10 risible to anyone who has played this seriously flawed pressing. Here is how we described its sound many years ago:
We found this mono reissue to be flat as a pancake and dead as a doornail, like most of the Sundazed records we’ve played, starting way back in the early 2000s. No, they never got any better.
In our experience, Sundazed is one of the worst record labels of all time. This pressing is just more evidence to back up our low opinion of them.
Obviously we may have a low opinion of them, but a famous audiophile reviewer seemed to find the sound to his liking. He wrote:
Sundazed’s reissue gives the original a run for the money and remains true to the original, though it suffers in the bass, which while deep and reasonably well defined, is not as tightly drawn or focused. The upper mids on the original also bloom in a way that the reissue’s don’t, giving the reissue a slightly darker, recessed sound, but there’s still sufficient energy up there since Dylan’s close-miked vocals pack an upper midrange punch. If the vocals or harmonica sound spitty and unpleasantly harsh, it’s your system, not the record [!] – though there’s plenty of grit up there. On the plus side, the overall clarity and transparency of the reissue beats the original. [!] A really fine remastering job.
Of course we find every word of this review arrant nonsense, except the discussion of the qualities he praises in the original relative to the reissue. It’s been twenty years since this remastered pressing came out, does anybody still like the sound of it? Anybody? Let’s hope not.
The intro to his review boldly declares a respect for Sundazed (and Classic Records and Analogue Productions) that we find puzzling after playing so many of their rarely-better-than-awful-sounding records. (Here is a commentary from 2007 that puts our antipathy in perspective. And no, modern records have no improved since then, if the releases from 2024 are any indication.)
Sundazed’s decision to issue Blonde on Blonde using the much sought after mono mix is indicative both of the company’s dedication to doing what’s musically correct, and of the vinyl marketplace’s newfound maturity. There was a time a few years ago when no “audiophile” vinyl label would dare issue a mono recording; audiophiles wouldn’t stand for it was the conventional wisdom. Perhaps back then it was even true. Today, with Sundazed, Classic, Analogue Productions and others issuing monophonic LPs on a regular basis (and one has to assume selling them as well) listeners are appreciating the music for music’s sake, and equally importantly, for the wonderful qualities of monophonic sound reproduction.
My grade might be 2 out of 11. No audiophile should be fooled by the crap sound of this pressing, and no audiophile should believe a word of this review.
Reviewer incompetence? We’ve been writing about it for more than 25 years. From the start we knew we could never begin to do much more than scratch the surface of preposterous record reviews in need of rebuttal. The audiophile world is drowning in this sh*t.
But rather than spending all day typing at a keyboard, we felt the best use of our time would be to offer the audiophile community actual records that backed up everything we typed, something obviously no reviewer has ever been able to do.
More on Blonde on Blonde
Over the many years we have been doing shootouts, we have cleaned and played quite a number of vintage pressings of Blonde on Blonde. For those of you who love the album, some of these may be of interest:
The right 360 label pressings are very special. Nothing can beat them. They might even be original. We’re not saying one way or the other.
This customer really liked his very expensive but very awesome copy. (Apparently he did not get the message that analog is a bygone technology. For more on that subject, please read the comments section for this article.)
Side four of some copies is horrendously bad sounding. Any idea why?
A better question: Any idea why nobody other than us ever noticed?
Finally, of course Blonde On Blonde is a recording that should be part of any serious popular music collection. Others that belong in that category and that are currently available can be found here.
There is an abundance of audiophile collector hype surrounding the hundreds of Heavy Vinyl pressings currently in print. I read a lot about how wonderful their sound is, but when I actually play them, I rarely find them to be any better than mediocre, and many of them are awful.
Music Matters made this garbage remaster. Did anyone notice how awful it sounded? I could list a hundred more that range from bad to worse — and I have!
Audiophiles seem to have approached these records naively instead of skeptically.
(But wait a minute. Who am I to talk? I did the same thing when I first got into audio and record collecting in the Seventies.)
How could so many be fooled so badly? Surely some of these people have good enough equipment to allow them to hear how bad these records sound.
The embrace of one third-rate Heavy Vinyl pressing after another by the audiophile community has rendered absurd the pretense that their members ever developed anything beyond the most rudimentary critical listening skills.
Sadly, the Dunning-Kruger effect, the best explanation for the sorry state of audio these days, means they simply don’t know how little they know and therefore see no reason to doubt their high opinions of themselves, their equipment and their acumen.
Progress in audio is possible, but only if you know that you are not already at the top of the mountain. You should recognize that a lot of serious climbing remains to be done.
What to Listen For
As a general rule, this Heavy Vinyl pressing will fall short in some or all of the following areas when played head to head against the vintage pressings we offer. Much like the records linked here:
- It will tend to lack ambience, size and space.
- It will tend to be more compressed.
- It will tend to lack energy.
- It will tend to have more smear.
- It will tend to lack transparency.
The sonic signature of the modern Heavy Vinyl Classical reissue in four words: diffuse, washed out, veiled, and vague.
Here are some of our reviews and commentaries concerning the many Heavy Vinyl pressings we’ve played over the years, well over 200 at this stage of the game. Feel free to pick your poison.
Even as recently as the early 2000s we were still somewhat impressed with many of the better Heavy Vinyl pressings. If we had never made the progress we’ve worked so hard to make over the course of the last twenty or more years, perhaps we would find more merit in the Heavy Vinyl reissues so many audiophiles seem impressed by.
We’ll never know of course; that’s a bell that can be unrung. We did the work, we can’t undo it, and the system that resulted from it is merciless in revealing the truth — that these newer pressings are second-rate at best and much more often than not third-rate and even worse.
Some audiophile records sound have such poor sound, they had me so pissed off I was motivated to create a special ring of hell for them.
Setting higher standards — no, being able to set higher standards — in our minds is a clear mark of progress. Judging by the hundreds of letters we’ve received, especially the ones comparing our records to their Heavy Vinyl and Half-Speed mastered counterparts, we know that our customers see things the same way.
Further Reading