Advice-WTLF, Soul, Blues, R&B, etc.

Records with advice on what to listen for in order to separate the best pressings from the also-rans.

What to Listen For on Midnight Love

Hot Stamper Pressings of Soul, Blues, R&B, etc. Available Now

UPDATE 2026

In 2002 we put up a 3/3 copy of Midnight Love that really knocked our socks off. We wrote:

With two STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sides, this Midnight Love is certainly as good a copy as we have ever heard – exceptionally quiet vinyl too.

Here are just a few of the things we had to say about this amazing copy in our notes: “round and punchy”…”jumping out of the speakers”…”good size and weight”…”spacious and relaxed percussion and vox”…”top detail” (side two).

Drop the needle on Sexual Healing then sit back and relax as the rich, warm sound of analog sets the mood.

There’s good frequency extension up top and down low, with plenty of meaty bass and silky highs (just check out those bells).

What made it so good? Glad you asked!

This copy has two qualities which are essential if this music is to  work its soulful magic: silky vocals and a big meaty bottom end.

Check out all the texture to the synths on Turn On Some Music – this is a highly resolving pressing which takes Marvin Gaye’s music — the last he would make before his death — to another level.

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Amazing Grace – A Bit of VTA Experimentation Can Really Pay Off

More Setup Advice for Turntables and Cartridges

UPDATE 2026

Although we liked it well enough, this title unfortunately did not get much love from our customers.

Years ago it was tagged here as a never again title, which simply means we would stop doing shootouts for it because they were no longer profitable. (It’s possible we could do it again, expecially if we were to get hold of an amazing sounding pressing or two, but at this point that does not seem to be in the cards, if for no other reason than we have stopped buying them altogether. Cheap records are a thing of the past and have been for quite a while now.)

We encourage you to find a nice copy for yourself. Stick with the early label. If you don’t hear the sound we describe below, you might consider buying more copies until you do, assuming you like the music.

Amazing Grace is a handy record for VTA setup, a subject we discuss below.

On the better copies Aretha’s vocals are as dynamic as any you will ever hear, and unlike all the records she did with Tom Dowd, her voice never breaks up on this record. If you have big speakers that can play at loud levels, with the right volume level you can really get Aretha to belt it out like nothing you have ever heard on record. 

Like most modern churches, the kind that have upholstered pews and lots of carpeting, the natural reverberation of the sound isn’t as pronounced as it would be were the recording taking place in a 16th century cathedral.

Note also that the recording is from 1972, not 1962, so the Tubey Magic that would have been on a recording such as this ten years earlier is not going to be as great either.

When we play a big stack of copies of a record like this, the limitations of the recording have to be taken into account.

The best copies will do what the best copies do; we can’t ask them to sound like something they were never designed to sound like.

The best copies of the album clearly sound quite a bit better than the average copy we played, but they still sound like the same recording, just bigger, richer, clearer and more alive.

To set your VTA right, don’t try to make Aretha too smooth — she should sound a bit “hot” when the spirit fills her and she shouts her loudest. If you get her to sound correct you lose a lot of space and ambience. What space and ambience there is on the tape need to be there for the recording to sound “real.”

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What We Listen For on Soul to Soul

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Stevie Ray Vaughan Available Now

Number one:

Too many instruments jammed into too little space in the upper midrange.

When the tonality is shifted-up, even slightly, or there is too much compression, or too much smear, there will be too many elements — voices, guitars, drums — vying for space in the upper area of the midrange, causing congestion and a noticeable loss of clarity.

With the more solid sounding copies, the lower mids are full and rich; above them, the next “level up” so to speak, there’s plenty of space in which to fit all the instruments comfortably, without having them sound like they are all piled up on top of one another as is so often the case.

With more space and less compression and less smear the upper midrange does not sound overstuffed and overwhelmed with musical information.

Number Two:

Edgy vocals, which is related to Number One above.

Almost all of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s recordings seem to have some edge to his vocals — the man really belts it out on his albums, it’s what he does — but the best copies keep the edge under control, without sounding compressed, dark, dull or smeary.

That’s what you get with a Hot Stamper pressing — it’s the one that keeps the edge under control, but has all the energy, presence, richness and clarity you were never able to find on any pressing of the album on your own.

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Off the Wall Vs. Thriller – Which One Has More Tubey Magic?

Hot Stamper Pressing of the Music of Michael Jackson Available Now

Many years ago we came across an amazing sounding copy of Off the Wall, which prompted a few thoughts about its sound compared to Thriller.

ABSOLUTELY STUNNING SOUND for this White Hot Stamper pressing!

Both sides cannot be beat — both have the BIG M.J. SOUND that jumps out of the speakers and fills the room. We’ve never heard a copy that was so full of ANALOG MAGIC!

The vocals are PERFECTION — breathy, full-bodied, and present. The top end is extended and sweet, with tons of ambience the likes of which I’ve never heard before.

Normally when you have a copy with strong midrange presence it will be somewhat sibilant in places. Not so here. For some reason this copy has all the highs, but it’s cut so clean it practically doesn’t spit at all. Even on the song I Can’t Help It, which normally has a problem in that respect. Since that’s my favorite song on this album, and probably my favorite MJ song of all time, hearing it sound so good was a revelation.

Better Sound than Thriller?

Yes. As consistently brilliant as Thriller may be musically — it is the biggest selling album of all time after all — speaking strictly in terms of sonics the sound of the best copies of Off the Wall is substantially sweeter, tubier, more natural, richer, and more ANALOG than Thriller.

Thriller is clearly more aggressive and processed-sounding than Off the Wall. The Girl Is Mine or Human Nature from Thriller would fit just fine anywhere on Off the Wall, but could the same be said for Beat It or Thriller? Just thinking about them you can hear the artificiality of the sound of both those songs in your head. Think about the snare that opens Beat It. I’ve never heard a snare sound like that in my life. Practically no instrument on Off the Wall has that kind of overly processed EQ’d sound.

Choruses Are Key

The richness, sweetness and freedom from artificiality is most apparent on Off the Wall where you most always hear it on a pop record: in the biggest, loudest, densest, climactic choruses.

We set the playback volume so that the loudest parts of the record are as huge and powerful as is possible for them to become without crossing the line into distortion or congestion.

On some records, Dark Side of the Moon comes instantly to mind, the guitar solos on Money are the loudest thing on the record.

On Breakfast in America the sax toward the end of The Logical Song is the biggest and loudest element in the mix, louder even than Roger Hodgson’s near-hysterical multi-track screaming “Who I am” about three quarters of the way through the track.

Those are clearly exceptions though. Usually it’s the final chorus that gets bigger and louder than anything else.

A pop song is usually structured so as to build up more and more energy as it works its way through its verses and choruses, past the bridge, coming back around to make one final push, releasing all its power in the final chorus, the climax of the song.

On a good recording — one with real dynamics — that part should be very loud and very powerful.

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The Best of Earth Wind & Fire – Hard and Honky Brass Is a Dealbreaker

More of the Music of Earth, Wind and Fire

As you can imagine, most copies of this album leave a lot to be desired. Most were, to one degree or another, dull, smeary, opaque, gritty or shrill.

Our Hot Stampers, on the other hand, depending on hot hot they are, will give you the sound you’re looking for. If you’re a fan of BIG HORNS, with jump-out-of-the-speakers presence, this is the album for you. Some of the best R&B-POP brass ever recorded can be found here — full-bodied, powerful, fast, dynamic and tonally correct.

Advice

Here is some specific advice on What to Listen For as you critically evaluate your copy of The Best of Earth Wind & Fire.

When the brass sounded the least bit squawky on a given copy, that was almost always a dealbreaker and out it went.

When the BIG, MULTI-TRACKED vocals get going they need to have plenty of space to expand into. They also need to be breathy and warm, with airy extension for the harmonies (and those crazy high notes that only Philip Bailey can sing). Proper tape hiss is a dead giveaway in this respect.

This advice will of course work for any Earth Wind & Fire record you happen to have multiple copies of.

Here are a couple of hundred other albums with specific advice on what to listen for.

Choruses Are Key

Three distinctive qualities of vintage analog recordings — richness, sweetness and freedom from artificiality — are most clearly heard on a Big Production Recording like this one in the loudest, densest, most climactic choruses of the songs.

We set the playback volume so that the loudest parts of the record are as huge and powerful as they can possibly become without crossing the line into distortion or congestion. On some records, Dark Side of the Moon comes instantly to mind, the guitar solos on Money are the loudest thing on the record.

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Donny Hathaway Lives On Through His Masterful Live Album from 1972

More of the Music of Donny Hathaway

Hot Stamper Pressings of Soul, Blues and R&B Albums Available Now

This live recording has YOU ARE THERE sound. The soundstage is wide and deep. It’s so natural, rich and transparent, what is there to fault? 

Within moments of the needle hitting the groove your speakers disappear and the music just flows into the room.

On the best original domestic pressings you can immediately understand and appreciate the honest, emotive quality of his singing that made Donny Hathaway the tremendous performer he was known to be.

I’ve been playing this record regularly since I first heard it back in the mid-’90s and even after twenty years it has never failed to thrill. If I could take only one soul album to my desert island, it would be this one, no doubt about it.

Listening Test — Don’t Be Fooled

Pay close attention to the audience chatter and clapping. Most copies, being compressed and veiled, have no hope of reproducing the handclaps and audience shout-outs correctly. Only those copies with transparency and presence let you “see” the crowd clearly.

But don’t be fooled by thinner, leaner sounding copies. There is tons of low end and lower midrange in this recording — it’s one of its prime strengths, and it’s what it would have sounded like if you were there — so make sure you have plenty going on in the lower frequencies before you start evaluating the audience participation.

Many audiophile recordings and remasterings are leaner and cleaner, producing a phony kind of transparency and detail at the expense of the fullness and richness of the original recording.

This is almost never a good thing.

Listening Test — Conga Energy

The copies where the congas are up-front, punchy and full-bodied were the ones where the rhythmic energy really carried the day. You know it when you hear it, that’s for sure. Most copies failed in this regard to some degree. If you have more than one copy, see if you don’t hear quite a bit more energy on the copies with more prominent, solid-sounding congas.

Congas, like drums and pianos, are good for testing specific pressings as well as stereo equipment.

If these instruments get lost in the mix, or sound smeary or thin, it’s usually fairly easy to hear those problems if you are listening for them. Most of what you will read on this blog is dedicated to helping you do that kind of listening.

The richness of analog is where much of its appeal lies. Lean drums, congas and pianos are what you more often than not get with CDs.

These three instruments are also exceptionally good for helping you to choose what kind of speakers to buy. (We recommend big ones with dynamic drivers.)

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Soundstaging at All Costs – A Flawed Approach to Audio

More on the Subject of Vague Imaging

The first thing I noticed about this system is that the Hallographs are in the wrong place, or at least they are in the wrong place if you are only using one pair. The first pair should be to the outside and just behind the speakers.

What this system screams out to those of us who have heard a lot of stereos, in my case having spent about fifty years in high-end audio, is “Soundstage Freak.”

The speakers are too far apart to create a proper center image.

The sound will be exceptionally spacious this way, but it is also very likely to be washed out and vague.

If you listen exclusively to orchestral music, and you like to sit toward the back of the hall when you go to live performances, then yes, you can almost justify having the speakers this far apart.

For most other music this is not a good approach.

A good vocal recording is all you would need to demonstrate the serious shortcomings of placing your speakers this wide apart.

If this were your setup, But I Might Die Tonight could show you the error of your ways, the way it showed me some of mine (albeit different ones) when I had initially finished the speaker setup at our new studio.

I worked on my speaker placement and room treatments for weeks and months after that, but I knew something was wrong well before that two minute song was over.

Stardust would also be a good choice. Most of Julie London‘s records would work. Some of the more intimate Ella records would be ideal of course, but we rarely have much stock. Blue would work, as would any early Joni Mitchell album.

The recordings of singer songwriters rarely place them anywhere but in the center of the stage, the best of them as prominently as possible. Many of our Hot Stamper pressings would make excellent test discs for getting this aspect of speaker placement dialed in better.

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That’s the Way of the World – The Hit Is Made from a Dub Tape

More of the Music of Earth, Wind and Fire

We’re pretty sure that the first track on side one, Shining Star, is made from a dub tape, a common occurrence with planned hit singles. The rest of the songs on side two are a step up in class; when you play the side, see if you don’t hear some veiling and smearing on Shining Star, both of which are good indications of a dubby tape.

These are problems we hear in the sound of practically all the Heavy Vinyl pressings that, let’s be honest, we waste our time auditioning, which leads us naturally to conclude that they are not really made from master tapes, but high quality analog dubs or high-rez digital masters. Some of course sound better than others, but none will ever sound the way this copy does.  (more…)

Bass, Choruses and Energy Are Key to the Best Pressings of War’s Albums

More Jazz / Rock Fusion Records with Hot Stampers

[This review was originally published about 2012 or so. Note that we rarely have any War records in stock. If you see one, grab it, the recordings on the best pressings are positively amazing on big speakers at loud levels.]

We just finished our first big shootout for this fun album — the All Music Guide calls it “a magical ride with plenty of surprises to keep the listener on his or her toes” and we couldn’t agree more.

This copy gives you punchy bass, airy flutes, hard-hitting percussion and loads of Tubey Magic. Many copies we played had too much hardness, edge, and midrange honk, but this one is smooth, sweet and rich.

Engineered by the brilliant Chris Huston, this recording displays all his trademark gifts.

His mixes feature:

The links above will take you to other albums that are good for testing all of these qualities.

As for the choruses, allow me to paraphrase our listing from Commoner’s Crown.

This is one of the rare pop/rock albums that actually has actual, measurable, serious dynamic contrasts in its levels as it moves from the verses to the choruses of many songs. The first track on side two, Four Cornered Room, is a perfect example. Not only are the choruses noticeably louder than the verses, but later on in the song the choruses get REALLY LOUD, louder than the choruses of 99 out of 100 rock/pop records we audition. It sometimes takes a record like this to open your ears to how compressed practically everything else you own is.

The Top Is Important Too

Richness and weight are key to the sound, but oddly enough an extended top end was almost as crucial to the success of the best copies. When the top end extends, the sound is open and relaxed. When the various songs build to their climaxes, the copies with lots of clean top end had a sense of “ease” that simply was not to be found on the smoother (read: duller) brethren.

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I Am the Blues – First Question: How Big Is the Sound?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Soul, Blues and R&B Albums Available Now

It was pretty easy to separate the men from the boys in this shootout. A quick drop of the needle on each side would immediately answer our number one question: “How BIG is the sound?”

The copies that lacked top end extension or heft in the bottom end were just too uninvolving. This is the BLUES, baby — you think it’s supposed to sound small and distant?

Another problem we ran into on many copies was excessive smoothness. When a copy was overly rich or smeary, it usually lacked the “gritty” feel that music like this should have.

I don’t know about you, but if I’m listening to the blues, I am not looking for glossy sound. Give me the raw texture and the detail that was put on the tape. I don’t want the sound to be “fixed” after the fact, and I definitely don’t want it to be modified to give it more audiophile appeal.

The sound and the arrangements here are perfectly suited to Willie’s material. Since most vintage blues recordings leave a lot to be desired sonically, and most modern “hi-fi” blues recordings are less-than-engaging musically, this album is the cure for the blues-lovin’ audiophile’s blues!

The material here is TOP NOTCH — Dixon was one of the blues’ greatest songwriters, responsible for Spoonful, Hoochie Coochie Man, Little Red Rooster, Back Door Man and other songs you’ve probably heard your favorite classic rock band covering.

We had an absolute blast with this one. It’s the rare blues recording that has the audiophile goods, so it was a real treat to hear an album that could deliver authentic blues music with such strong sonics.

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