Month: November 2025

Please Please Me on MoFi – Another Disgracefully Spitty Half-Speed

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Beatles Available Now

Sonic Grade: C

If you own the Mobile Fidelity LP, do yourself a favor and buy one of our Hot Stamper pressings. (Actually any good British import pressing will do.)

What’s the first thing you will notice other than correct tonality, better bass and a lot more “life” overall?

No spit!

As we’ve commented elsewhere, because of the wacky cutting system they used, Mobile Fidelity pressings are full of sibilance. 

As I was playing a British pressing of this record many years ago, maybe by about the fifth or sixth song it occurred to me that I hadn’t been hearing the spit that I was used to from my MoFi LP. You don’t notice it when it’s not there.

But your MoFi sure has a bad case of spitty vocals. If you never noticed them before, you will now.

We discuss the sibilance problems of MoFi records all the time. Have you ever read Word One about this problem elsewhere? Of course not.

Audiophiles and audiophile reviewers just seem to put up with these problems, or ignore them, or — even worse — fail to recognize them at all.

Play around with your table setup for a few hours and you will no doubt be able to reduce the severity of the sibilance on your favorite test and demo discs. All your other records will thank you for it too.

Especially your Beatles records. Many Beatles pressings are spitty, and the MoFi Beatles pressings are REALLY spitty. Of course MoFi fans never seem to notice this fact. Critical listening skills and a collection of MoFi pressings are rarely if ever found together. For reasons that should be obvious to anyone spending time on this site, you either have one or the other.

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Why Does “Why” Matter in Analog Audio

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.

Why Does “WHY” Matter in Analog AUDIO?

 

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.)

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All Truth Passes Through Three Stages

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More on the Importance of Critical Thinking Skills in Audio

All truth passes through three stages.

First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Here’s a blast from the past that may shed some light on the philosophical insight above.

I had an interesting conversation with one of our good customers a while back. He had recently been chatting with some of his audiophile buddies about Hot Stampers. Let’s just say they weren’t buying any of it. This is more or less how he related the conversation to me over the phone (which started out as an email, most of which is reproduced below).

First he told me how much he has been enjoying his Hot Stampers, then we talked about his audiophile buds.

The Hot Stampers have been phenomenal as always. No matter how many records I buy, none can hold a candle to anything in my Hot Stamper collection.

A couple of my friends happen to be longtime audiophiles. As still a relative beginner to the world of audiophiles, I had hoped that these audio vets would be fans of Better Records, if not regular customers.

Instead they seemed to be incredulous at the thought of Hot Stampers — even though they had never heard one!! Admittedly, they have more years of experience in this endeavor, but I thought, hey, at least I am willing to give a great sounding record a try, right? Perhaps over the course of many years, people believe they have it all figured out. [More on that subject here.]

Anyhow, even if they could ultimately be persuaded by playing a Hot Stamper from my collection, it just seemed like such a ridiculous attitude to dismiss something that you’ve never listened to. Don’t get me wrong — they’re nice people, but it certainly doesn’t inspire faith in their approach to audio. As such, I’m sticking with the Better Records advice, whether it’s a record or system upgrade. And so far the audio wisdom you guys have offered has never failed to impress me.

Equally important, I appreciate your approach to the whole process, which seems to be rooted in the apparently radical idea of objectivity. What a concept!

That’s the gist of the story. I told him that he had officially just had his first taste of those whose ears are plugged up with Audiophile Dogma. Welcome to my world.

Just to be safe, when I got off the phone I looked up the word “incredulous,” which is defined as “unwilling to admit or accept what is offered as true.” In this case, these guys not only don’t believe two identical looking records will often sound different, they cannot even accept the possibility that they would.

It’s fine to be skeptical; I’m as skeptical as they come, and proud of it. But pig-headed is something else. I wrote this bit of commentary on that very subject:

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Aretha Franklin – Aretha Now

More of the Music of Aretha Franklin

  • A killer sounding pressing of this early Atlantic label LP with Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it on both sides
  • Here is the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern pressings barely begin to reproduce – folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing any sign of coming back
  • Problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these early pressings – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you
  • 4 1/2 stars: “… this still caught Aretha Franklin at the peak of her early form. ‘Think,’ ‘I Say a Little Prayer,’ ‘See Saw,’ and ‘I Can’t See Myself Leaving You’ were all big hits.”

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Elton John – Don’t Shoot Me I’m Only The Piano Player

More of the Music of Elton John

  • This vintage copy of Elton’s 1973 release (the first to hit the site in over three and a half years) boasts INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it from start to finish
  • Forget the dubby, closed-in and transistory domestic pressings – here is the relaxed, rich, spacious, musical, lifelike sound that only the best imports can show you
  • Thanks to Ken Scott‘s brilliant engineering and Gus Dudgeon‘s production savvy, every song here sounds better than you imagined, because finally you are hearing it right
  • 4 stars: “His most direct, pop-oriented album… a very enjoyable piece of well-crafted pop/rock.”

The amazing engineer Ken Scott (Ziggy Stardust, Magical Mystery Tour, Honky Chateau, Crime of the Century, Truth, Birds of Fire) is the man responsible for the stunning sound here.

The kind of Tubey Magical richness, smoothness and fullness he achieved at Trident in the early ’70s, as well as here at a certain French country estate, have never been equaled elsewhere in our opinion. (more…)

One Man’s Experimental Approach to Audio Reveals Some Inconvenient Truths

Here Are Some of Our Favorite Orchestral Test Discs

UPDATE 2025

The following was originally posted by Robert in 2020. We have added a link at the top to test discs that we’ve found to be good for tweaking and tuning your system, room, electricity and such like.

Robert has also reviewed a fair number of difficult to reproduce orchestral recordings, titles that are sure to challenge the playback quality of any system. They should make it easy to hear whether the changes you make are actually getting closer to sound that is more like live, unamplified music, which, from our point of view, should be the goal of any audiophile.

This is the one true test for any system.

Here’s an especially good test disc to get you started.

POWER CORDS: Is THIS the Difference You Want?

Robert Brook has a blog which he calls

A GUIDE FOR THE DEDICATED ANALOG AUDIOPHILE

Below is a link to a comparison Robert Brook carried out with a group of power cords he had on hand. I did the same thing about fifteen twenty years ago and it taught me a lot (although strangely in my case I’ve never taken the time to write about it, mostly because my notes are long gone).

The experience he went through is instructive and easily replicated by anyone for any system. The benefits are likely to be substantial, maybe even life-changing. (Robert has had many life-changing experiences with audio and music since this was written, and we couldn’t be happier that we played some small part in the evolution he underwent.)

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Yes – The Yes Album

More of the Music of Yes

  • You haven’t begun to hear the weight, energy and space of Yes’s brilliant third album until you’ve played one of our killer Hot Stamper copies
  • On the right system, at the right volume (very loud), this very record is an immersive experience like practically no other (also particularly on side two)
  • A Top 100 Album and the band’s best sounding record if you ask us (although Fragile can sound absolutely amazing too, just not as smooth and rich)
  • “Organist Tony Kaye, guitarist Steve Howe and bass player Chris Squire play as though of one mind, complementing each other’s work as a knowledgeable band should.”
  • This Prog Rock Masterpiece from 1971 is one that we feel belongs in every audiophile’s collection
  • The Yes Album (along with Fragile and Close to the Edge) is also one of those albums that helped us dramatically improve our playback quality

Drop the needle on this bad boy and you will find yourself on a Yes journey the likes of which you have never known. And that’s what I’m in this audiophile game for. The Heavy Vinyl crowd can have their dead-as-a-doornail, wake-me-when-it’s-over pressings that play quietly. I couldn’t sit through one with a gun to my head.

With the amazing Eddie Offord at the board, as well as the best batch of songs ever to appear on a single Yes album, they produced both their sonic and musical masterpiece — good news for audiophiles with Big Speakers who like to play their records loud.

These guys — and by that I mean this particular iteration of the band, the actual players that were involved in the making of this album — came together for the first time and created the sound of Yes on this very album, rather aptly titled when you think about it. (more…)

Letter of the Week – “Oh man, what a difference. Huge sound – really alive – the way you remember this sound should be like.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Van Halen Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently:

Hey Tom,  

I just got a super hot stamper Van Halen and immediately got out my DCC version – which is a record I’ve had no complaints about – compared to most of the heavy vinyl remaster crap – but, oh man, what a difference.

Huge sound – really alive – the way you remember this sound should be like – I saw these boys when they first hit – one of my first rock concerts.

Thanks again – this was money well spent – and on this one, I can even ebay away the DCC and more than break even (I almost feel guilty about that!).

Richard

Richard,

Isn’t it funny how a record that doesn’t sound “bad” in any way — the DCC – falls so far short of what it really should have sounded like? How will the audiophile record collectors of the world ever get better sound when they already think they have it?

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The Rolling Stones / Rolled Gold from 2011

More of the Music of The Rolling Stones

UPDATE 2025

We will likely never do this shootout again.

We understand now that the album releases are capable of much better sound than we had previously thought.

We know that because we’ve done scores of shootouts for them. Add to that the fact that our system is much more revealing and we would be very surprised if any side of this album scored better than 1.5+ on any side, although it is certainly possible.

We don’t do shootouts for pressings with very little hope of top quality sound.

Some compilations have the potential for great sound, these for example, but not many do.

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Paul McCartney – Pipes of Peace

More of the Music of Paul McCartney 

  • You’ll find excellent Double Plus (A++) grades throughout this vintage UK pressing – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • The sound here is rich and Tubey Magical, two qualities the CD made from these tapes surely lacks and two qualities which are crucial if this music is to sound the way Sir Paul intended
  • These sides are bigger, more natural, warmer and more solid than those of any other copy you’ve heard or your money back
  • The sound may be heavily processed, but that sound works surprisingly well on the best sounding pressings (played at good, loud levels on big dynamic speakers in a large, heavily-treated room, of course)
  • “‘Say Say Say’ [featuring Michael Jackson] hits hard, sounding as funky as anything on Thriller, and ‘Pipes of Peace’ achieves an earned grace. Perhaps Pipes of Peace doesn’t have the gravitas of Tug of War but it offers something equally valuable: a portrait of an impeccable craftsman at play.”

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