More Reviews and Commentaries for Heavily Processed Recordings
This album has some of the worst sound I have ever heard in my life, worse than The Hunter even, and that’s saying something.
If this kind of crap is what audiophiles choose to play, then they deserve all the derision heaped upon them.
We’re glad we no longer offer embarrassments such as The Well, although we used to, many years ago. In our defense we would simply offer up this old maxim: de gustibus non est disputandum.
Our old slogan was Records for Audiophiles, Not Audiophile Records, but we also followed this business rule: Give the Customer What He Wants.
Now we give the customer what he wants, as long as he wants one of the best sounding pressings of the album ever made. (In this case obviously there is no good sounding pressing.)
How Bad Is It?
If this isn’t the perfect example of a pass/not-yet record, I don’t know what would be.
Some records are so wrong, or are so lacking in qualities that are critically important to their sound — qualities typically found in abundance on the right vintage pressings (although there is no acceptable pressing of this record, vintage or otherwise) — that the defenders of these records are fundamentally failing to judge them properly. We call these records pass/not-yet, implying that the admirers of these kinds of phony-sounding records are not where they need to be in audio yet, but that there is still hope, and if they devote enough time and money to the effort, they can get where they need to be, the same way we did.
Tea for the Tillerman on 2 LPs at 45 RPM may be substandard in every way, but it is not a pass/not-yet pressing. It lacks one thing above all others, Tubey Magic, so if your system has an abundance of that quality, as many tube systems do, the new pressing may be quite listenable and enjoyable.
Those whose systems can play the record and not notice this important shortcoming are not exactly failing. They most likely have a system that is heavily colored and not especially revealing, but it is a system that is not beyond the pale. There’s still hope for it.
A system that can play the MoFi pressing of Aja without revealing to the listener its many unacceptable faults is on another level of bad entirely, and that is what we would characterize as a failing system.
My system in the 80s played that record just fine, or at least I thought it did. Looking back on it now, I realize my system was doing more wrong than right.
We were still selling Heavy Vinyl when this Jennifer Warnes album came out in 2001, but six years later we’d had enough of the sonically-challenged titles that were coming to market. It was then that we decided to focus all our energies on finding good vintage vinyl for our audiophile customers who were looking for authentically good sound.
In 2007 we took the question we had asked rhetorically above and turned it into a full-blown commentary: why own a turntable if you’re going to play mediocrities like these?
Looking back, 2007 turned out to be a milestone year for us here as Better Records.
If you are stuck in a Heavy Vinyl rut, we can help you get out of it. We did precisely that for these folks, and we can do it for you.
The best way out of that predicament is to hear how mediocre these modern records sound compared to the vintage Hot Stampers we offer.
Once you hear the difference, your days of buying newly remastered releases may in fact be over.
Even if our pricey curated pressings are too dear, as the English say, you can avail yourself of the methods we describe to find killer records on your own.
Bernie Grundman cut this record — Ms Warnes would never trust anyone else — and this link will take you to other commentaries you may find of interest concerning Bernie‘s accomplishments.
Further Reading