Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Who Available Now
UPDATE 2026
A remastered pressing of Live at Leeds came out on Heavy Vinyl from Universal Records in 2001.
We got a copy of it in, played it, heard the kind of compressed, lifeless sound that is the purest evidence of incompetent mastering — something which was rampant in the world of Heavy Vinyl at the time and still is — and wrote the short review you see below.
We didn’t feel the need to get into much detail about its other faults. When a record is this bad, why bother?
This Universal Records 180 gram LP has flat as a pancake sound. The CD almost has to be better.
It’s yet another record that belongs in the audiophile hall of shame.
Further Reading
Here are some of our reviews and commentaries concerning the many Heavy Vinyl pressings we’ve played over the years, well over 300 at this stage of the game in 2026.
Even as recently as the early 2000s we were still impressed somewhat with the better Heavy Vinyl pressings. If we had never made the progress we’ve worked so hard to make over the course of the last twenty or more years, perhaps we would find more merit in the Heavy Vinyl reissues so many audiophiles are enamored with these days.
We’ll never know of course; that’s a bell that can be unrung. We did the work, we can’t undo it, and the system that resulted from it is merciless in revealing the truth — that these newer pressings are second-rate at best and much more often than not third-rate and even worse.
Some audiophile records have such bad sound that I was pissed off to the point of creating a special sh*t list for them. As of 2025, it contains close to 300 titles. That is a lot of bad sounding audiophile records! I should know, I played an awful lot of them.
Having now retired, I’m pleased to be able to leave that job in the more than capable hands of the listening crew at Better Records. They have been playing many of the newer releases and finding the sound is every bit as bad or worse these days.
Setting higher standards — no, being able to set higher standards — in our minds is a clear mark of progress. Judging by the hundreds of letters we’ve received, especially the ones comparing our records to their Heavy Vinyl and Half-Speed mastered counterparts, we know that our customers see things the same way.
Further Reading