A Living Stereo knockout! We sometimes forget to spend time with records like this when there are so many Zeppelin and Floyd records waiting to be played (and a lot more customers waiting to get hold of them to add to their collection).
We’ve always enjoyed Belafonte At Carnegie Hall, but when we’ve dug further into his catalog we’ve been left cold more often than not. However, when we finally got around to dropping the needle on a few of these many years ago we were very impressed by the music and blown away by the sound on the better pressings.
Just make sure that you avoid the orange label reissues.
They are dry, gritty and spitty. The notes below show a side one earning a single plus (1+) not-quite-Hot Stamper grade. We discuss its faults on the far right, and the other orange label pressing we played was even worse, earning a grade of NFG.
To help you avoid pressings with subpar sound, we’ve included links to other records with the same problems as this RCA reissue.
- These are pressings that tend to have dry sound
- These are pressings that tend to have gritty sound
- These are pressings that tend to have spitty sound
Audiophiles should consider steering clear of these titles, including those that are pressed on premium-priced Heavy Vinyl.
At least RCA had an excuse for making records that don’t sound good: they were cheap reissues.
If you wasted $150 on a crappy sounding pressing of Aja, or $100 on Thriller, or even just forty bucks on The Cars, what else would you feel other than ripped off?
Sadly, to my knowledge none of these companies offers refunds.
We do, of course, so feel free to return any record that doesn’t live up to your standards. We only want satisfied customers.
Our Story
We’ve listened to countless pressings in the 37 years we’ve been in business — buying, cleaning and playing records by the thousands.
This is how we find the best sounding vinyl pressings ever made, through trial and error. We make lots of mistakes, some of which turn out to be quite costly.
It may be expensive and time consuming, but there is simply no other method for finding better records that works. If you know of one, please write me!
We are not the least bit interested in records that are “known” to sound the best.
Known by whom? Which audiophiles — hobbyists or professionals, take your pick — can be trusted to know what they are talking about when it comes to the sound of records? Any records.
I have never met one, outside of those of us who work for Better Records. I remain skeptical of the existence of such a creature. The audiophile experts and reviewers I’ve encountered on the web seem hopelessly lost to me.
Woops, I take that back. I have met one, a certain Mr. Robert Brook. He has been conducting his own shootouts for a few years now and makes his findings available on his blog, The Broken Record. This is information you can trust.
(A fellow who goes by the name of ab_ba is a newer convert. You can read about some of his shootouts here.)
We’re looking for records that actually do sound the best.
If you’re an audiophile with an ear for top quality sound on vintage vinyl, we’d be happy to send you the Hot Stamper pressing guaranteed to beat anything and everything you’ve heard, especially if you have any pressing marketed as suitable for an audiophile.
Those, with few exceptions, are rarely better than mediocre. Some of the worst can be found here.
And if we can’t beat whatever LP you own or have heard, you get your money back. It’s as simple as that.
Further Reading