Month: January 2025

Off the Wall Vs. Thriller – Which One Has More Tubey Magic?

Hot Stamper Pressing of the Music of Michael Jackson Available Now

Many years ago we came across an amazing sounding copy of Off the Wall, which prompted a few thoughts about its sound compared to Thriller.

ABSOLUTELY STUNNING SOUND for this White Hot Stamper pressing!

Both sides cannot be beat — both have the BIG M.J. SOUND that jumps out of the speakers and fills the room. We’ve never heard a copy that was so full of ANALOG MAGIC!

The vocals are PERFECTION — breathy, full-bodied, and present. The top end is extended and sweet, with tons of ambience the likes of which I’ve never heard before.

Normally when you have a copy with strong midrange presence it will be somewhat sibilant in places. Not so here. For some reason this copy has all the highs, but it’s cut so clean it practically doesn’t spit at all. Even on the song I Can’t Help It, which normally has a problem in that respect. Since that’s my favorite song on this album, and probably my favorite MJ song of all time, hearing it sound so good was a revelation.

Better Sound than Thriller?

Yes. As consistently brilliant as Thriller may be musically — it is the biggest selling album of all time after all — speaking strictly in terms of sonics the sound of the best copies of Off the Wall is substantially sweeter, tubier, more natural, richer, and more ANALOG than Thriller.

Thriller is clearly more aggressive and processed-sounding than Off the Wall. The Girl Is Mine or Human Nature from Thriller would fit just fine anywhere on Off the Wall, but could the same be said for Beat It or Thriller? Just thinking about them you can hear the artificiality of the sound of both those songs in your head. Think about the snare that opens Beat It. I’ve never heard a snare sound like that in my life. Practically no instrument on Off the Wall has that kind of overly processed EQ’d sound.

Choruses Are Key

The richness, sweetness and freedom from artificiality is most apparent on Off the Wall where you most always hear it on a pop record: in the biggest, loudest, densest, climactic choruses.

We set the playback volume so that the loudest parts of the record are as huge and powerful as is possible for them to become without crossing the line into distortion or congestion.

On some records, Dark Side of the Moon comes instantly to mind, the guitar solos on Money are the loudest thing on the record.

On Breakfast in America the sax toward the end of The Logical Song is the biggest and loudest element in the mix, louder even than Roger Hodgson’s near-hysterical multi-track screaming “Who I am” about three quarters of the way through the track.

Those are clearly exceptions though. Usually it’s the final chorus that gets bigger and louder than anything else.

A pop song is usually structured so as to build up more and more energy as it works its way through its verses and choruses, past the bridge, coming back around to make one final push, releasing all its power in the final chorus, the climax of the song.

On a good recording — one with real dynamics — that part should be very loud and very powerful.

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Letter of the Week – “I would have paid $15,000 for this feeling had I known it was there”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Beatles Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about his Hot Stamper copy of Let It Be that he purchased recently:

Hey Tom, 

Wow, yep! This Let It Be Hot Stamper is doing what it’s supposed to. I haven’t felt this way in a long time. It’s INSANELY good!

I would have paid $15,000 for this feeling had I known it was there. No, I’m not going to. I’m just sayin’.

Absolutely gorgeous.

Billy M.

Billy,

Thanks for writing. That’s exactly what we are going for, feelings that are so powerful they’re like hearing the record for the first time. Those feelings are priceless, although $15k is probably not too far off.

The lifeless reissues they put out year after year do nothing but keep audiophiles from experiencing the record the way it was meant to be heard.

If you want to dig a pony, you can’t do it without a properly-mastered, properly-pressed vintage UK LP, which are the only ones we offer. Accept no substitutes. We don’t.

That’s why we think the music of The Beatles is an audiophile wake up call.

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Led Zeppelin – Presence

More of the Music of Led Zeppelin

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  • Massive amounts of Zeppelin rock and roll energy on this copy, with both sides earning INSANELY GOOD Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades
  • Here is a pressing with the power, the dynamic contrasts, the low end WHOMP, as well as the in-the-room midrange presence (pun only slightly intended) you’ve been waiting for
  • Featuring a stripped down, harder rock sound, Presence really benefits from the outstanding bottom end found on this early LP
  • “Presence has more majestic epics than its predecessor, opening with the surging, ten-minute ‘Achilles Last Stand’ and closing with the meandering, nearly ten-minute ‘Tea for One.'”

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Having a Tough Time Shooting Out Blue from 2005 to 2011

Hot Stamper Pressing of the Music of Joni Mitchell Available Now

UPDATE

This review starts with a killer copy we played in 2011. Further down you can read about our aborted attempt to do a shootout for the album in 2005.

ABSOLUTELY STUNNING TRIPLE PLUS SOUND ON SIDE TWO with a side one that’s nearly as wonderful! You’ve probably heard us say this before, but it is ridiculously tough to find great copies of Blue. It’s not just the toughest nut to crack in Joni’s catalog, it’s one of the most difficult albums in ALL OF POP MUSIC to get to sound right.

So when we find one like this, it’s a BIG DEAL. It’s got Off The Charts breathiness, delicacy, warmth and sweetness, and that’s just Joni’s voice. The sound of the ensemble throughout is amazingly natural, the recording so spacious.

Just check out the piano on The Last Time I Saw Richard: this is not the thin and hard-sounding instrument that accompanies Joni on every pressing you have ever had the misfortune to audition, hoping against hope that someday you would find that “elusive disc” with sound worthy of such extraordinary music. No, this piano has real weight; it has body; and it’s surrounded by real, three-dimensional studio space. No vinyl pressing we have ever played has managed to capture the sound of the piano on this record any better. Exactly no copies. (A few White Hot Stamper copies have done it as well, but none any better.) For those of you with a certain Heavy Vinyl pressing in your collection, we can only say: Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Both sides here are rich, full-bodied and warm with amazing immediacy. The sound is exceptionally DYNAMIC and the clarity and transparency are OFF THE SCALES. Joni’s vocals sound just right — so clear and natural, with lots of breath and texture.

We Promised Not to Talk About It

In the introduction to the Blue Game you may remember reading this:

Down the road when we’ve had a chance to do a shootout amongst all our best copies, we will be offering something more to our liking. I recommend instead — and this is coming from a die-hard LP guy, someone who disconnected his home CD player over two years ago and only plays the damn things in the car — that you pick yourself up a nice used copy of the gold CD Hoffman mastered for DCC. It’s wonderful.”

We then went on to explain that we didn’t want to just tell you what we found lacking in the newly remastered version. We much preferred that you discover it for yourself, an experience we were sure would be both edifying and enjoyable in equal amounts.

We Weren’t Ready in 2005

That first aborted attempt at a shootout for Blue failed because we had neither the specialized cleaning techniques and machinery that we use now, nor the equipment required to play such a challenging recording. We pointed out at the time that our notes contained comments such as “soft, lacks bass, grungy, grainy, thin, hi-fi, bright, so-so, aggressive, hard, thick, groove damage, highs worn away, lacking in bass and extreme top, gritty, swooshy, bad vinyl.”

No doubt that’s what we were hearing.

We also found comments such as “perfection, wonderful, lovely, sweet, transparent, as good as it gets, Joni’s right there, one of the best, wow.”

So there was hope, even way back in 2005. But no Blue to sell.

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Van Halen / 1984 – Our White Hot Shootout Winner for 2025

More of the Music of Van Halen

  • With INSANELY GOOD Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades throughout, we guarantee you’ve never heard 1984 sound this good – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Here are just a few of the things we had to say about this amazing copy in our notes: “big and rich and transparent”…”no hardness or veil” (side one)…”jumping out of the speakers”…”3D vox”…”meaty and rich drums and guitar”…”really solid and punchy”
  • These sides have the kind of big, full-bodied sound that lets this rockin’ band come to life exactly the way you want them to
  • Nothing phony here – the sound is natural and balanced, with meaty guitars and big punchy drums
  • Plenty of hits: “Panama,” “Hot For Teacher,” “Jump,” and you won’t believe how good they sound on this copy
  • 5 stars: “It’s the best showcase of Van Halen’s instrumental prowess as a band… the best showcase for their songwriting, just their flat-out best album overall.”

Want to hear three of the best songs these guys ever did — “Jump,” “Panama” and “Hot For Teacher”– sound incredible? We recently had a chance to shoot out a bunch of these, and I’m sure it won’t surprise you that far too many copies were unimpressive. Most just do not have the weight on the bottom end that this music needs to work.

Turn your nose up if you like, but this music is Classic Rock by now. I’m not going to pretend it’s on a level with After The Gold Rush or Zep II, but the band on this album definitely knows how to rock. The All Music Guide gives this one 5 Big Stars, and I’m sure that plenty of audiophiles feel just as strongly about it. (more…)

Six-Eye, Black Print, White Print, Red Label – Which Is the Best Sounding Kind of Blue?

Hot Stampers Pressings of the Music of Miles Davis Available Now

Is the 50s original always better, is the 70s reissue always better, is the 60s 360 pressing always better?

The answer is “no” to all three.

Why? Because no pressing is always better. All pressings are unique and should only be judged on their merits, and you do that by playing them, not by looking at their labels. For us this truth is practically axiomatic. It is in fact the premise of our entire business. Over the course of the 28 years we have been selling records we have never found any compelling evidence to invalidate it.

The day that someone can accurately predict the sound quality of a specific record by looking at the label or cover is a day I do not expect to come, ever.

UPDATE 2024

Our Latest Thinking on KOB

The 6 Eye label domestic stereo pressings win our shootouts, in the case of Kind of Blue without exception.

The 360 label pressings, black print (1962-63) or white print (1963-70), as well as the rare 70s red label (1970-?), can sound very good, but they never win shootouts.

We’ve identified a select group of reissues with the potential to do well in shootouts, typically earning a grade of Super Hot (A++) when up against the best originals which earn our top grade, White Hot (A+++). Kind of Blue is one of those recordings.

A Larger Point

But there is a larger point to be made. Let’s assume that the best original Six Eye Columbia pressings can be the best — the most Tubey Magical, the most involving, the most real. You just happen to have a clean pressing, and you absolutely love it.

But is it the best? How could you possibly know that?

Unless you have done a comparison with many copies under controlled conditions, you simply cannot know where on the sonic curve your copy should be placed.

Perhaps you have a mediocre original. Or a mediocre 360 Label copy. Since you haven’t done a massive shootout you simply have no way of knowing just how good sounding the album can be.

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Moondance on Heavy Vinyl Is a Disgrace to Audiophiles and Record Lovers All Over the World

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Van Morrison Available Now

The original grade I gave out in 2015 when I last played this remastered version as part of a shootout was “D.” I explained at the time:

Just listen to how strange Van’s voice sounds, so lean, hard and sour. That alone qualifies it for an “F,” but considering how bad most pressings of this album are, let’s be fair, if not downright generous, and call it a “D.”

I just revisited the record in a current shootout, and after giving it some thought I have decided that the right grade is in fact “F.” It cannot be any other, for reasons I discuss below.

In 2014 I had written:

Where is the Tubey Magic of the originals? The sweetness? The richness? And why is there so little ambience or transparency? You just can’t “see” into the studio on this pressing the way you can on the good originals, but that’s fairly consistently been the knock on these remastered Heavy Vinyl records. We noted as much when we debunked Blue all the way back in early 2007, so no surprise there.

Having just played a marvelous shootout-winning early pressing, this time around I found the reproduction of Van’s voice on the reissue to be so leaned-out, artificial and unpleasant that I could hardly stand to listen to it.

We had reset the VTA correctly; the overall tonal balance of the recording from top to bottom was correct. It was only the voice that sounded so off. All the other shortcomings I had mentioned before were still true of course, but none of that mattered. The singer on this record just sounded awful.

As you know, we are constantly making improvements to our playback system. The real Moondance we had just played sounded better than ever. The fake Moondance, however, was sounding worse than ever. That’s what higher quality playback can do for you. It makes your good records sound better than they’ve ever sounded, and shows you just how bad your bad records really are.

Do I have a bad copy of the Heavy Vinyl pressing? Maybe, can’t say I don’t. If any of you out there in the real world have a copy of this pressing that you like, and would be willing to send it to me to hear for myself, I would be more than happy to give it a listen and report my findings on this blog.

Short of that I’m not sure what more I can do. I certainly do not feel the least bit inclined to waste a nickel of my hard-earned money on another copy of this ridiculously badly-mastered crap vinyl.

If you want to read about other records that have these same shortcomings, there are links below to the ones we’ve auditioned and identified to date. Our advice would be to avoid them, and if you own some of these pressings, perhaps now is the time to give them another listen and see if you don’t hear the same faults we did.

And, of course, the Hot Stamper pressings we offer, when played side by side with any of these Heavy Vinyl remasters, can help you to see more clearly just where these new records are going wrong, or, in the case of Moondance, completely off the rails.

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When It Comes to Carts and Horses, Which Comes First, and Who Pulls Whom?

Please Consider Taking Some of Our Audio Advice

Robert Brook recently wrote a piece making the case that the cure for audiophile ailments of all kinds — burnout, boredom, etc. — is a high quality stereo system. It is beautifully written and we think well worth your time to read.

Robert walks us through what it has meant to him to have spent so many hours over the years building a high quality stereo system, mostly by describing the musical enjoyment it has brought to him.

What could be better?

We feel the same way. If you build such a system, and play the right records on it, you will experience the music you love in ways more powerful than you could have ever even imagined. Your favorite albums will sound so good that boredom and burnout would be simply inconceivable.

Those of us with top quality systems are confused by the dysfunctional relationship these poor souls have to their stereos and recordings. With a good stereo and good records, it’s hard to see how these psychological states are even possible.

The Heart of the Problem

The problem audiophiles have is one that sits right at the heart of our hobby.

Good stereos are hard to come by.

So the question always comes down to how one should go about building such a beast. There are two schools of thought.

Is the first priority to have properly-pressed, properly-mastered records of well-recorded music in order to get the ball rolling?

Or is it better to make improvements to the stereo first, so that you can then pursue better sounding records and end up with the best of both worlds, a great stereo playing great records?

My Two Cents

Allow me to weigh in. Please consider the following unusual, even goofy, and possibly logically inconsistent, analogy.

Imagine that the place where you can enjoy music is a town not far from where you live.

Because you love music, you must travel there as that is the only place you can enjoy your favorite music to its fullest.

The Horse and the Cart

The horse that draws the cart that you ride into this town is not the right record, it is the right stereo in the right room.

Without the right stereo, you lack the ability to recognize the right record.

Similarly, you lack the ability to appreciate what makes it more right than any other record.

Without the right stereo, you may in fact be trying to optimize the playback of records that are wrong. I did this for decades with my Mobile Fidelity records in the 70s and 80s. I played Heavy Vinyl pressings in the 90s and early 2000s that sounded right to me at the time but no longer do, mainly because our current system evolved over a very long time to be ruthless at revealing their deficiencies and my ears became better at recognizing them.

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Barney Kessel Plays Carmen on the Original Stereo Pressing

Hot Stamper Pressings of Contemporary Jazz Albums Available Now

A recent shootout produced this shootout winning pressing with amazing sound.

STUNNING Shootout Winning grades or close to them bring Kessel’s inspired jazz album to life on this original Contemporary stereo LP (the first copy to hit the site in years).

Here are just a few of the things we had to say about this killer copy in our notes: “tubey, sweet, and lively midrange”…”lots of room around the guitar and horns”…”excellent space and detail”…”great energy”

Tubey Magic, richness, sweetness, dead-on timbres from top to bottom – this is a textbook example of Contemporary sound at its best. The sonics are gorgeous – all tube, live-to-two-track, direct from the Contemporary studio to you, on glorious un-remastered analog vinyl.

For those of you who appreciate the sound that Roy DuNann (and Howard Holzer on other sessions) were able to achieve in the 50s at Contemporary Records, this LP is a Must Own (unless you already have it, which is doubtful considering how hard it is to find a copy in clean condition). Their stuff just doesn’t get any better than this.

From an audiophile point of view, how can you beat a Roy DuNann recording of so many instruments? It’s audiophile heaven.

Talk About Timbre

Man, when you play a Hot Stamper copy of an amazing recording such as this, the timbre of the instruments is so spot-on it makes all the hard work and money you’ve put into your stereo more than pay off. To paraphrase The Hollies, you get paid back with interest. If you hear anything funny in the mids and highs of this record, don’t blame the record. (This is the kind of record that shows up audiophile BS equipment for what it is: audiophile BS. If you are checking for richness, tubey-magic and freedom from artificiality, I can’t think of a better test disc. It has loads of the first two and none of the last.)

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If Only I Could Remember My Name – Hand Claps Are Key

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of David Crosby Available Now

Note how Crosby’s voice is “chesty” on the better sounding copies. Some make him sound like he’s all mouth and no diaphragm. When his voice is full-bodied and solid, that’s when he sounds more like a real person and less like a pop recording of a person.

All credit must go to Stephen Barncard.

Harry Pearson put this record on his TAS List of Super Discs, not exactly a tough call if you ask us. Who can’t hear that this is an amazing sounding recording? 

Listening Test

One of our key test tracks for side one is Cowboy Movie, and one thing that separated the best pressings from the lesser ones was the sound of the hand claps. It’s a dense mix and they are not easy to hear, but on the best copies there is audible echo and ambience around them, with a richer “flesh on flesh” quality to their sound.

Not many pressings had it, and the ones that did tended to do most other things well also.

Which is what makes it a good test! (more…)