Vocal LPs to Improve Your Playback

Getting the Balance Right on Mean to Me

Hot Stamper Pressings of Pop and Jazz Vocals Available Now

Mean to Me is a favorite test track for side one, with real Demo Disc quality sound. We credit it with helping us dramatically improve our playback.

Roy DuNann at Contemporary was able to get all his brass players together in one room, sounding right as a group as well as individual voices.

The piano, bass, and drums that accompany them are perfectly woven into the fabric of the arrangement.

What makes this song so good is that when the brass really starts to let loose later in the song, with the right equipment and the right room, you can get the kind of sound that’s so powerful you could practically swear it’s live.

Helen was recorded in a booth for this album, and her voice is slightly veiled relative to the other musicians playing in the much larger room that of course would be required for so many players.

When you get the brass correct, the trick is to get her voice to become as transparent and palpable as possible without screwing up the tonality of the brass instruments.

The natural inclination is to brighten up the sound to make her voice more clear.

But you will quickly be made painfully aware that brighter is not better when the brass gets too “hot” and starts to tear your head off.

The balance between voice and brass is key to the proper reproduction of this album.

Once you have achieved that balance, tweak for transparency while guarding against too much upper midrange or top end. Which also means watch out for audiophile wires that may have fooled you into thinking they were more resolving when actually they were just peakier in some portion of the frequency range.

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Belafonte at Carnegie Hall – I Have a Theory

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Harry Belafonte Available Now

We’ve long known that some copies of the album are mastered with the polarity reversed. This is one of those copies.

But the crazy news we have today is that this copy of the album sound just fine without reversing the polarity of the system, better than any other copy we played.

True, it sounds a bit better with the polarity reversed, but it is still our Shootout Winner even with the wrong polarity.

I would never have believed that to be the case in the past, but my theory is that the new studio we built has reduced distortions and problems to such a degree that polarity issues are less of a problem now than they might have been in the past.

As I say, it’s just a theory, and as time goes on we will revisit this idea with other recordings that we know to have polarity issues, and we’ll be sure to let you know what we find.

The best sounding versions we played are cut super clean. The brass and strings have dead-on correct textures and timbres.

As good as some pressings are, the best pressings are clearly a step up in class. The differences are easy to hear:

  • The brass has more weight and body and richness.
  • Same with the strings.
  • The voice gets fuller and sweeter and less sibilant, while still maintaining every nuance of detail.
  • The presence is startling; Belafonte is absolutely in the room with you.

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1962 Tubes and The Sound That’s Been Lost for Fifty Years

Hot Stamper Pressings of Pop and Jazz Vocal Albums Available Now

UPDATE 2025

This review was written many years ago, circa 2010 I would guess, right about the time we first started doing shootouts for the album. (Here is what we have to say about I Left My Heart in San Francisco these days, suspiciously similar to what we had to say in 2010. As the song says, ‘”The fundamental things apply…”)

Everything that’s good about All Tube vocal recordings from the 50s and 60s is precisely what’s good about the sound of this record.

The huge studio the music was recorded in is captured faithfully on this pressing. The height, width and depth of the staging are extraordinary, a true Demo Disc in that regard.

We are not big soundstage guys here at Better Records, but we can’t deny the appeal of the space to be found on a record that sounds as good as this one does.

Transparency and Tubey Magic are key to the sound of the orchestra and you will find both in abundance on these two sides.

(Other records that are good for testing those two qualities can be found here and here.)

Albums such as this live and die by the quality of their vocal reproduction. On this record Mr. Tony Bennett himself will appear to be standing right in your listening room, along with the 38 other musicians from the session. (Actually, come to think of it, they’re probably sitting.)

On the best pressings, the space of your stereo room will seem to expand in all directions to accommodate them — an illusion of course, but nevertheless a remarkably convincing one.

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These Records Helped Us Dramatically Improve Our Playback

Some of the Most Important Albums We Employed to Tune, Tweak and Improve Our Stereo, Room, Table Setup, Electrical Quality and More

The records on this list (limited to rock and pop for the most part but we’re working on adding in the classical and jazz) all have one thing in common: I made practical use of them to improve my equipment, room treatments, table setup, electrical quality and whatever else that I could think of that might result in higher quality playback.

Were it not for my desire — obsession may be the better word, and it’s certainly a better operating principle — to get the wonderful music on these albums to improve with each passing year, Hot Stamper pressings would be at most a niche part of my collection. Worse, and a thought some may find too unpleasant to contemplate, Hot Stampers might have then accounted for only a small part of Better Records’ business.

By the mid-2000s when we started down this road for real, the stereo needed to evolve dramatically. It needed to become much more revealing and truthful than any system I had ever heard if we were going to carry out Hot Stamper shootouts all day.

The best of the best Hot Stamper pressings are often like needles in haystacks. No one in his right mind would go to all that trouble for music that was not emotionally powerful enough to be, for all intents and purposes, practically irresistible.

If you have records you can’t wait to play every time you make a change to your equipment, room, setup, etc., you know what I am talking about.

I favor large scale dynamic speakers because they are the only ones that seem capable of reproducing the demanding recordings you see listed below.

There is no question that the artists that made these albums, in concert with remarkably talented producers and engineers, sweated every detail of these exceptional recordings. For the last five decades I (now we) have been doing all we could to get these wonderful records to sound their best.

We know how good they can sound on systems that have what it takes to play them, because these are the records we used to test, tune and tweak the new studio we built.

The more of that kind of work you do — on your system, room and electricity — the more progress you will make in this hobby. With each improvement, these are the very recordings that will sound bigger and bolder than you ever imagined.

They are the most difficult-to-reproduce albums we know of. Difficult records are the ones that will help you make more real, demonstrable progress in this hobby than any others.

Again and again it was meeting the challenge of reproducing recordings such as these that allowed us to get to the next level, and the next one, and the one after that, and they can do the same for you.

The Top Two

By far the two most helpful records for testing over the last two decades were Tea for the Tillerman (going all the way back to 1984) and Bob and Ray Throw a Stereo Spectacular. We wrote about their uniquely valuable contributions to our audio progress in this commentary.

Led Zeppelin II is probably the main record our current listening panel uses to dial-in the Dynavector 17Dx Karat cartridges we mount three or four times a year so that every record is always  being played with a relatively fresh cartridge. (We are dealers for Dynavector and would love to get you one to try.)

The records below in bold have been especially important for our work. There should be quite a number of commentaries on the blog for each of them.

Also, at the bottom you will notice that more and more jazz and classical records are being added to the list as time permits.

Rock, Pop, etc.

  • 10cc / The Original Soundtrack
  • 10cc / Deceptive Bends
  • 801 / Live
  • Ambrosia / Self-titled
  • America / Self-titled
  • The Beatles / Please Please Me
  • The Beatles / Rubber Soul
  • The Beatles / Revolver
  • The Beatles / Sgt. Pepper’s
  • The Beatles / Magical Mystery Tour
  • The Beatles / Abbey Road

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Key Tracks to Play on Belafonte at Carnegie Hall

Hot Stamper Pressings of Pop and Jazz Vocal Albums Available Now

Harry Pearson brought this record to the attention of audiophiles with his TAS list a long time ago, and rightfully so: it’s an amazing recording.

We happen to love the music too, which makes it one of the most recommendable records we have ever offered. If you can find a better combination of demo disc sound, with music worth the hassle and expense of reproducing it properly, more power to you. We sure can’t.

Because this is a live recording, because it has lots of natural instruments as well as a vocal, because it was recorded in the Golden Age by one of the greatest labels of all time, RCA, by Bob Simpson no less — for this and many other reasons, it has to be considered one of the most amazing recordings in the history of the world.

That said, it is our contention (and the basis of our business model) that the brilliant quality of the recording can only be appreciated if you have the pressing that captured the sound that the engineers recorded. In other words, a Hot Stamper.

From an audiophile point of view, you get to hear live musicians and all the energy they bring to this music, all on the stage at the same time: strings, brass, percussionists, and Harry Belafonte front and center. Tube mics (and not too many of them), a tube tape recorder, RCA’s superb engineering and all-tube mastering chain ensure that the “breath of life” is captured intact.

I know of no better live popular vocal recording on the planet.

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Thoughts on a Direct to Disc Recording, Its Strengths and Weaknesses

Hot Stamper Pressings of Direct-to-Disc Recordings Available Now

Reviews and Commentaries for Direct to Disc Recordings

In a shootout we conducted more than ten years ago, two White Hot Stamper pressings tied for the best side two we had ever heard.

In the final round it simply came down to the fact that the other copy was a little more clear, this one is a little richer.

They were both so amazing we couldn’t decide which we preferred so we gave them both White Hot Stamper grades.

In our experience this rarely happens.

Most of the time one side of one of the records in the shootout will show itself to be the clear winner, doing everything — or almost everything; there is no such thing as a perfect record — right.

When you play enough copies, eventually you run into the one that shows you how the music wants to be heard, what kind of sound seems to work for it the best. The two side twos we liked were variations, and fairly subtle ones at that, on a theme — a little richer here, a little clearer there, but both so good.

To be honest, most copies of this title were quite good. Few didn’t do most things at least well enough to earn a Hot Stamper grade. This has not been the case with many of the Sheffield pressings we’ve done shootouts for in the past. Often the weaker copies have little going for them. They don’t even sound like Direct Discs.

Some copies lack energy, some lack presence, most suffer from some amount of smear on the transients.

But wait a minute. This is a direct disc. How can it be compressed, or lack transients? Aren’t those tape recorder problems that are supposed to be eliminated by the direct to disc process?

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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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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…)

Frank Sinatra & Duke Ellington – Booth? What Booth?

More of the Music of Frank Sinatra

More of the Music of Duke Ellington

Notice that, at least for most of the material, and perhaps all of it, Sinatra does not seem to be stuck in a vocal booth. He sounds like he is actually standing on the same stage as Ellington’s band.

Whether this is a recording trick — he’s in a booth but the engineer did a great job creating a sound for the booth that matched the ambience and space of the studio — or whether he is standing front and center with the band, the illusion is convincing and adds greatly to the “reality” of the performance..

Recorded one year after the remarkable Sinatra-Jobim record that we treasure here at Better Records, Sinatra takes the opportunity to work with one of the greatest bandleaders in the history of jazz, the Duke himself. We had good luck with the stereo originals on the lovely Blue and Green Reprise labels — they can be as big, rich and warm as Sinatra’s legendary Capitol recordings when you find the right pressing, and that’s really saying something.

Transparency

What typically separates the killer copies from the merely good ones are two qualities that we often look for in the records we play: transparency and lack of smear. Transparency allows you to hear into the recording, reproducing the ambience and subtle musical cues and details that high-resolution analog is known for.

(Note that most Heavy Vinyl pressings being produced these days seem to be quite Transparency Challenged. Lots of important musical information — the kind we hear on even second-rate regular pressings — is simply not to be found. That audiophiles as a whole — including those passing themselves off as the champions of analog in the audio press — fail to notice these failings does not speak well for either their equipment or their critical listening skills.)

Richness and Lack of Smear

Lack of smear is also important, especially on a recording with this many horns, where the reproduction of leading-edge transients is critical to their sound. If the sharply different characters of the various horns (trumpet, trombone, and various saxes) smear together into an amorphous blob, as if the sound were being fed through ’50s vintage tube amps (for those of you who know that sound), half the fun goes right out of the music.

Richness is important — horns need to be full-bodied if they are to sound like the real thing — but so are speed and clarity, two qualities that ensure that all the horns have the proper bite and timbre.

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String Tone and Texture Are Key to the Best Pressings of What’s New

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Linda Ronstadt Available Now

We’ve criticized the engineer George Massenburg in the past, but with this copy we almost want to take it all back.

What he gets right on this recording is the sound of an orchestra, augmented with various jazz musicians (Ray Brown, Tommy Tedesco, Plas Johnson, Bob Cooper), all performing live in a huge studio.

The sound stretches far to Linda’s left, far to her right, as well as back far behind her in a huge semi-circle. She is of course singing in a vocal booth, with her vocal placed front and center in the soundstage.

What to Listen for

That’s easy on this album: the strings. When the strings are big and rich, not shrill and thin, that’s a good thing. Rosiny texture means you have a copy with less smear and higher resolution. Harmonics up top means that the top end of your copy is extending properly.

Bottom line: If the strings are bad on this album probably everything else is too.

Here are some records that are good for testing string tone and texture.

Having said that, this is an album of standards sung by a woman with a very recognizable voice. If Linda doesn’t sound right, what’s the point of the record? To hear Nelson Riddle’s well-recorded strings?

The best copies have Linda sounding rich and breathy. Few managed to pull off that particular trick as well as we would have liked. We took major points off for those copies that had her sounding too thin or forced in her upper range.

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