Albums We’re Obsessed With

What to Listen for on Time Further Out

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Dave Brubeck Available Now

The best copies demonstrate the big-as-life Fred Plaut Columbia sound at its best (even better than Time Out in our opinion).

These vintage recordings are full-bodied, spacious, three-dimensional, rich, sweet and warm in the best tradition of an All Tube Analog recording.

If you want to hear big drums in a big room, these Brubeck recordings will show you that sound better than practically any records we know of. 

The one standout track on this album for audiophiles is surely Unsquare Dance, with its uncannily real sounding handclaps in 7/4. The copies that did the best job of reproducing that “flesh on flesh” sound of actual human hands clapping scored very well in our shootout.

More to Listen For

For starters, listen for a fat snare and rich piano on the first track of side one. When you hear that, assuming you do, you should know you are in for a treat. Our best copies captured those two sounds brilliantly.

On the second track the clarity of the brushed snare is key to how resolving and transparent any copy is. The rich, smooth sound of Desmond’s sax balanced against the clarity of the brushes will help you make sure that the overall sound is tonally correct from top to bottom.

On side two the first track has the Wall to Wall Big Drums in a Big Room sound that positively blows our minds. If you’re a fan of  with jump out of the speakers sound, this is the album for you.

Note that in some places it sounds like the piano is overdriving its mic. We heard that sound on practically every copy we played, so we’re pretty sure it’s on the tape that way.

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The Carmen Ballet – As Tough a Test Disc As Any We Know

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Georges Bizet Available Now

If I had only one record to bring to someone’s house in order to evaluate their equipment, a killer copy of this Bizet-Shchedrin record would certainly be at the top of my list. (Here are some others.)

If you can make this record sound the way it should, your stereo is cookin’.

If you are having problems, this record will show them to you in short order.

Many copies are bright in the upper-midrange, sounding as nasally and artificial as a bad Mercury or London. Many lack weight down low. The lower strings and heavier percussion play a crucial role in balancing out the upper strings and lighter percussion, so without enough going on down low, the sound skews upwards in an artificial way.

If your copy has either of these problems don’t use it to set up or tweak anything in your system.

Use one of our Hot Stampers, the hotter the better.

The sound of the best copies is rich, full-bodied, incredibly spacious, and exceptionally extended up top. There is a prodigious amount of musical information spread across the soundstage, much of it difficult to reproduce. Musicians are banging on so many different percussive devices (often at the back of the stage, exactly where they should be) that getting each one’s sonic character to clearly come through is a challenge. And when you’ve met it, a thrill.

If you’ve done your homework with VTA, Azimuth, Anti-Skate and Tracking Weight, this is the record that will make clear just how much you’ve accomplished.

The recording has tremendous transients and dynamics. Be prepared to have trouble tracking it. In that respect it’s a prime candidate for table, cartridge and system tweaking.

If you have the kind of big system that a record like this demands, when you drop the needle on the best of our Hot Stamper pressings, you are going to hear some amazing sound.

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Sweetnighter Is a Must Own Album of Modern Jazz Fusion

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Weather Report Available Now

We recently compiled a list of records we think every audiophile should get to know better, along the lines of “the 1001 records you need to hear before you die,” with the accent on the joy these amazing audiophile-quality recordings can bring to your life.

The list is purposely wide-ranging. Yes, it includes some well-known albums (Tumbleweed Connection, The Yes Album), but we’ve also gone out of our way to choose excellent titles from famous artists that are less well known (Atlantic Crossing, Kiln House, Dad Loves His Work).

Which simply means that you won’t find Every Picture Tells a Story or Rumours or Sweet Baby James on this list because masterpieces of that caliber should already be in your collection.

Many of these may not be to your taste, but they sure are to ours.

Out of the thousands of records we have auditioned and reviewed, here are a hundred or so that maybe are less well known but have stood the test of time for us. As such, we think they are more than deserving of a serious listen.

Sweetnighter checks off a number of boxes for us here at Better Records

More letters, reviews and commentaries for Sweetnighter.

Keeping the Players Together on Jazz Impressions of Black Orpheus

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Hot Stamper Pressings of Jazz Recordings Featuring the Piano

Another in our series of listening exercises here discussing the importance of transparency, ambience and resolution.

The arrangement of the players is straightforward, with the bass hard left, drums hard right (with leakage well to the left on the cymbals, but that’s another story), and Guaraldi on piano in the center. (The first track of side two reverses this arrangement; why, I have no idea.)

Here’s the crazy thing about this recording: The best copies really connect up — tie together — the space each of the players is in. I heard it during the shootout, and I can’t recall if it actually happened more than once or twice, but I know I heard it. They are all live, they are all on the same soundstage, but on most copies you would hardly know it.

They sound like they are playing in booths, the ambience never extending very far in any direction. The best copies have so much ambience that one player’s space extends all the way to the edge of the other player’s space. The effect, though rare, is nothing less than magical.

The piano is solid, mostly clear and not hard. Not many copies present the piano this way — correctly in other words. The amazing snare of Colin Bailey in the right channel is LIVELY and fun like you’ve never heard before.

There is no sacrifice in fullness, richness or Tubey Magic in the presentation, and that is the right sound for this music.

No Breakup on the Piano

I would be willing to bet that 90% or more of all the early pressings still in playable condition have some breakup on the piano. The old arms and carts of the day simply could not track the groove the way modern arms and carts can, and ended up damaging the record.

We are happy to report that this copy has no breakup on the piano at all.

The best copies bring out the contribution of the bass player better, the bass being essential to the rhythm of the music. On some, the bass is so tight and note-like you can see right into the soundstage and practically watch Monte Budwig play.

Further Reading

Somethin’ Else Sets the Record for Straight Ahead Jazz

Hot Stamper Pressings of Blue Note Albums Available Now

In 2010 or thereabouts we had this to say about a copy of Somethin’ Else we had just played:

The music here is amazing — as I’m sure most of you know, this is as much a showcase for Miles Davis as it is for Cannonball himself — but the good news for audiophiles is that it’s also one of the BEST SOUNDING BLUE NOTE ALBUMS we know of!

When you hear it on a copy like this, it’s about As Good As It Gets.

Setting the Record for Straight Ahead Jazz

After doing this shootout in 2015, I would like to amend the above remarks for being much too conservative. The current consensus here at Better Records is that this album deserves to hold three — count ’em, three — somewhat related titles:

  • One, The Best Sounding Blue Note record we have ever played.
  • Two, The Best Sounding Jazz Record we have ever played.
  • Three, Rudy Van Gelder’s Best Engineering (based on the copies we played).

Our shootout winners had more energy, presence, dynamics and three-dimensional studio space than any jazz recording we have ever heard. The sound was as BIG and BOLD as anything in our audio experience.

Add to that a perfectly balanced mix, with tonality that’s correct from top to bottom for every instrument in the soundfield and you may begin to see why we feel that the best copies of this album set a standard that no other jazz record we’re aware of can meet.

Have we played every Blue Note, every RVG recording, every jazz record? We would never say such a thing (nor should anyone else).

However, in our defense, who could possibly claim to have critically evaluated the sound of more jazz records than we have?

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Balancing the Vocal, Strings and Rhythm on Lady in Satin

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Billie Holiday Available Now

The better copies reproduce clearly the three most important elements in the recording — strings, rhythm, and vocal — and, more importantly, they are properly balanced with one another. 

The monos, as you might expect, balance the three elements well enough, but the problem with mono is that the vocals and instruments are jammed together in the center of the soundfield, layered atop one another.

Real clarity, the kind that live music has in abundance, is difficult if not impossible under those circumstances.

Only the stereo pressings provide the space that each of the players needs in order to be heard.

Naturally the vocals have to be the main focus on a Billie Holiday record. They should be rich and tubey, yet clear, breathy and transparent.

To qualify as a Hot Stamper, the pressings we offer must be highly resolving. You will hear everything, all of it surrounded by the natural space of the legendary Columbia 30th Street Studio in which the recording was made.  (more…)

Oliver Nelson’s Masterpiece – So Much Better Sounding on the (Right) Reissue

Hot Stamper Pressings that Sound Their Best on the Right Reissue

For those of you who still cling to the idea that the originals are better, this Hot Stamper pressing of the album should be just the ticket to set you straight.

Yes, we can all agree that Rudy Van Gelder recorded it, brilliantly as a matter of fact. Shouldn’t he be the most natural choice to transfer the tape to disc, knowing, as we must assume he does, exactly what to fix and what to leave alone in the mix?

Maybe he should be; it’s a point worth arguing.

But ideas such as this are only of value once they have been tested empirically and found to be true.

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Art Pepper+Eleven – Hard to Beat for Music or Sound

Hot Stamper Pressings of Contemporary Jazz Records Available Now

If you buy only one large group jazz record from us, make it this one – the music is swingin’ fun and the sound is going to blow your mind.

And that’s doubly true if you own any modern reissue. (The best early OJC pressings can be good but often suffer from the standard problems OJCs tend to have — they lack weight, Tubey Magic and can get a bit hot up top.)

This is the kind of sound no later pressing from ANY era can compete with. Last time around we noted:

This vintage Contemporary stereo pressing has plenty of Modern Jazz Classics Magic. On a copy such as this you can really pick out each of the musicians and follow them throughout the course of the track. Being able to appreciate everyone’s contributions really gives you a sense of how much work went into the making of this album. It’s nothing short of epic.

This is one DYNAMIC jazz record — drop the needle on any track and prepare to be knocked out.

The sound is full-bodied and energetic, with breathy brass and plenty of studio ambience.

As is so often is the case with the best Contemporary records, thanks must go to Howard Holzer and Roy DuNann.

If I could only have one Art Pepper record, this would be the one.

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Bob and Ray Produced Our Favorite Record for Cartridge Setup

Hot Stamper Pressings of Bob and Ray Available Now

Bob and Ray Throw a Stereo Spectacular just happens to be our favorite Test Disc, eclipsing all others in the areas of naturalness and difficulty of reproduction. Any tweak or new room treatment — we seem to do them almost weekly these days — has to pass one test and one test only — the Bob and Ray Test. 

This record has the power to help you get to the next level in audio like no other.

Six words hold the key to better sound: The Song of the Volga Boatman.

For the purpose of mounting new carts, our favorite track is The Song of the Volga Boatman from LSP 1773. It’s by far the most difficult track we know of to get to sound right.

There are about twenty places in the music that we use as tests, and the right setting is the one that gets the most of them to sound their best. With every change some of the twenty will sound better and some will sound worse. Recognizing when the sound is the biggest, clearest, and most balanced from top to bottom is a skill that has taken me twenty years to acquire.

It’s a lot harder than it looks. The longer you have been in audio, the more complicated it can seem, which may be counterintuitive but comports well with our day-to-day experience very well.

All our room treatments and tweaks must pass The Bob and Ray Test as well. It’s the one record we have relied on more than any other over the course of the last ten years.

Presenting as it does a huge studio full of brass players, no record we know of is more dynamic or more natural sounding — when the system is working right. When it’s not working right the first thirty seconds is all it takes to show you the trouble you are in.

If you don’t have a record like that in your collection, we highly recommend you find one.

It will be invaluable in the long run. The copy we have is so good (White Hot, the best we have ever played), and so important to our operation here, that it would not be for sale at any (well, almost any) price.

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Midnight Blue Is a Masterpiece

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Kenny Burrell

Midnight Blue is our favorite Kenny Burrell album of all time, at least in part because it’s one of the All Time Best Sounding Blue Notes. 

If you already own a copy of Midnight Blue and you don’t consider it one of the best sounding jazz guitar records in your collection, then you surely don’t have a copy that sounds the way our Hot Stamper pressings do. In other words, there is a very good chance you simply don’t know what you’re missing.

Don’t think this is just another 60s jazz guitar album. With Stanley Turrentine on sax and Ray Baretto on congas, this music will move you like practically no other. When Turrentine (a shockingly underrated player) rips into his first big solo, you’ll swear he’s right there in the room with you.

And if you do have one of our better Hot Stampers and it still isn’t the best sounding jazz guitar album in your collection, then you have one helluva jazz collection. Drop us a line and tell us what record you like the sound of better than Midnight Blue. We’re at a loss to think of what it might be.

Midnight Blue checks off a number of important boxes for us here at Better Records.

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