Hot Stamper Pressings of Contemporary Jazz Albums Available Now

This album is findable on the OJC pressing from the 80s, but we found the sound of the oens we we played seriously wanting.

They were brighter and thinner than even the worst of the real Contemporary pressings.  Above all they badly lacked Tubey Magic, a sound the best pressings are swimming in. Consequently, none of them made the cut for our shootout. (Here are more than 400 other vintage albums that fell short either sonically or musically that audiophiles should consider avoiding.)

That is just not our sound.  It’s not the sound Roy DuNann was famous for, so why should we like it either?

Some OJC pressings are great — including some of the new ones — some are awful, and the only way to judge them fairly is to judge them individually, which requires actually playing a large enough sample.

Since virtually no record collectors or audiophiles like doing that, they make faulty judgments – OJC’s are cheap reissues sourced from digital tapes, run for the hills! – based on their biases and inadequate sample sizes.

You can find those who subscribe to this approach on every audiophile forum there is. The methods they use do not produce good results, but as long as they stick to them, they will never have to worry about discovering that inconvenient truth.

Further Reading

• Roy DuNann is one of our favorite engineers
• These are potentially good sounding OJC pressings
• Hot Stamper pressings that sound better on the right reissue available now