Month: February 2025

Leonard Cohen Sure Sounds Better than He Used to

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Leonard Cohen Available Now

Insanely good Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound on both sides AND fairly quiet vinyl – the best copy to ever hit the site bar none.

Unbeatable richness and freedom from artificiality in the midrange allowed this one to tower over the rest of the field.

As you can see from the notes, both sides of our most recent White Hot stamper shootout winning copy were doing everything right. We marvelled at these specific qualities in the sound:

Side One

Track one

    • Rich vocals
    • Jumps out
    • Much bigger and fuller and more natural

Track two

    • Big and rich and breathy
    • Very open chorus

Side Two

Track three

    • Big, breathy and transparent and rich
    • Vocals are right up front and dynamic

Track one

    • Sweet and tubey
    • Big bass

Midrange presence is one of the most important qualities of any rock or pop recording we might be evaluating, and for a Leonard Cohen album it is absolutely essential.

You want Cohen to be front and center, neither recessed in space nor behind a veil.

The notes for track three on side two say it all:

Vocals are right up front and dynamic

That is what gets this music to sound the way it is supposed to. You can be very sure that no Heavy Vinyl remastered pressing is going to put Leonard Cohen front and center. They practically never do. (Here is an especially offensive remaster with a bad case of recessed vocals. Funny how none of the audiophile reviewers noticed. What does that say about the quality of their playback, or the standards to which they hold their records?)

DIY Advice

To aid you in doing your own evaluations, here is a list of records that we’ve found to be good for testing midrange presence.

This is exactly why we do shootouts. If you really want to be able to recognize subtle (and not so subtle!) differences between pressings, you must learn to do them too.

And make sure to take notes about what you are hearing, good and bad.

We love Cohen’s albums here at Better Records. No, they’re not audiophile spectaculars, but much like the best Dylan recordings, when they work the sound fits the music perfectly.

UPDATE 2025

In previous listings we had noted:

The vocals are right up front and fairly dry, throwing the words and phrasing into high relief.

But we would no longer agree with the vocals being dry. On the best copies they are rich, full-bodied and tubey.

What does that say about the quality of our playback? How about: It’s better now than it used to be!

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Cream – Disraeli Gears

More of the Music of Cream

  • With killer Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) grades on both sides, this UK copy is practically as good as we have ever heard, right up there with our Shootout Winner – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • You aren’t going to believe how hard this copy rocks, with all the WHOMP and energy you never knew was there
  • Classics like “Strange Brew,” “Sunshine Of Your Love” and “Tales of Brave Ulysses” make this Cream album a Must Own
  • 4 1/2 stars: “…the imagination of the arrangements, the strength of the compositions, and especially the force of the musicianship make this album transcend its time.”
  • It’s hard to conceive of any list of the Best Rock and Pop Albums of 1967 that would not have this record on it

This superb copy has the kind of smooth, analog sound you need for this music — warm, rich, smooth, and pretty much free of the nasty grain that gets in the way on most pressings. There’s good extension up top, and the bottom end is meaty and well-defined.

The lesson we’ve learned over the years is that when the extremes are properly transferred to the vinyl, the middle will take care of itself. Since the extremes seem to be the hardest thing to get right, at least on this record, that might explain why so many copies don’t really sound the way they should.

This outstanding copy has the kind of smooth, analog sound you need for this music — warm, rich, smooth, and pretty much free of the nasty grain that gets in the way on most pressings. There’s good extension up top, and the bottom end is meaty and well-defined.

The lesson we’ve learned over the years is that when the extremes are properly transferred to the vinyl, the middle will take care of itself. Since the extremes seem to be the hardest thing to get right, at least on this record, that might explain why so many copies don’t really sound the way they should.

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The First Two Roxy Music Albums Are the Band’s Best Sounding

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Roxy Music Available Now

For Your Pleasure is a Masterpiece of Art Rock, Glam Rock and Bent Rock all rolled into one. AMG calls Roxy Music the “most adventurous rock band of the early ’70s” and I’m inclined to agree with them.

Spacious, dynamic, present, with HUGE MEATY BASS and tons of energy, the sound is every bit as good as the music. (At least on the best copies it is. That’s precisely what Hot Stampers are all about.)

Strictly in terms of recording quality, For Your Pleasure is on the same plane as the other best sounding record the band ever made, their first.

Siren, Avalon and Country Life are all musically sublime, but the first album and Pleasure are the only two with the kind of dynamic, energetic, POWERFUL sound that Roxy’s other records simply cannot show us (with the exception of Country Life, was is powerful but a bit too aggressive).

The super-tubey keyboards that anchor practically every song on the first two albums are only found there. If you want to know what Tubey Magic sounds like in 1972-73, play one of our better Hot Stamper Roxy albums. Roxy and their engineers and producers manage to capture a keyboard sound on their first two albums that few bands in the history of the world can lay claim to.

I love the band’s later albums, but none of them sound like these two. The closest one can get is Stranded, their third, but it’s still a bit of a step down.

Chris Thomas and John Punter

With all the latest technological advances in playback, I can tell you that these records sound a whole lot better than I ever thought they could.

For Your Pleasure is an amazing recording. Chris Thomas produced side one; he produced the rest of their albums (and engineered The Beatles and Badfinger and mixed Dark Side of the Moon and on and on).

The album has many of his trademark qualities: an enormous, 3-dimensional soundstage; tons of bass; tremendous dynamics; and energy to rival anything around.

John Punter‘s engineering is superb in all respects — virtually faultless.

Big Rock Records with Big Rock Sound

Both of these albums are the very definition of big speaker albums. The better pressings have the kind of ENERGY in their grooves that are sure to have most audiophile systems begging for mercy.

This is The Audio Challenge that awaits you. If you don’t have a system designed to play records with this kind of SONIC POWER, don’t expect to hear them the way the band and those involved in their productions wanted you to.

This album wants to rock your world, and that’s exactly what our Hot Stamper pressings are especially good at doing.

Roxy Music is one of the most influential and important artists/bands in my growth as a music lover and audiophile, joining the ranks of Steely Dan, 10cc, Ambrosia, Yes, Bowie, Supertramp, Eno, Talking Heads, Jethro Tull, Elton John, The Beatles, Crosby, Stills and Nash, The Cars, Led Zeppelin, Cat Stevens and countless others, musicians and bands who dedicated themselves to making the highest quality recordings they could, recordings that could only come alive in the homes of those with the most advanced audio equipment.

My system was forced to evolve in order to reproduce the scores of challenging recordings issued by these groups in the 70s.

It’s clear that these albums informed not only my taste in music, but the actual stereo I play that music on. It’s what progress in audio is all about. I created the system I have in order to play demanding recordings such as these, the music I fell in love with all those years ago.

Want to find your own killer copies?

Consider taking our moderately helpful advice concerning the pressings that have been winning our Hot Stamper shootouts for years. For Your Pleasure and the first album only really come alive:

Of course it needs to be played loud. What Roxy Music album doesn’t?

Furthermore, the better copies sound their best:

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Thelonious Monk – Monk’s Dream

More of the Music of Thelonious Monk

  • Monk’s Dream returns to the site for only the second time in over two years, here with INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them throughout this black print Stereo 360 pressing
  • These are just a few of the things we had to say about this killer copy in our notes: “big and weighty”…”great size and detail and very full”…”breathy sax jumping out of the speakers”…”very big and full piano”
  • Both of these sides are rich, spacious, big and Tubey Magical, with less smear on the piano, a problem that holds many copies back
  • The sound found on these early Columbia 360 Label Stereo pressings is absolutely the right one for Monk’s music
  • This is a lot of money for a somewhat noisy copy – “Body and Soul” is pretty much ruined here, alas – but the sound is so awesome and quiet pressings of the album so hard to come by that we hope someone will take a chance on it and get the thrill we did from hearing it sound so good
  • 5 stars: “Although he would perform and record supported by various other musicians, the tight – almost telepathic – dimensions that these four shared has rarely been equalled in any genre… Monk’s Dream is recommended, with something for every degree of Monk enthusiast.”

A truly outstanding Monk album from 1963. Thanks to Columbia’s state of the art engineering, the recording really comes to life, or at least it does on a copy that sounds as good as this one does!

Charlie Rouse is particularly wonderful on sax on this album, and this copy features him on many of its tracks. The sax sound is full-bodied and natural with lots of breath and just the right amount of bite. Monk’s piano comes through with powerful dynamics and real weight to the keys.

So many copies just sound like an old jazz record, but this one lets you feel like you are right there in the studio, watching as the music is spontaneously created. What more could you ask for?

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You Say You Want a Revelation? Well, You Know…

Record Collecting for Audiophiles – A Guide to the Fundamentals

We get letters from time to time chiding us for charging what strikes some people as rather large amounts of money for records that we would be the first to admit do not have much in the way of Collector Value, the assumption being that collectible records are of course worth the high prices they command in the marketplace, if for no other reason than that their prices are set by the market.

The writers of these letters are convinced that our Hot Stamper pressings, for some reason or another, are a very different animal. They simply can’t be worth the seemingly outrageous prices we ask for them.

Let’s be honest: if you don’t like our prices, you have plenty of other sources for the records we sell. And it’s unlikely that anyone would charge as much as we charge for what appears to be the same pressing, although it does happen.

(The phrase “appears to be” in the sentence above is at the heart of our business model. It is also foundational to much of what you need to know in order to collect better sounding records. The 6000 entries on this blog are dedicated to helping you understand everything that follows from that premise.)

Customer Satisfaction Is Everything to Us

Some of our customers seem to be inordinately pleased with their purchases. We know that because they’ve told us so.

  • One of our customers paid $700 for a copy of Aja and — mirabile dictu — he’s actually glad he did.
  • Another customer wrote to tell us how much he liked the copy of Let It Be we sent him:

“I would have paid $15,000 for this feeling had I known it was there.”

  • Was our Hot Stamper pressing of Deja Vu a bargain at $800? This customer thought it was.

Revelatory Sound Quality Can Be Yours

Some of our customers have found the sound of our Hot Stamper pressings to be nothing less than a revelation, especially the customers who’ve taken the time to compare them to the Heavy Vinyl or Half-Speed mastered pressings of the same titles they owned.

This prompted some of them to swear off the modern masterings they used to like. This, as you can imagine, warmed our hearts no end.

Our How-To Guide Is Free

If you want to do the work yourself and avoid the cost of buying our Hot Stamper pressings, we are behind you all the way.

We even tell you how to go about it.

You can buy records from us, or you can learn to do your own shootouts.

The one thing you can’t do is buy a ready-made superior sounding remastered copy of anything, no matter what anyone may tell you.

After 36 years in the audiophile record business, having conducted thousands upon thousands of Hot Stamper shootouts — using the process which allowed us to discover the best sounding pressings of countless titles in every genre of music — we can tell you with confidence that records don’t work that way.

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Shelly Manne – The Manne We Love

More of the Music of Shelly Manne

  • The Manne We Love makes its Hot Stamper debut with solid Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER throughout this original Japanese-pressed Eastworld LP
  • Both of these direct-to-disc sides are simply more spacious, transparent and dynamic than most others we played
  • The sonics are superb – airy and open, with a solid bottom end – the depth and definition are out of this world

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Who Can Explain Why This Cheap Reissue Sounds So Good?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Claude Debussy Available Now

This Decca reissue is spacious, open, transparent, rich and sweet.

Roy Wallace was the engineer for these sessions from 1955 to 1962 in Geneva’s glorious sounding Victoria Hall. His work here is superb in all respects.

It’s yet another remarkable disc from the Golden Age of Vacuum Tube Recording, with the added benefit of mastering using more modern, but apparently still good, cutting equipment from the ’70s, 1972 to be exact.

We are of course here referring to the often amazing modern mastering of 40+ years ago, not the mediocre-at-best modern mastering of today.

The combination of old and new works wonders on this title as you will surely hear for yourself on both of these superb sides.

We were impressed with the fact that it excelled in so many areas of reproduction. The illusion of disappearing speakers is one of the more attractive aspects of the sound here, pulling the listener into the space of the concert hall in an especially engrossing way.

Thread It Up and Just Hit Play Already

What might be seen as odd — odd to some audiophiles but not to us — was how rich and Tubey Magical the reissue can be on the best copies.

This leads me to think that most of the natural, full-bodied, smooth, sweet sound of the album is on the tape, and that all one has to do to get that vintage sound on to a record is simply to thread up the master on a good machine and hit play.

The fact that nobody seems to be able to make an especially good sounding record these days makes clear that in fact I’m wrong to think that this approach would work. It seems to me that somebody should be able to figure out how to do it. In our experience that is simply not the case today, and has not been for many years.

Old Tapes, New Tapes

The master tapes were about fifteen years old when this record was mastered.

Compare that to a current cutting which would be made from approximately fifty year old tapes.

Perhaps that explains it.

Or maybe it doesn’t.

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Eric Clapton – Backless

More Eric Clapton

  • You’ll find INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades on both sides of this early British pressing – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Here are just a few of the things we had to say about this amazing copy in our notes: “deep, rich bass”…”vox breathy and open”…”jumping out of the speakers”…”big and open”
  • Rich, smooth, clear sound throughout – listen to the grungy guitars on “Walk Out In The Rain” – that’s the way they should sound, all right
  • Clapton comes to life on the traditional blues “Early In The Morning” – it also has the best sound on the album
  • “Backless is a seductive record, if you’re attracted to the interplay of Clapton’s dolorous voice and Marcy Levy’s raspy backup vocals, George Terry’s slide guitar and Glyn Johns’ pristine production.” – Rolling Stone

The typical pressing of Backless, much like the typical pressing of Slowhand, is just too thick, dull, compressed and veiled to be much fun.

You need to turn this album up good and loud to get it to do anything.

The copies that are solid and weighty love getting loud; the copies that are thin and bright only get worse as the level goes up, a sign that they leave a lot to be desired. This is supposed to be a rock album after all.

UPDATE 2025

Last time around in 2023 we wrote:

We had top quality copies on both domestic and British vinyl. Both were cut here in L.A. It makes sense that either can be good.

This time around none of our domestic pressings mastered by The Mastering Lab, the ones we used to think could be good, did well in our shootout. They were boxy and hard. We probably won’t be buying them anymore. The better Brits just killed them.

Seems we got this one wrong. Live and learn is our motto, for precisely this reason. When we’re wrong we admit it, and we tell you what we think is true about the record now, reserving the right to change our minds again. All it takes is the right pressing to show us the error of our ways, and we are looking for those all the time.

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Mendelssohn / Symphony No. 3 / Maag

More of the music of Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)

More music conducted by Peter Maag

  • With two seriously good Double Plus (A++) sides, you’ll have a hard time finding a copy of Mendelssohn’s famed concert overture and orchestral symphony that sounds remotely as good as this vintage Ace of Diamonds pressing
  • A truly superb recording with huge, spacious, dynamic, lively sound – Tubey Magical richness is a big plus too
  • There is a rosiny texture to the strings that no record made in the last 30 years can capture, and if you don’t believe me, we offer this pressing as proof
  • When you hear how good this record sounds, you may have a hard time believing that it’s a budget reissue from the 60s, but that’s precisely what it is
  • Even more extraordinary, the right copies are the ones that win shootouts
  • This is one of our favorite performances with top quality sound

Audiophiles have known of this record’s sublime sonic qualities for decades. As our stereos get better, so do amazingly powerful recordings such as this one.

Both sides of this record have that classic Decca rich, sweet sound. It’s not for everybody, it’s probably not the sound one would hear in a concert hall, but we love it and so do many audiophiles.

The performance here by Peter Maag and London Symphony Orchestra is legendary and definitive. The sound is perfectly suited for this music, with massed strings to die for. This is classic Tubey Magical Decca orchestral sound.

If you want immediacy, buy a Mercury. If you want luscious, rich string tone, this vintage Ace of Diamonds reissue should be right up your alley. This is a sweetheart of a record, full of the Tubey Magic for which Decca recordings are justly famous.

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It May Be Hard to Believe, But We Actually Enjoy Testing Records

Advice to Help You Make More Progress in Audio

Some audiophile reviewers opining at great length about the sound quality of various kinds of discs — both compact and vinyl — prefer to review only those that sound good to them and simply ignore the rest. (A small sample of the writings of one such reviewer can be found here on the blog, but there are doubtless others who follow the same approach.)

We think this does the audiophile community a disservice.

Needless to say, we see our role differently. Like Consumer Reports, we like to test things.

They test toasters, we test records. We put them through their paces and let the chips fall where they may.

They want to find out if the things they are testing offer the consumer good quality and value.

We want to find out if the records we are testing offer the audiophile good sound and music.

It takes a lot of people and a healthy budget to carry out large numbers of these kinds of tests.

No other record dealers, record reviewers or record collectors could possibly have auditioned more than a fraction of the records that we have. We’ve been looking for the best sounding pressings of records for a very long time, more than forty years.

Now, with a staff of ten or more, we can buy, clean and play records in numbers that are unimaginable for any single person to attempt.

That puts us in a unique position to help audiophiles looking for the highest quality pressings.

Yes, we have the resources, the staff and the budget. More importantly, we came up with a different approach.

We’ve learned through thousands and thousands of hours of experimentation that there is no reliable way to predict which pressings will have the best sound for any given album.

The impossibility of predicting the sound of records is one which we learned to accept as axiomatic. As a born skeptic, this was never difficult for me. Early on in my audio career, sometime in the ’80s, I realized it was self-evident.

The solution we put into practice given the nature of records comprises the four principles we adopted:

  1. We stopped pretending to know something that can’t be known.
  2. We stopped relying on theories proven to have very little if any predictive effect.
  3. We stopped relying on the experts and so-called authorities.
  4. We stopped assuming and speculating and, importantly, we stopped worrying about getting it wrong.

What remained was the simplest possible approach to the problem that would actually work. One that could be taught in a high school science class, if high school science classes were run by skeptical record collectors.

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