Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Igor Stravinsky Available Now
Many years ago, a customer alerted me to a review Wayne Garcia wrote about various VPI platters and the rim drive, and this is what I wrote back to him:
Steve, after starting to read Wayne’s take on the platters, I came across this:
That mind-blowing epiphany that I hadn’t quite reached with the Rim Drive/Super Platter happened within seconds after I lowered the stylus onto the “Infernal Dance” episode of Stravinsky’s Firebird (45 rpm single-sided Classic Records reissue of the incomparable Dorati/LSO Mercury Living Presence recording).
That is one of my half-dozen or so favorite orchestral recordings, and I have played it countless times.
This is why I have so little faith in reviewers. I played that very record not two weeks ago (04/2010) against a good original and the recut was at best passable in comparison. If a reviewer cannot hear such an obvious difference in quality, why believe anything he has to say?
The reason we say that no reviewer can be trusted is that you cannot find a reviewer who does not say good things about demonstrably mediocre and even just plain awful records. It’s the only real evidence we have for their credibility, and the evidence is almost always damning.
I want a reviewer who knows better than to play such an underwhelming pressing and then waste my time telling me about it. He should tell us what a good record sounds like with this equipment mod. Then I might give more credence to what he has to say.
Reviewer malpractice? We’ve been writing about it for more than 25 years.
P.S.
This is one of the Classic Records titles on Harry Pearson’s TAS List of Super Discs(!)
P.P.S.
Allow me to quote a writer with his own website devoted to explaining and judging classical recordings of all kinds. His initials are A.S. for those of you who have been to his site.
Classic Records Reissues (both 33 and 45 RPM) – These are, by far, the best sounding Mercury pressings. Unfortunately, only six records were ever released by Classic. Three of them (Ravel, Prokofiev and Stravinsky) are among the very finest sounding records ever made by anyone. Every audiophile (with a turntable) should have these “big three”.
Obviously we could not disagree more. I’ve played all six of the Classic Mercury’s. The Chabrier, Ravel and Prokofiev titles are actually even worse than the Stravinsky we reviewed.
This same reviewer raved about a record we thought had godawful sound, Romantic Russia on MoFi, a label that never met an orchestral string section it didn’t think needed brightening.
Find me a Mobile Fidelity classical record with that little SR/2 in the dead wax that does not have bright string tone. I have yet to hear one.
What is it with audiophile record reviewers? They seem to be taken in by the most unnatural sounding pressings. The world is full of wonderful vintage pressings that have no such problems. If you are an audiophile who feels himself qualified to write about records, shouldn’t you at least be able to hear the difference between a phony audiophile pressing and the vintage pressings it supposedly improved?
Hot Stamper Pressings of Excellent Jazz Recordings Available Now
If you see this OJC pressing in your local record store, our best advice is to skip it. We found the sound to be much too dry and bright — think CD-like sound — for our tastes. Veiled too, lacking the resolution common to good vintage pressings.
We’ve never played an early pressing of the album, but we know a bad sounding record when we hear one, and this OJC is pretty bad.
It clearly lacks Tubey Magic as well as weight in the lower registers, and that is simply not a sound we can abide, whether it’s found on a cheap jazz reissue or a modern Heavy Vinyl pressing.
Same with Come Along With Me. The copy we played years ago had many of the same problems.
Our OJC Overview
We’ve easily played more than a hundred OJC pressings in the more than 37 years we’ve been in the record business.
Some OJC pressings have the potential to be great.
We’ve even found some of the more recent pressings on OJC that have good — not great mind you, but good — sound. (Just to be clear, any OJC produced this century is to our way of thinking a recent pressing.)
Some are we’ve played are just awful.
And the only way to judge them fairly is to judge them individually, which requires actually throwing one on the turntable and giving it a spin. If it shows promise, we buy a bunch more and see if we can find some good ones.
If the sound is hopeless, we don’t pursue it. We have way too many potentially good sounding records waiting to be played.
It’s a Lot of Work
Since virtually no record collectors or audiophiles like going the extra mile, they draw faulty conclusions based on their lack of rigor, among other things, when evaluating pressings. They are quick to judge the whole series based on a few examples.
OJC’s are cheap reissues sourced from digital tapes, run for the hills!
Those who approach the problem of finding top quality pressings with what can only be described as an utter lack of seriousness can be found on every audiophile forum there is. The youtubers are the worst, but are the self-identified aristocrats of audio any better?
I see no evidence to support that proposition, for or against. None of them in our estimation seem to know much about the mysteries and arcana that lie at the heart of the vinyl LP.
Our customer John wrote to tell us how much he likes his Hot Stamper pressings.
Just have to say–as with most (all) the things you’ve written about–the better one’s system gets the better these Better Records sound. It’s incredible HOW MUCH BETTER. It took me four years of careful changes with a lot of help to get my system really, truly cooking.
Of course, even before that it was clear that your Better Records were way better. But now that gap is so much bigger.
There’s the true, analog sound and then there are remasters (and average early/original pressings). Remasters just sound, well, remastered.
But Better Records deliver that energy, tone, dynamics and big analog sound that “is not coming back”.
(I’m not poo-pooing the remastered stuff–though some is pure crap–because it’s the reality of loving music and this hobby.)
But when you listen to the right recording on the right system, it’s almost a different medium. It’s crazy how good it can sound.
John
Dear John,
Ain’t it the truth!
Thanks for your letter.
Best, TP
Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Frank Sinatra Available Now
Back in the early 70s this was actually the album that first introduced me to honest-to-goodness “audiophile” sound.
I was at my local stereo store listening to speakers one day, and the salesman made a comment that the speakers we were listening to (the old Infinity Monitors with the Walsh tweeter) sounded “boxy.”
I confessed to him that I didn’t actually know what that meant or what it would sound like if it weren’t boxy.
So he hooked up a pair of Dahlquist DQ-10s and put Sinatra at the Sands on. I was amazed at how the sound just floated in the room, free from the speakers, presenting an image that was as wide and deep as the showroom we were in. That speaker may have many flaws, but boxiness is definitely not one of them.
This description is pretty close to what I thought I heard all those years ago:
The presence and immediacy here are staggering. Turn it up and Frank is right between your speakers, putting on the performance of a lifetime. Very few records out there offer the kind of realistic, lifelike sound you get from this pressing.
This vintage stereo LP also has the MIDRANGE MAGIC that’s missing from the later reissues. As good as some of them can be, this one is dramatically more real sounding. It gives you the sense that Frank Sinatra is right in front of you.
He’s no longer a recording — he’s a living, breathing person. We call that “the breath of life,” and this record has it in spades. His voice is so rich, sweet, and free of any artificiality, you immediately find yourself lost in the music, because there’s no “sound” to distract you.
Or so I thought at the time.
We’re still surprised at how well recorded the album is. It takes a pressing like this to really show you the live Jimi Hendrix magic Eddie Kramer got onto tape. Drop the needle on “Little Wing” and you are going to be floored.
The size and space here are really something, miles beyond most. The resolution and clarity of the open live sound of this copy bring out all the instrumental textures and details of the recording like few we played. More importantly, the extended top keeps the highs from getting hard or harsh the way they do on so many pressings we’ve played.
As these performances are culled from different concerts, the sound varies a bit from track to track, but every track on here sounds good and the best tracks sound amazing.
Almost Famous
It’s hard to understand why this album isn’t more widely known. The performances are great and the sound is excellent for a vintage live recording.
Naturally not every copy sounds as good as this one. We heard a lot of pressings with too much grit and grain, and many that badly lacked presence. When I play a live album, I want to feel like I am there at the show (and to do that I set the volume accordingly, of course) but with most copies that just isn’t possible.
Thanks to Eddie Kramer’s amazing engineering, this album will have Jimi playing live in your listening room, and what a thrill it is to hear it all these years later (and on dramatically better equipment).
Of course the music is wonderful, with Respighi looking back and paying homage to the music and the musical structures of the past. This is no Pines of Rome.
