Month: August 2025

Leonard Cohen – Songs Of Leonard Cohen

More of the Music of Leonard Cohen

  • With incredible Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) grades on both sides, this Stereo 360 copy of Cohen’s debut LP is practically as good as we have ever heard, right up there with our Shootout Winner
  • Intimate, breathy vocals are key to the better copies such as this one, and that of course goes for practically every singer-songwriter album we offer
  • Some of the man’s most memorable songs, including “Suzanne,” “Sisters of Mercy,” “So Long, Marianne” and “Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye”
  • Problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs, but once you hear just how superb sounding this copy is, you might be inclined, as we were, to stop counting ticks and pops and just be swept away by the music
  • 5 stars: “The ten songs on Songs of Leonard Cohen were certainly beautifully constructed, artful in a way few (if any) other lyricists would approach for some time, but what’s most striking about these songs isn’t Cohen’s technique, superb as it is, so much as his portraits of a world dominated by love and lust, rage and need, compassion and betrayal…few musicians have ever created a more remarkable or enduring debut.”

Get ready for some serious goosebumps! If this copy of Songs Of Leonard Cohen doesn’t give you chills, I don’t know what will.

We’ve played a ton of 360s and Red Labels, and copies that sound as good as this one are clearly the exception and not the rule.

The Red Label pressings from the 70s can be quite good if you know which are the good stampers and which to avoid, information that the average audiophile record lover would have a hard time coming by on his own.

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Eric Dolphy and Booker Little – Memorial Album

More Jazz Recordings Engineered by Rudy Van Gelder

  • Memorial Album appears on the site for only the second time ever, here with an INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side one mated to a solid Double Plus (A++) side two
  • These sides are rich and full, from the extended top end all the way down to the deepest bass — thanks RVG!
  • If you want to hear a healthy dose of the Tubey Magic, size and energy of this wonderful live session recorded at the Five Spot in New York in July 1961, this copy will let you do that

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“Explaining doesn’t work. Only hearing works.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Dire Straits Available Now

One of our erstwhile customers asked me a question not long ago:

Hey Tom, 

Some audiophile guy professes to me that he prefers his Japan and German pressings of Dire Straits’ 1st LP over the UK press. How can I tell him in a kind way that he is wrong?

Dear Sir,

You can’t, in a kind way or any other way.

You have to play the two pressings for him, on his stereo or yours, and that’s simply not possible unless he lives near you, which is rarely the case, audiophiles being fairly thin on the ground in my experience.

Explaining doesn’t work. Only hearing works.

All forums — whatever their benefits — cannot overcome this problem.

Next time someone posts an opinion about a record, ask yourself “What does his system sound like?”

If you don’t know the answer, why on earth would you put any stock in his opinion? For all you know his system sucks and his critical listening skills are non-existent. He might have a pair of JBL 100s in the basement and a Dual turntable (or the modern equivalent of same).

He may hate the records whose sound you love and love the records whose sound you hate.

I Look Forward to Being Proven Wrong

Along those lines, I had a new customer tell me that this record was one of the better Heavy Vinyl reissues he had heard recently. Rather than just paint every Heavy Vinyl pressing with the broad brush of disgust I normally reach for when doing reviews for them, I thought maybe I should actually give this one a listen.

It might change my mind. It might help me see the light. Maybe I could even learn a thing or two instead of being so relentlessly negative about modern reissues. They can’t all be as bad as I say, can they?

So I took his advice and ordered one right then and there.

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Seems as Though the Shaded Dogs Pressed in Indianapolis Actually Do Sound Better

Hot Stamper Pressings of Living Stereo Recordings Available Now

As painful as it may be for us to admit it, sometimes the conventional wisdom turns out to be right!

For RCA classical and orchestral recordings, collectors have long held that the earliest pressings on the Shaded Dog label, in stereo, pressed in Indianapolis, tend to be the best sounding. That qualifier “tend” may not be necessary — plenty of audiophiles think they simply are better sounding, no question about it.

Maybe. If we tallied all the copies we’ve played and created a very large spreadsheet using the data, perhaps we could give you a better answer than “maybe,” but we’ve definitely never tallied them up and have no plans to do so. It sounds like a lot of work.

We are not revealing what record had these stampers and earned these grades for the simple reason that we rarely if ever give out the specific information that identifies the best sounding pressing of any album.

As I’m sure you can understand, we want you to buy the copy with the Hottest Stampers from us, not find one on your own! We’re happy to be somwhat helpful, but naturally we find it necessary to draw the line somewhere, and giving out “the shootout winning stampers” are where we choose to draw it.

You can be sure, based on our most recent shootout for this mystery RCA title, that in future we will focus our efforts on the Indianapolis pressings and avoid the Richmond pressings unless they are cheap and minty.

When the conventional wisdom turns out to be correct, in other words, when it comports with reality, at least for the seven copies of this album that we played, we are happy to temporarily put aside our skepticism and learn from what this title is trying to tell us.

Why? Because the experimental evidence supports it.

The reality is that most of the time we are not able to predict which stampers will win a shootout before we actually sit down to play all our copies.

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Sonny Rollins – Way Out West

More of the Music of Sonny Rollins

  • With two solid Double Plus (A++) sides or close to them, this vintage Contemporary pressing is doing just about everything right
  • This copy has superb 1957 Contemporary stereo sound – big, open and natural throughout
  • One of our favorite Rollins albums – one listen to this copy and you will know exactly why we love the recordings of Roy DuNann
  • This is a Must Own jazz album from 1957 that belongs in every jazz-loving audiophile’s collection
  • 5 stars: “The timeless Way Out West established Sonny Rollins as jazz’s top tenor saxophonist…”
  • Contemporary is one of our favorite jazz labels — once you’ve heard a Hot Stamper pressing of one of their releases, you will surely become as enthusiastic as we are about their phenomenally good recordings from the 50s and 60s
  • Like a lot of the best jazz recordings we know of, these sessions were recorded live in the studio

It’s our favorite jazz label for sonics by a long shot. Roy DuNann always seems to get The Real Sound out of the sessions he recorded — amazingly realistic drums in a big room; full-bodied, breathy horns; Tubey Magical guitar tone; deep, note-like bass; weighty pianos; vocal immediacy, and on and on.

For us audiophiles both the sound and the music here are wonderful. If you’re looking to demonstrate just how good a 1957 All Tube Analog recording can be, this copy will do the trick.

This pressing is super spacious, sweet, and positively dripping with ambience. Talk about Tubey Magic, the liquidity of the sound here is positively uncanny. This is vintage analog at its best, so full-bodied and relaxed you’ll wonder how it ever came to be that anyone seriously contemplated trying to improve it.

This IS the sound of Tubey Magic. No recordings will ever be made like this again, and no CD will ever capture what is in the grooves of this record. There is of course a CD of this album, but those of us who possess a working turntable and a good collection of vintage vinyl could care less.

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Mozart / Symphony No. 35 – A Cisco Recommended LP, or Is It?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Mozart Available Now

I wrote this review in 2001, the equivalent of the stone age in my audio world — most everything of value that I’ve learned in audio over the last fifty years I learned in this century — and would now disagree with a great deal of what I said about the sound of the record.

The music and performances are fine, but the sound has all the hallmarks of bad cutting equipment and dead-as-a-doornail RTI vinyl.

This is the review I wrote in 2001:

Hearing this performance from Thomas Nee and his orchestra is like hearing the work for the first time. It may be difficult to reproduce the magic in these grooves but wonderfully rewarding when you do. You won’t be bored! The sound is intimate and immediate; this is the record for those of you who appreciate more of a front row center seat. Count me in; that’s where I like to sit myself.  

I worked hard on my system for about 4 hours one night, using nothing but this record as my test, because of its wealth of subtle ambience cues, excellent string tone, and massed string dynamics. There is a lot to listen for, and a lot to get right, for this album to sound right.

The performance of the Mozart’s 35th Symphony is definitive. Without a doubt this is the best Mozart record currently available, one that belongs in any serious record collection. I give it a top recommendation for its sublime musical qualities that set it apart from other current releases. In short, a Must Own.

UPDATE 2020

Twenty years and a great deal of audio progress later I have changed my tune. Now I would say:

Cisco’s titles had to fight their way through Kevin Gray’s opaque, airless, low-resolution cutting system, a subject we discussed on the blog in some depth here. Other bad sounding records that he mastered can be found here.

An excerpt:

As is the case with practically every record pressed on Heavy Vinyl over the last twenty years, there is a suffocating loss of ambience throughout, a pronounced sterility to the sound. Modern remastered records just do not breathe like the real thing.

Good EQ or bad EQ, they all suffer to one degree or another from a bad case of audio enervation.

Where is the life of the music?

You can try turning up the volume on these remastered LPs all you want; they simply refuse to come to life.

A textbook case of live and learn.

Cisco Music had this to day about their record:

One of Mozart’s most popular symphonies is given a visceral and driving performance. Instead of slowing down the tempo in service to lyricism, conductor Thomas Nee chose to adhere to Mozart’s written instructions: ‘The first movement must be played with fire; the last, as fast as possible.’ Even if you own several recordings of this bright and joyous work, you’ve never heard it played like this, and certainly never with this kind of audiophile sound! 

This is exactly the kind of “audiophile sound” I fell for 20 25 years ago, long before I had a clue as to just how good the best orchestral recordings could sound.

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Warren Zevon – Excitable Boy

More of the Music of Warren Zevon

  • Excitable Boy is back on the site after a three year hiatus, here with solid Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER on both sides of this vintage Asylum pressing
  • The sound is anchored by an exceptionally fat, rich, punchy low end, and this copy delivers on that promise big time
  • Much like The Pretender, this is a superb recording with the kind of Tubey Magical Analog Richness we go crazy for here
  • 4 stars: “Excitable Boy was an actual hit, scoring one major hit single, ‘Werewolves of London,’ and a trio of turntable hits (‘Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner,’ ‘Lawyers, Guns and Money,’ and the title track).”
  • If you’re a fan of Warren’s, this has to be seen as a Top Title from 1976 that surely belongs in your collection
  • It’s without a doubt his best sounding album, and, to our way of thinking, his only essential one

Just listen to ‘Excitable Boy’ and ‘Werewolves Of London’ to hear how full-bodied the sound of this album can be — the louder you play it the better it gets!

That’s the “big speaker quality” we live for around here. You turn it up and it starts to really rock.

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Frames of Reference, Carefully Conducted Shootouts and Critical Listening

Hot Stamper Pressings of Decca Recordings Available Now

The sound we were hearing on this pressing of the Beethoven Septet (CS 6132) during a recent shootout was both rich and sweet, with easily recognized, unerringly correct timbres for all seven of the instruments heard in the work.

The legendary 1959 Decca tree microphone setup had worked its magic once again.

And, as good as it was, we were surprised to discover that side two was actually even better!

The sound was more spacious and more transparent. We asked ourselves, how is this even possible?

Hard to believe, but side two had the sound that was TRULY hard to fault.

This is precisely what careful shootouts and critical listening are all about.

Shootouts are the only way to answer the most important question in all of audio: “compared to what?”

Without shootouts, how can you begin to know what are the strengths and weaknesses of the copies you own?

The vast majority of our Shootout Winning pressings fall short in one way or another on one side, something we have lately been making more of an effort to highlight on the blog.

Now, if you are a fan in general of modern Heavy Vinyl pressings, what exactly is your frame of reference? How many good early pressings of those same titles could you possibly own, and how were they cleaned?

Without the best pressings around to compare, Heavy Vinyl might sound fine.

It’s only when you have something better to play that its faults come into clearer focus.

And if you have any of these titles and they sound fine to you, this is a situation that requires your immediate attention!

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Joni Mitchell – Ladies Of The Canyon

More of the Music of Joni Mitchell

  • This vintage Reprise pressing boasts solid Double Plus (A++) sound from first note to last
  • Ladies of The Canyon is a very strong album for Joni, with some of her most well known, seemingly timeless songs: “Morning Morgantown,” “For Free,” “Big Yellow Taxi,” “Woodstock,” “The Circle Game” and more
  • We guarantee there is dramatically more space, richness, vocal presence, and performance energy on this copy than others you’ve heard, and that’s especially true if you made the mistake of buying whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing is currently on the market
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Yet another essential listen in Mitchell’s recorded canon.”
  • If you’re a fan of this lady, and what audiophile wouldn’t be?, this title is clearly one of the best of 1970 and a true Must Own for the audiophile

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Sorry, This Album of String Quartets Is Not As Good As We Thought

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Claude Debussy Available Now

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Maurice Ravel Available Now

UPDATE 2024

About ten years ago we were under the impression that the domestic Philips pressing you see pictured had exceptionally good sound, sound that would be difficult to beat.

Well, that just goes to show how little we knew about the sound of the various recordings of this music back then.

We needed to do a lot more homework, and the reason we started playing other recordings of these two string quartets is simply that the Philips record we liked so much was too hard to find on the domestic pressing.

The imports could be found, sure, but they sounded like a lot of Philips pressings — overly smooth, smeary, lifeless, recessed and veiled, like the Golden Imports Philips had made in the 70s. It was in those bad old days of the early 70s that Philips set about ruining the sound of phenomenally good Mercury master tapes. They should never be forgiven for it.

I bought one and fell in love with it, for both its music and its sound, a classic case of me not having any idea what I was missing.

How clueless was I? I was almost as clueless as the guy who thought the MoFi pressing of Star Wars and Close Encounters was a true audiophile Demo Disc. As foolish a MoFi fan as I was in the late-70s, even I knew was a piece of phony junk that record was.

Now there are dozens of outfits that make it their business to ruin phenomenally good master tapes by dint of their incompetent remastering, a story we never tire of telling.

Breaking Through

The key to our breakthrough was the rediscovery of a record we had played many years before, all the way back in 2005, and had simply lost track of in the ensuing years: LSC 2413. (It’s easy to lose track of rare Shaded Dogs. They’re not usually sitting in the bins of your local record store. Out of sight, out of mind.)

The best pressings of LSC 2413 are dramatically better sounding, and the performances are equal to or better than any we know.

Recently we finally got hold of another copy of the rare Philips pressing above and found to our dismay that the sound was not nearly as good as we remember it from our shootout years ago. The copy that came in was flat and badly lacked the presence and Tubey Magic of the Shaded Dog pressings we played of the RCA.

As the best of the RCA pressings demonstrate beyond all doubt, 1960 was a great year for classical and orchestral recordings. (What the shameful modern masterng engineers operating today do to such wonderful recordings is another thing altogether.)

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