Robert Brook runs a blog called The Broken Record, with a subtitle explaining that the aim of his blog is to serve as:
A GUIDE FOR THE DEDICATED ANALOG AUDIOPHILE
Here is a posting Robert wrote many years ago and has recently updated.
A quote I rather liked:
You can throw a Hot Stamper onto your rig and hear that it sounds better than your crappy “audiophile” 180g reissue, but when you compare it to your high res digital file, you’re not quite sure which one you like better.
The digital vs. analog debate, perhaps the most enduring in all of audio, persists because only a handful of audiophiles have truly realized the full potential of analog in their systems.
You may be reading this thinking “hey whad’ya mean! My analog system sounds great!.” And it very well may sound great, but I thought and still think that my copy of Eagles sounds great, and let me tell you, the White Hot Stamper is a WHOLE new platter of wax!
The tubey jangle of the guitars, the room filling weight of the drums and bass, the airy, spacious, luscious vocal harmonies, and every last sumptuous element of the mix, unmoored, liberated from obscuration so completely that the music, freed from every conceivable resolution constraint, SOARS to life in the listening room.
That’s what this White Hot Stamper of Eagles sounds like, and that’s what analog is ALL ABOUT!
This record, The Dude be damned, is one of my all time favorites. It’s a delicious recording on even a decent copy. My current copy, which bested several others, was competitive on side 1, but laid to waste by the White Hot on side 2. And that was the side I thought mine had nailed!
Eagles lives and dies by the vocal harmonies, and when the backing vocals are as clear and present and alive as the lead vocal is on most other records then you know you’re hearing a very special copy.
Here is our description of a recent copy that is up on the site at this time.
Super Hot and $699 — affordable maybe for some, certainly not cheap, but as Robert makes clear in his review, one of the most amazing sounding recordings in the history of popular music on the right pressing, and the right pressings are the only ones we offer.
The notes for our Shootout Winning copy from 2024 can be seen at the very end of this post. Side two was a “strong 3+, ” which we would have called 4+, Beyond White Hot, way back when, but we stopped doing that many years ago.
Side two was HTF — Hard To Fault. This may have been the side two that Robert is raving about in his review.
My current copy, which bested several others, was competitive on side 1, but laid to waste by the White Hot on side 2. And that was the side I thought mine had nailed!
Eagles lives and dies by the vocal harmonies, and when the backing vocals are as clear and present and alive as the lead vocal is on most other records then you know you’re hearing a very special copy.
Can’t argue with any of that! That’s what we heard too.
Robert’s Approach
Robert has methodically and carefully — one might even say scientifically — approached the various problems he’s encountered in this hobby by doing the following:
- Improving his equipment,
- Teaching himself how to do a better job of dialing in his turntable setup.
- Learning how to do controlled shootouts for his favorite albums, and, most importantly of all:
- Carefully testing every aspect of audio and records empirically, with only his ears as his guide
More on Robert’s system here. You may notice that it has a lot in common with the one we use. This is not an accident.
And it is also no accident that these two systems just happen to be very good at showing their owners the manifold shortcomings of the modern remastered LP, as well as the benefits to be gained by doing shootouts in order to find dramatically better sounding pressings to play.
