More Heavy Vinyl Commentaries and Reviews
I got this idea while thinking about the old saying:
Fast, cheap and good – pick two.
I’ve modified this saying into a version for audiophiles that takes into account that although some record collectors with top quality equipment may want to pursue the modern Heavy Vinyl pressing, they will run into the unavoidable reality that as their stereo starts to sound better, their new Heavy Vinyl records will start sounding worse.
They may want to get many things out of audio and record collecting, but they can’t have it all.
As will explain in detail further on, they will be forced to limit themselves to two of the following three.
Let’s assume that the audiophiles who collect modern records are those who:
- Want to have a revealing, accurate stereo.
- Want to be able to enjoy their favorite music.
- Want to continue to buy Heavy Vinyl pressings because they enjoy buying and collecting those records.
So let’s look at what happens when they pick one of the only three combinations that are logically available to them:
If they pick one and two, they get to keep their good stereo, and they can continue to enjoy their favorite music on it, but they will not be able to play Heavy Vinyl pressings anymore and will have to stop buying them.
On high-quality equipment those records reveal their manifest shortcomings and are simply no fun to play. They can have one and two but not three.
Damn!
What about one and three then?
If they pick one and three, they can still have excellent stereo reproduction in the home, and they can still buy and collect Heavy Vinyl pressings to their heart’s content, but they will not be able to enjoy the pressings they buy. Those pressings will simply not sound very good on a system that is working properly.
One hopes that before too long these folks will recognize that all they were doing was buying junk vinyl from the grifters exploiting the lo-fi and mid-fi crowd while pretending to appeal to the higher end of the market.
The lo-fi/mid-fi types are those who, lacking high-quality playback, are simply not able to tell the difference. Good systems make it easy to expose the incompetence of the pretentious hacks who make these new records.
Bad systems let them get away with murder.
And the folks making these records probably have playback systems of such low quality that they haven’t a clue as to just how bad their records actually sound. This allows them to be both incompetent and pretentious. They don’t know how little they know, the Dunning-Kruger effect in action.
OK, apparently one and three are out. How about two and three? How might those two work together?
Not any better. Choosing one and three, audiophiles can enjoy their music, and they can play their Heavy Vinyl pressings, the ones they like to buy and collect, endlessly discussing their merits on youtube as well as every audiophile forum on the web, but they can forget having a good stereo — the better the reproduction, the worse these Heavy Vinyl LPs sound. The ultimate effect is to ruin the fun of buying, collecting and discussing them.
Options two and three are sure to be the solution audiophiles and record collectors will find the most agreeable of the three combinations available to them.
Since nothing is harder than getting good sound in the home, these audiophile/record collectors will never need to burden themselves with the effort and expense of improving their playback.
They can simply enjoy doing what they like to do, which is buying records and playing them.
Which is why everybody got into the hobby in the first place, right?
True enough, as far as it goes. For those of us who became obsessed with music and wanted to hear it at its best, mostly on vinyl, we found that if we kept working on our systems, pushing against the boundaries of trying to get higher fidelity sound in the home, we actually could break through the barriers and achieve sound quality we never expected to find.
There was, however, an unintended consequence of making so many improvements to our playback and having them build one upon another to create so many revolutionary changes.
Our stereos became so good at reproducing music from vinyl that the newly remastered records that used to sound fine began sounding worse and worse. And when I say worse and worse, I mean really, really bad.
The Big Wake Up Call
This is exactly what happened to us way back in 2007. As you may well imagine, with each passing year the sonic differences between the best vintage vinyl pressings and their modern Heavy Vinyl counterparts has grown. The gap is now enormous.
If you would like to improve your playback in order to be able to recognize the faults of these modern pressings, we have cataloged their shortcomings chapter and verse for that very purpose.
After 2007, we found we had to limit ourselves to finding the music we wanted to enjoy on old vinyl pressings.
Not because we wanted to. Because we had to. The new records we were playing just weren’t sounding good to us any more, not when they were being reproduced properly.
All of this upsets the Heavy Vinyl crowd no end. They have no way of knowing just how much musical information they’re missing, based on my fifty years in audio, I would lay odds that the chances are good they will never find out.
If you have Heavy Vinyl pressings and actually want to know what you are missing, please go to our web site and buy a Hot Stamper pressing of one of your favorite albums.
We can write about the sound of the wonderful pressings we offer until we are blue in the face and never change a single mind.
It usually — not always, but often — only takes one listen to make the case for the superior sound of our Hot Stamper pressings, as some of our new customers made clear to us in their testimonial letters, hearing is believing.
And if for some reason you don’t like whatever record we sent you, for any reason, send it back and we will refund your money.
Further Reading