More of the Music of Crosby, Stills, Nash
- A vintage copy of CS&N’s self-titled debut LP that was doing just about everything right, with both sides earning superb grades
- The sound is big and rich, the vocals breathy and immediate, and you will not believe all the space and ambience
- We love the album, but it is a cryin’ shame, as well as a fact, that few were mastered and pressed well, and that includes none of the originals in our experience
- The reason you don’t see this title on the site more frequently is simply that it has become nearly impossible to find copies in audiophile playing condition with the right stampers
- The right stampers for this album are at least ten times more rare than those for Zep II, but for some reason everybody thinks that record is rare!
- We’ve discovered a hundred or more titles in which one stamper always wins, some of which we’ve identified, and no, we have no intention of giving out that information, sorry
- The fact that only one specific later pressing ever wins our shootouts is proof that freeing your mind from unscientific thinking is the only way to find the highest quality pressings
- 5 stars: “A definitive document of its era.”
- This is a Must Own Hippie Folk Rock Masterpiece from 1969 that belongs in every right-thinking audiophile’s collection
Although millions of copies of this album were sold, so few were mastered and pressed well, and so many mastered seemingly with no regard to sound quality, that only a vanishingly small number of copies have ever made it to the site with Hot Stampers.
We consider this album a Masterpiece. It’s a recording that should be part of any serious Popular Music Collection.
Others that belong in that category can be found here.
This vintage Atlantic pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records can barely BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing signs of coming back. If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to “see” the performers, and feeling as if you are sitting in the studio with the band, this is the record for you. It’s what vintage all analog recordings are known for — this sound.
If you exclusively play modern repressings of vintage recordings, I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it — not often, and certainly not always — but maybe one out of a hundred new records do, and those are some pretty long odds.
What the Best Sides Of Crosby, Stills and Nash Have To Offer Is Not Hard To Hear
- The biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space
- The most Tubey Magic, without which you have almost nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes in 1969
- Tight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low
- Natural tonality in the midrange — with all the instruments having the correct timbre
- Transparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional studio space
No doubt there’s more but we hope that should do for now. Playing the record is the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above, and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find a pressing that sounds as good as this one does.
Side One
Suite : Judy Blue Eyes
What’s magical about Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young? Their voices of course. It’s not a trick question. They revolutionized rock music with their genius for harmony. Any good pressing must sound correct on their voices or it has no value whatsoever. A CSN record with bad midrange reproduction — like most of them — is a worthless record.
Listen to the section of the song that starts with Stills’ line “Can I tell it like it is”, with Nash and Crosby behind him — it’s clearly a generation of tape down from what came before and what comes after. The voices and the acoustic guitars just seem to lose their immediacy for no apparent reason. Wha’ happen?
It’s the mix, folks, and no mastering engineer can fix it. This album is full of parts and pieces of various songs that are occasionally problematical in that way. Recognize them for what they are, a little bump in the road of the recording, no more, no less. On the hot copies the best sounding material will sound amazing, and the lesser sounding material (i.e., the more poorly recorded or mixed bits and pieces) will sound as good as they can sound.
That’s the nature of the beast. It is what it is. The more intensely you listen to a record like this — a true Rock Classic from the ’60s — and we listen very intensely around here when doing these shootouts — the more you will notice these kinds of recording artifacts. It’s what gives them “character”.
It’s also what allows you to play a record like this on a regular basis and still find something new in it after all these years. We’ve made some recent improvements to the stereo and room here at Better Records and I can tell you I heard things in this recording I never knew were there. What could be more fun than that? The music never gets old, and neither does the sound!
Marrakesh Express
Guinnevere
The best copies have superb transparency, clarity and sweetness on this track, one of the most well-recorded on the entire album. Super-spacious tubey-magical DEMONSTRATION QUALITY sound is what this track delivers in spades.
You Don’t Have To Cry
Pre-Road Downs
Wooden Ships
The best copies have tons of deep, hard-to-control deep bass on this track. Actually, there’s tons of deep bass on both sides of this album, one reason why it’s hard to find Hot Stampers. That kind of bass can easily get out of control if the record isn’t cut right and pressed right, and it sure seems like not many of them were.
The deep bass has to stay DOWN below the main elements in the mix. If it’s calling attention to itself by being overly loud or blubbery, or by sticking its head up into the midrange where it doesn’t belong, the balance suffers, and so does the listener. (The WORST example of bad blubbery Half-Speed Mastered bass has to be the Nautilus pressing of this album. Nice mids and highs but bass that will drive you from the room.
Lady Of The Island
Like Guinneverre, the best copies have superb transparency, clarity and Tubey Magical sweetness on this track. Another one of the more well-recorded on the entire album.
Helplessly Hoping
This is a wonderful song with lots of energy in the midrange and upper midrange area which is difficult to get right. A while back (2005) I was playing around with VTA, having recently installed a new cartridge on my playgrading table, when I discovered that this song showed me EXACTLY how to get the VTA right.
VTA is all about balance. The reason this song is so good for adjusting VTA is that the guitar at the opening is a little smooth and the harmony vocals that come in after the intro can be a little bright. Finding the balance between these two elements is key to getting the VTA adjusted properly.
Most people will never know what they’re missing on Helplessly Hoping because they will never have an amazing sounding copy of this song to play. The Hot Stampers are just too rare.
Long Time Gone
49 Bye-Byes
AMG 5 Star Rave Review
The Crosby, Stills & Nash triumvirate shot to immediate superstardom with the release of its self-titled debut LP, a sparkling set immortalizing the group’s amazingly close, high harmonies. …
Stills’ gorgeous opener, “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,” in particular, is an epic love song remarkable in its musical and emotional intricacy, Nash’s “Pre-Road Downs” is buoyant folk-pop underpinned by light psychedelic textures, and Crosby’s “Long Time Gone” remains a potent indictment of the assassination of Robert Kennedy. A definitive document of its era.
Further Reading
Below you will find some of the more popular commentaries we’ve written about Crosby, Stills and Nash’s debut. It’s an album I have been obsessed with since the age of 15. I played it mostly on 8-track tape back then.
For those of you too young to know about these things, that speaks volumes about the quality of my turntable at the time, an all-in-one auto-changing record player which was mounted to an AM/FM receiver, complete with 8-track tape playback. The thing probably retailed for less than a hundred bucks and sounded every bit as bad as you’re imagining.
This is also one of the records that we’ve often used to test with in order to improve the quality of our playback over the years, along with scores of others you can read about here on the blog.
Don’t expect to find any Hot Stamper pressings on the site though. They are very hard to find, due to the fact that the right reissues are the only ones that sound good to us and they apparently just did not make very many of them.
Listening in Depth to Crosby Stills and Nash
Although millions of copies of this album were sold, so few were mastered and pressed well, and so many mastered and pressed poorly, that few copies actually make it to the site as Hot Stampers.
We wish that were not the case — we love the album — but the copies we know to have the potential for Hot Stamper sound are just not sitting around in the record bins these days.
Whatever you do, don’t waste your money on the Joe Gastwirt-mastered CD. It couldn’t be any more awful. (His Deja Vu is just as bad.)
Suite Judy Blue Eyes – Critical Listening Exercise
What’s magical about Crosby, Stills, Nash (& Young)?
Their voices of course. It’s not a trick question. They revolutionized rock music with their genius for harmony. Any good pressing must sound correct on their voices or it has no value whatsoever. A CSN record with bad midrange — like most of them — is a worthless record.
For more posts on how to go about improving your critical listening skills, please click here.
Detail on Crosby, Stills and Nash – Holy Grail or Audio Trap?
Detail may be the Holy Grail to some audiophiles, but listening for the details in a recording can be a trap we too easily fall into unless we are on our guard.
Tonal balance is the key. Without correct tonal balance, no judgments about the details of the recording have any value.
A case in point: As good as the Classic Heavy Vinyl pressing is, the guitar at the opening of Helplessly Hoping tells you everything you need to know about what’s missing. The guitar on the better Hot Stamper copies has a transparency and harmonic integrity that cannot be found on Classic’s version.
An audiophile record dealer (of course; who else?) once raved to me about Crosby Stills and Nash on Nautilus. I said “What are you talking about? That version sucks!” He replied “No, it’s great. Helplessly Hoping sounds amazing.”
Now one thing I know about the Nautilus is this: although it is wonderfully transparent in the midrange, it may very well take the cake for the most bloated, out-of-control bass in the history of Half-Speed mastering.
Accurate VTA Using Helplessly Hoping on the Classic LP
VTA is all about balance.
The reason this song is so good for adjusting VTA is that the guitar at the opening is a little smooth and the harmony vocals that come in after the intro can be a little bright.
Finding the balance between these two elements is key to getting the VTA adjusted properly.
For more advice on setting your VTA properly, please click here.
Crosby Stills & Nash – Classic Records Reviewed
The Classic 180g version was a revelation to some when it came out years ago. Bernie actually cut it pretty darn right. However, his mastering chain cannot compete with the one used on the best vintage pressings.
The evidence for this is overwhelming. There simply is no Bernie-Grundman-cut record that is the equal of the best pressings not cut on his current chain that I have heard over the years.
It lacks the Tubey Magic that can be found in abundance on the best vintage pressings and sounds too modern for a recording from 1969.