Month: December 2025

Holst – The Planets / Previn

More of the Music of Gustav Holst

  • An early British EMI pressing of Holst’s magnum opus, here with very good Hot Stamper sonic grades on both sides
  • Previn’s and the LSO’s performances are without peer in our estimation
  • We guarantee there is more space, richness, presence, and performance energy on this copy than others you’ve heard or you get your money back – it’s as simple as that
  • A TAS list Super Disc, with a performance that’s as spectacular as the recording (thanks to the work of the two Christophers)
  • Marks and problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs, but once you hear the sound of this copy, you might be inclined, as we were, to stop counting ticks and pops and just be swept away by the music
  • This link will take you to more of our favorite orchestral performances with top quality sound

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On A Day at the Races, Which Side Lacked Space?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Queen Available Now

We described our 2025 White Hot Shootout Winner this way:

Here are just a few of the things we had to say about this incredible copy in our notes: “tubey and silky vox”…”very transparent and present”…”3D and sweet and tubey”…”big bass!” (side two)…”very full bodied and 3D.”

We shot out a number of other imports and the midrange presence, bass, and dynamics on this outstanding copy placed it well above almost all the other pressings we played.

As you can see from the notes, side one was killer in every respect, and the way we know that with a high degree of certainty is that we played a bunch of copies and nothing could touch it.

Side two was every bit as good in virtually every area, but in the final analysis we determined it fell a bit short in one. We discovered that fact when we came across a side two that was slightly better in one aspect of its sound than the side two you see described in the notes below.

When we played the two best copies back to back, something we do for each side as a final test in every shootout, side one of this copy came out on top, earning a grade of 3+. However, the side two of another pressing showed us there was even more space to be heard surrounding the music than we’d noticed the first time around.

With another copy earning a better grade for having even more space and ambience, we felt the right grade for this side two was 2.5+, Nearly White Hot.

Will the owner of this copy be able to tell?

That seems unlikely. It would be the rare listener indeed who would be able to detect anything missing on this amazingly good side two.

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Chabrier / Orchestral Music – Ansermet

More of the Music of Emmanual Chabrier

  • This vintage London pressing of the Suisse Romande‘s performance of Chabrier’s most famous compositions boasts incredible Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) grades from start to finish – just shy of our Shootout Winner
  • It’s also impossibly quiet at Mint Minus to Mint Minus Minus (or close to it), a grade that practically none of our vintage classical titles – even the most well-cared-for ones – ever play at
  • Contains our favorite “Espana Rhapsody” on side one, and we guarantee you’ve never heard it sound remotely as good as it does on this very copy
  • This spectacular Demo Disc recording is big, clear, rich, dynamic, transparent and energetic – here is the sound we love
  • All the energy and power of Chabrier’s remarkable orchestration, thanks to the brilliant engineering of Roy Wallace
  • Ansermet’s Chabrier disc has long been a favorite of ours here at Better Records – this copy will show you why
  • We have a section of classical recordings that we think offer the best performances with top quality sound, and this record is one of its founding members. (Some might say that this one might even be ever so slightly better for the Espana Rhapsody.)

If you want a classical record to TEST your system, if you want a classical record to DEMO your system, you will have a hard time finding a better pressing than this very copy.

Who can resist these sublime orchestral works? To quote an infamous (around here) label, they are an audiophile’s dream come true.

So clear and clean, and spread out on such a huge stage, either one or both of these sides will serve you well as your go-to reference disc for Orchestral Reproduction.

Listen for the waves of sound in Espana — only the best copies bring out the energy and power of Chabrier’s remarkable orchestration.

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Imagine on Mobile Fidelity from 1984

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of John Lennon Available Now

This Jack Hunt-mastered Half Speed has the midrange suckout that Mobile Fidelity was notorious for.

Lennon and his piano on the first track sound like they are coming from another room.

And yet somehow there are still “audiophiles” in this day and age that defend the records put out by this ridiculous label.

Oy vey. What is wrong with these people?

I Have a Theory

Actually, I have a good idea why so many so-called audiophile records have a sucked-out midrange.

A midrange suckout creates depth in a system that has difficulty reproducing depth.

Imagine that instead of having your speakers pulled well out from the back wall as they should be, instead you have placed your speakers right up against the wall.

This arrangement, though preferable aesthetically and dramatically more family- and wife-friendly, has the unfortunate effect of seriously limiting your speakers’ ability to reproduce whatever three-dimensional space exists on your recordings.

I hinted back in 2022 that I was going to discuss this idea down the road, and like most things that I was supposed to write about down the road, we’re still waiting to see it.

The album I was going to write more about was Kind of Blue.

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The “X-Factor” in Analog Playback

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 higher fidelity — and are willing to go the extra mile and pay the extra dollar to make that happen.

The “X-FACTOR” in ANALOG PLAYBACK

Robert closes his story with some ideas that I have been advancing for years, ideas that, implemented with the seriousness and rigor required, are practically guaranteed to help anyone find more joy in the music they love.

Systems that have this X-factor are a rare thing indeed. The time and effort they require is far beyond what most of us are willing to put into this hobby, and even then, we need to be blessed with a good ear to boot.

But such a system is well worth striving for. And while not cheap, money only gets us so far in building it. Rather, we need to have a clear understanding of what we’re aiming for. We need to know what a system with this X-factor actually sounds like. Which means we need to be able to hear it in the first place.

Robert is a case study in what it takes to make the kind of dramatic progress in this hobby that he has achieved.

He also has written at some length about what motivated him to devote so much time and energy to the improvement of the playback quality of his favorite recordings. For some of us this is very familiar ground. It has been my experience that only the unrestrained love of the sound of music can be the driver of real success in audio.

Music does the driving, sure, of course it does, but the vast majority of music lovers never cared much about sound, which is no doubt why Spotify has been so successful. I hope to be able to find the time to write about an experiment I carried out not long ago comparing the sound of a track I heard on SiriusXM versus the same track called up on my phone with Spotify. The differences I heard really knocked me back on my heels.

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Eagles – Eagles Live

More of the Music of The Eagles

  • These vintage pressings of the band’s first live album boast solid Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER on all FOUR sides
  • This copy is remarkably spacious, full-bodied and natural, with a nicely extended top end, plenty of space around the instruments and vocals, and few of the problems that plagued many pressings we played (discussed below)
  • The album provides a balanced document of the band’s musical history – four tracks were recorded in 1976, the rest in 1980
  • Problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these Classic Rock records – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you
  • That said, this title in particular is almost always noisy, which is why you will rarely find it on our site — most of what we buy is just too noisy to sell

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Letter of the Week – “You might pay a lot more for an early Beatles pressing on Discogs but you’d still pay less and get a better pressing from your site.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Beatles Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased back in 2024:

Hey Tom,

I’m genuinely thrilled to have someone who figured out what’s going on with vinyl and how to make it sound best and what vinyl to buy. I’ve been posting in different places, like on Reddit, Discogs.com and other groups I belong to over the last year, telling them essentially two things: you figured out that the best pressings can only be found through shoot outs or your service. They’re not going to be the first pressing of a record necessarily or anything simple like that. It’s just not that easy.) And to stay away from recent remasters and half-speed remasters.

And I said that while some stuff on your site may not be in everyone’s budget, certain things are so worthwhile, like mid-career Beatles albums, to take one example. You’d be foolish to go anywhere else. To get a Hot Stamper or Super Hot Stamper of, say, Rubber Soul or Revolver from you is a great deal. You might pay a lot more for an early Beatles pressing on Discogs.com but you’d still pay less at better-records.com AND get a better pressing from your site. And I give other examples where it just makes more sense to buy from you and know you’ll get a guaranteed great record; money back guarantee – no questions.

And the other discovery is that you figured out how to clean the records better than anyone, and how important that is. You’ve heard me say it’s the clarity of a CD with the warmth of vinyl. (I can’t have been the first one to think up that analogy.) And that even brand new records need to be cleaned before you can truly judge them. So unless one buys from your company, or learns to clean the records using your system and learn to do shootouts (which will take a long time, but it’s a good skill if you have the interest), you’re going to be listening to mediocre stuff.

And when you hear the real deal for the first time, it will be so obvious that the previous stuff was crap. (My next purchase will be your cleaning system before I buy another record. I’ve just got to have this book off my plate.)

So I wanted you to know I was spreading the gospel and you’ve already given me a lot that I’m really grateful for. And I appreciate you answering all my early questions and my occasional questions in addition to redefining everything I know about vinyl.

Andrew

Andrew,
Thanks for the kind words, as usual!

It’s true that our Beatles pressings are going to beat practically any early pressing of any title you can find for yourself, for lots of reasons, the main one being that the early Beatles pressings of Revolver and Rubber Soul and most of their other titles are not especially good sounding.

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Roland Kirk – Left & Right

More Jazz Recordings of Interest

  • Left & Right 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 – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • Rich, solid bass; you-are-there immediacy; energy and drive; instruments that are positively jumping out of the speakers – add it all up and you can see that this copy had the sound we were looking for
  • 4 1/2 stars: “…extremely brilliant and thoroughly accessible.”

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Thriller Is Proof that Bernie Grundman Was Cutting Great Records in 1982

Hot Stamper Pressing of the Music of Michael Jackson Available Now

This commentary was written many years ago, probably in 2007, right around the time that our system really started to get Thriller to sound good, owing to advances we had made in cleaning and playback. We went into a great deal more detail about those changes in this commentary, which compares the sound of Thriller from the 80s and the sound of Thriller today.

Our old friend Bernie Grundman handled the mastering for Thriller and managed to do a really nice job. Unfortunately, most copies of this mass-produced classic don’t give you as much of the magic as other copies, including the ones BG mastered.

The sound on this copy is huge — big, wide, deep, and open, with the kind of three-dimensional soundstaging that lets the music unfold in front of you and around you as well. You get the bottom-end punch that’s so crucial to this music and tons of energy. The bass is meaty and well-defined, showing you the rhythmic foundation that the music needs. The sound is transparent with amazing texture to practically every element.

Michael’s voice is marvelous on this copy — breathy, textured, and positively dripping with emotion (just listen to him break down on The Lady in My Life).

Thanks to constant improvements in our stereo, we’re now getting this album to sound better than it ever has. Extended highs appeared where none had been before. We were hearing synthesizers buried deep in the mix we’d never heard. All of a sudden, these ’80s pop records had amazing analog magic.

If your system is up to the task, you won’t believe how big and lively this album sounds. Who woulda thunk it?

In a more recent commentary we went into some detail about Bernie Grundman’s shortcomings as a mastering engineer.

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Leroy Anderson – Music of Leroy Anderson, Vol. 2 / Fennell

More Mercury Label Recordings

  • Music of Leroy Anderson, Vol. 2 debuts on the site with solid Double Plus (A++) sound on both sides of this original Plum Label Mercury stereo pressing
  • It’s also fairly quiet at Mint Minus Minus, a grade that even our most well-cared-for vintage classical titles have trouble playing at
  • This spectacular recording is big, clear, rich, dynamic, transparent and energetic – here is the Mercury sound we love
  • Mercury recordings often struggled in the area of string reproduction, but here the rich, textured sheen sounds glorious – tonally correct and, above all, natural

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