Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Al Stewart Available Now
Our answer, judging by the copy we played not long ago, would be solidly in the negative. The final grade we awarded both sides was No, our way of saying the record is Not Good.
Below is a description for what a top copy of the album sounds like, based on our most recent shootout:
Incredible sound throughout this vintage Janus pressing of Stewart’s 1976 Masterpiece. With engineering by Alan Parsons, the top pressings are every bit the audiophile Demo Discs you remember. The best sides have sweet vocals, huge amounts of space, breathtaking transparency, and so much more.
Tubey Magical acoustic guitar reproduction is superb on the better copies of this recording. Simply phenomenal amounts of Tubey Magic can be heard on every strum, along with richness, body and harmonic coherency that have all but disappeared from modern recordings (and especially from modern remasterings).
But if you own the wrong Mobile Fidelity pressing — this one was reissued in 1981, the original came out in 1978, so there may be some other pressings that sound better than this one — you would never know how good sounding the album can be. We put a copy we had laying around in a shootout recently and the results were, not to put too fine a point on it, pretty painful.
As the notes make clear, the Mobile Fidelity pressing, with the stampers you see on the sheet above, is:
- Small, veiled and thick,
- Yet the voice is overtextured (full of phony detail) and spitty (of course; Half-Speeds tend to be sibilant and some are ridiculously so).
- The middle (snare and vocal) are always boxy, forward and weird, with way too much 300-400 hz
- Wooly bass too, of course (again, this is something you hear on virtually every Half-Speed ever made. Poor bass definition is the hallmark of the Half-Speed mastered pressing. I would hope this does not come as news to you).
- Grade: No, on both sides
Does that sound like an audiophile record to you?
It sure does to us! We’ve played plenty that sounded as bad this, and some that are even worse, if you can wrap your head around such a thing. We created a special hall of shame for MoFi records that sound as bad as this one. This title is entry number 58.
We’ve Played ‘Em
We’ve auditioned countless pressings in the 38 years we’ve been in business — buying, cleaning and playing them by the thousands.
This is how we find the best sounding vinyl pressings ever made, through trial and error. It may be expensive and time consuming, but there is simply no other method for finding better records that works. If you know of one, please write me!
We are not the least bit interested in records that are “known” to sound the best.
Known by whom? Which audiophiles — hobbyists or professionals, take your pick — can be trusted to know what they are talking about when it comes to the sound of records?
I have never met one, outside of those of us who work for Better Records. I remain skeptical of the existence of such a creature. The audiophile experts and reviewers I’ve encountered on the web seem hopelessly lost to me.
We’re looking for records that actually do sound the best.
If you’re an audiophile with an ear for top quality sound on vintage vinyl, we’d be happy to send you the Hot Stamper pressing guaranteed to beat anything and everything you’ve heard, especially if you have any pressing marketed as suitable for an audiophile. Those, with few exceptions, are rarely better than mediocre.
And if we can’t beat whatever LP you own or have heard, you get your money back. It’s as simple as that.
Further Reading