Hot Stamper Pressings of Pablo Recordings Available Now

We freely admit that we have never played the Heavy Vinyl pressing of The Alternate Blues on the Analogue Productions label. It started life in 1996 as APR 3010, part of the Analog Revival Series on 150 gram vinyl (average price on Discogs these days: $99), and now it seems to be in print on 180 gram vinyl, made from the same metalwork by the looks of it.

The mastering of the Analog Revival Series pressing may have been credited to Bruce Leek and Stan Ricker, but the stamper information is TML, The Mastering Lab all the way.

In case you, unlike us, are tempted to try one or both of the AP pressings, or perhaps already own one or both, here is our advice on how to recognize the fairly predictable shortcomings of Chad’s pressing, or any pressing mastered by Doug Sax in the 90s for that matter. Every one we’ve ever played has suffered from the same suite of sins.

The Best Part

And we expect that the AP pressing’s failures in some areas will be so obvious that you really don’t need any other copy of the album to be able to hear them.

Just focus on the two qualities that Analogue Productions’ records have always failed to deliver: transparency and freedom from smear.

In our 2011 shootout notes we drew the reader’s attention to both:

What to Listen For – Transparency

What typically separates the killer copies from the merely good ones are two qualities that we often look for in the records we play: transparency and lack of smear. Transparency allows you to hear into the recording, reproducing the ambience and subtle musical cues and details that high-resolution analog is known for.

Note that most Heavy Vinyl pressings being produced these days seem to be quite transparency challenged.

Lots of important musical information — the kind we hear on even second-rate regular pressings — is simply nowhere to be found. That audiophiles as a whole — including those that pass themselves off as the champions of analog in the audio press — do not notice these failings does not speak well for either their equipment or their critical listening skills.

What to Listen For – Lack of Smear

Lack of smear is also important, especially on a recording with this many horns, where the leading edge transients are so critical to their sound. If the horns smear together into an amorphous blob, as if the sound were being fed through ’50s vintage tube amps (for those of you who know that sound), half the fun goes right out of the music.

Richness is important — horns need to be full-bodied if they are to sound like the real thing — but so are speed and clarity, two qualities that insure that all the horns have the proper bite and timbre.

More on Smeary Sound

Smear, a blurring of the sharpness of the notes, refers to the loss of transient information which is most often associated with tube gear.

However, smear occurs with every kind of gear, especially high-powered amps, the kind typically required to power the inefficient speakers audiophiles often favor. We caution against the use of both.

When we finally got rid of our tube equipment and high-powered amps, a lot of smear in the playback of our records disappeared with them.

Once that happened, the smear that is commonly heard on most modern Heavy Vinyl repressings became much more noticeable and, over time, even more annoying.

Nobody else seems too bothered by smear, and one of our many theories about the stereo shortcomings of reviewers and audiophiles in general is that their systems are fairly smeary, so a extra smear — a little or a lot — becomes virtually inaudible to them.

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