Hot Stamper Pressings of Percussion Recordings Available Now
Sonic Grade: F
Alto records did this title on 180 gram in 1996, and it was a COMPLETE DISASTER.
Those of you getting our catalogs in the 90s were warned not to buy it. I was lucky enough to own a very good original pressing of it at the time, which of course made it easy to recognize just how poorly the new pressing had been mastered.
At the time, no criticisms of the quality of the mastering were offered in the audiophile press however, none that I saw anyway.
And every major audiophile record dealer carried it. Funny how some things never change.
Famous in its Day
The Carmen Ballet Suite was deservedly famous in audiophile circles back in the ’70s. Even with the dubious equipment that a high-end stereo store might be running, this record would still sound shockingly good. It has so much “life” to it, so many interesting colors, and above all such three-dimensional spaciousness, it can make even bad transistor equipment, which is pretty much all there was back then, sound good. (The store I frequented carried the classic tube Audio Research electronics — that’s where I bought mine — but most stores were all transistor, and high-power transistors at that, not a sound I care to revisit. Would love to hear my SP3-A-1 again though.)
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.