Month: April 2025

Letter of the Week – “I feel like a scotch right now.”

More of the Music of Frank Sinatra

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently:

Hey Tom,   

Thanks guys – sitting here listening to my A+++/A+++ Sinatra that I just opened. Wow, just as advertised it’s like Uncle Frank is right here in my listening room.

I feel like a scotch right now.

Love your service, your product and your integrity.

Rocco

Rocco,

Thanks for the kind words. We love to make discoveries of just these sorts of albums, and make them available on Hot Stamper pressings that we know for a fact sound good, because we cleaned and played them ourselves.

What could be better?

Thanks for your letter.

Best, TP

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We Don’t Know — And We’ve Learned Over the Years Not to Pretend To

More on the Subject of Pretentious Knowledge

In our twenty-year-old review for the Speakers Corner pressing of the Tsar Saltan we made the following claim, a claim which we obviously had no evidence to back up.

But… when I hear this kind of sound only one word comes to mind, a terrible word, a word that makes us recoil in shock and horror. That word is DUB. This reissue is made from copy tapes, not masters.

It was foolish of us to declare any such thing, especially with such certainty. How on earth could we possibly know what tapes were used to master the record, in Germany of all places? The very idea is absurd. We call people out for saying things they have no evidence to support all the time. Running into this review today, I have to call myself out for such nonsense. What I should have said was the following:

This reissue sounds to us as though it has been made from copy tapes.

Just to be clear, I think I am perfectly justified in saying that it sounds like a copy tape was used to master the record, but I am not at all justified in saying that a copy tape was actually used to master the record.

Nor do I have any business talking about about the sound of a master tape I’ve never heard.

I can certainly talk about the sound of the best London pressings. Those I have played. I’ve critically listened to batches of them over the course of many years. They may be expensve but they are not hard to find. We’ve sold dozens of them as Hot Stamper pressings and played plenty of others with sound not good enough or surfaces not quiet enough to offer to our customers.

Whatever approach Decca may have used in the mastering, with whatever tape they may have used to make the records that we’ve auditioned, is information that would be nice to have. But it’s really none of my business, since it doesn’t alter the sound of the pressings we auditioned.

More importantly, it’s none of Better Records’ business.

Our business is about one thing and one thing only: records that sound better than other pressings.

Discussions of master tapes and what they should sound like or what they do sound like is not part of our remit. Nor should it be. At bottom it is nothing but speculation, and it is rarely if ever supported by anything resembling evidence.

We are firmly on record as opposing that sort of thing.

We’ve Been Saying This for Twenty Years

After our dubious claim to knowing that the record was mastered from a copy tape, we went on to say:

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Bizet / Saint-Saens / Carmen Fantaisie / Introduction And Rondo Capriccioso / Ricci

More of the Music of Georges Bizet

  • You’ll find solid Double Plus (A++) sound throughout this early London LP
  • This is a spectacular recording, and one of the Greatest Violin Showpiece Albums of All Time
  • It is certainly a record that belongs in every right-thinking audiophile’s collection. If you’re on our site and taking the time to read this, that probably means you
  • Ruggiero Ricci is superb throughout – we know of no better performance of these works than those found on this very record
  • Some old record collectors (like me) say classical recording quality ain’t what it used to be – here’s all the proof anyone with two working ears and top quality audiophile equipment needs to make the case

Ricci’s playing of the Bizet-Sarasate Carmen Fantasie is out of this world. There is no greater performance on record, in my opinion, and few works that have as much audiophile appeal.

The Average Copy

When you play a copy of this record and hear a smeared, veiled violin, don’t be too surprised. This is not the least bit unusual, in fact it’s pretty much par for the course. The soundstage may be huge, spacious and 3-D. It is on most copies.

But what good is a record of violin showpieces if the violin doesn’t sound right?

Sides One and Two

These two sides can show you how good the violin — and the whole orchestra — can sound. They’re tonally correct from top to bottom, transparent and sweet.

These pieces are less about the “violin-in-your-lap” effect and more about the violin as an integrated member of the orchestra.

These sides had plenty of a quality that goes a long way in the world of classical music. As we went through the various copies, we noticed that the sound on the best sides was especially relaxed. (Compare that to the typical Classic Records Heavy Vinyl pressing, which, on the relaxation scale of one to ten, rates a lot closer to one than it does to ten. Between one and two, probably.)

Once you spot the relaxed copies, you find they tend to do every other thing well, and that’s what it takes to score top grades in shootouts — doing everything well.

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Townes Van Zandt – Flyin’ Shoes

More Folk Rock

  • This original Tomato pressing boasts superb Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER from start to finish – remarkably quiet vinyl too
  • Amazingly present, real and resolving, this copy is guaranteed to murder any remastering undertaken by anyone – past, present and future
  • The LIFE of the man’s music is captured on this pressing, and you can be pretty sure that that is simply not going to be the case with whatever Heavy Vinyl mediocrity they’re peddling to record buyers these days
  • 4 stars: “The melodies here are strong, the lyrics full of Van Zandt’s razor sharp insight, and the production is sparse and to the point, bringing to mind the inconspicuous polish of High, Low and in Between. The feel here is a balance between folk and country, with Van Zandt’s voice and guitar up front, letting the songs speak for themselves. “
  • If you’re a Van Zandt fan, this title from 1978 is surely a Must Own

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Tom Waits / Heartattack and Vine

More Tom Waits

  • Both sides of this vintage Asylum pressing (the first copy to hit the site in years) have superb sound for Waits’s 1980 release, earning STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them
  • The overall sound is exceptionally rich and full with wonderful immediacy to the vocals
  • Waits’s music is an acquired taste and certainly not for everyone, but those of you who appreciate Randy Newman, just to take one example, are likely to get a lot out of this one
  • “…Heartattack and Vine reveals just how much Waits had grown during his tenure with Asylum. …almost every song stands on its own as a dusty gem.”

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Classic Records and Begged Questions

Hot Stamper Living Stereo Orchestral Titles Available Now

A typical review of a Classic Records classical release here on the blog might read more or less as follows:

Classic Records ruined this album, as anyone who has played a sampling of their classical reissues would have expected.

Their version is dramatically more harsh and aggressive than the Shaded Dogs we’ve played, with transistory shrill string tone and almost none of the sweetness, richness and ambience that the best RCA pressings have in such abundance.

In fact, their pressing is just plain awful, like most of the classical recordings they remastered, and should be avoided at any price. 

With every improvement we’ve made to our system over the years, Classic’s remastered classical offerings have managed to sound progressively worse. How could that be, you ask?

Because higher quality playback stops hiding the shortcomings of bad sounding records.

At the same time, and much more importantly, better audio reveals more and more of the strengths of good sounding records.

Begging the Question

But what actually is a good record? Don’t I have to offer some evidence for what causes a record to be good rather than simply asserting that the original is good and the Heavy Vinyl reissue is bad (or at least worse)?

Luckily for you, dear reader, you are actually on a blog that has much to say about these issues.

The main reason we feel qualified to make these judgments is that we make sure to play the records we review under rigorously controlled conditions in what amounts to “blinded” experiments. (Certainly as blinded as is practical.)

And our approach to finding the best sounding pressings for any given album has gone through a host of changes over the course of decades in order to allow us to carry out this difficult work. Work we actually enjoy doing.

It’s also the kind of work that practically nobody else does.

And certainly no one does it at anything approaching the scale of our efforts, with a full time staff and a monthly record purchasing budget in the tens of thousands of dollars.

An amazingly good stereo set up in a heavily-treated room with clean electricity doesn’t hurt either.

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Men At Work – Business As Usual

More Titles Only Offered on Import Vinyl

  • This excellent UK import copy (one of only a handful to hit the site in three years) boasts two solid Double Plus (A++) sides – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • “Who Can It Be Now” and “Down Under” are the big hits, and we guarantee you’ve never heard them sound as good as they do on this vintage pressing
  • Big and full-bodied, and much smoother than most, with an abundance of energy, the sound here immediately set the sonic bar very high
  • “The production sound was low-key, but clean and uncluttered. Indeed, the songs stood by themselves with little embellishment save for a bright, melodic, singalong quality.”
  • In our opinion, Business As Usual is the band’s best sounding album, and probably the only Men at Work record you’ll ever need. Click on this link to see more titles we like to call one and done.

As a bit of background just in case you are not familiar with the album, the domestic pressings are horrendously bright. We have never played one that didn’t sound like the treble was jacked up to a level just this side of ear-bleed.

The only way to hear this album sound right is on Australian, Dutch, British and, more than a little surprisingly, even Japanese vinyl. Yes, we have heard them all. We’ve liked about one out of every one hundred Japanese pressings we’ve played over the last twenty years. We were surprised to find that the Japanese copy of Business As Usual we played many years ago was pretty good, for what that’s worth.

(We can’t be sure that on our current system with our current ears we would feel the same.)

We tend to prefer the Brits but it seems that any import is worth a listen. The key, as always, is in the mastering and pressing.

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Another Great Conga Tester Title

Hot Stamper Pressings of Recordings by Rudy Van Gelder Available Now

The best pressings of Prelude are especially full-bodied and rich.

The congas are well up in the mix, which allows them to drive the powerful rhythmic energy of the music.

We know this because the copies with congas that were veiled or thin never seemed to have any get up go. 

There is wonderful transparency and openness to the soundstage, as well as less congestion in the loudest parts. Also Sprach (2001) is on side one of the album and it is KILLER on the best pressings.

Both sides can also be surprisingly sweet and Tubey Magical, nice qualities for a CTI record to have since so many of them are aggressive and edgy to the point of distraction.

Full, lively horns; rich, punchy, smear-free congas; fuzzy fuzzed-out guitars; as well as correct tonality and Tubey Magic in every area of the spectrum, what’s not to love?

The best pressings are so much bigger than most copies too. There is no doubt that you will hear the difference immediately. If you do a shootout with your best copy and ours plan on it being over almost before it starts.

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Bartok – Music For Strings Percussion And Celeste / Marriner

The Music of Bela Bartok Available Now

  • We surveyed a large group of pressings containing this work, and in the end Marriner’s reading from 1970 had the best sound and the best performance of all those we played
  • Wonderfully textured string tone and huge hall space extending wall to wall and floor to ceiling – everything you want in a top quality orchestral recording is here, and more
  • To keep beating a horse that has been dead for years, this is precisely the sound that the modern reissue fails to offer the committed audiophile with top quality equipment
  • “… one of the best-known compositions by the Hungarian composer Béla Bartók.”
  • There are about 150 orchestral recordings we think offer the best performance coupled with the highest quality sound. This record has earned a place on that list.

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These Pink Label Pressings Can Sound Good, But Great? Not a Chance

Hot Stamper Pressings of Music on Island Records Available Now

Below you will see the bottom part of the stamper sheet for a shootout we did recently.

Please note that the album you see pictured is not the one we are discussing here.

It very well could have been been a Jethro Tull album, but all we can say for sure is that it was definitely an album on Island, which just happens to be one of our favorite labels, for sound and music.

The earliest pressings for many records on the Island label are not very good. This one — again, not for This Was, for some other record — is not a bad sounding pressing.

With grades of 1.5+ on both sides, it fits comfortably in our section for good, not great sounding LPs — but the right reissues from the 70s are a big step up in class sonically. They’re the ones that win shootouts, not these Pink Label LPs.

It’s big and clear but dry and spitty and badly needs tubes in the cutting chain.

Do the record collectors who prize the Pink Label pressings above all others notice these things?

Do the audiophiles who play them?

Been There, Done That

We’ve run into so many sonically-flawed Pink Label Islands by now that hearing one sound lackluster if not actually awful doesn’t phase us in the least. Some of the other Pink Labels that never win shootouts can be found here.

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