Robert Brook runs a blog called The Broken Record, with a subtitle explaining that his blog is:
A GUIDE FOR THE DEDICATED ANALOG AUDIOPHILE
We know of none better, outside of our own humble attempt to enlighten that portion of the audiophile community who love hearing music reproduced with the highest fidelity — and are willing to go the extra mile and pay the extra dollar to make that happen.
I wrote a piece about this subject years ago, exhorting audiophiles to forget their theories. An excerpt:
We don’t know what causes some copies to sound so good.
We know them when we hear them and that’s pretty much all we can say we really know. Everything else is speculation and guesswork.
We have data. What we don’t have is a theory that explains that data.
And it simply won’t do to ignore the data because we can’t explain it. Hot Stamper deniers are those members of the audiophile community who, when faced with something they don’t want to be true, simply manufacture reasons why it can’t be true or shouldn’t be true. That’s not science. It is in fact the very opposite of science.
Practicing science means following the data wherever it leads.
The truth can only be found in the record’s grooves and nowhere else.
If you don’t understand record collecting as a science, you won’t be able to do it well and you certainly won’t achieve the success that’s possible by using a scientific approach.
(For those who like to get into the weeds with data in the form of stamper numbers, we’ve got plenty on the blog to share with you.)
Further Reading