Robert Brook runs a blog called The Broken Record, with a subtitle explaining what the aim of his blog is:
A GUIDE FOR THE DEDICATED ANALOG AUDIOPHILE
Here is Robert’s latest posting.
We’ve written about the lessons to be learned from the misguided exploits of the late Mr. Fritz ourselves, and you can read all about them here.
Robert Brook runs a blog called The Broken Record, with a subtitle explaining that the aim of his blog is to serve as:
A GUIDE FOR THE DEDICATED ANALOG AUDIOPHILE
We know of none better, outside of our own humble attempt to enlighten that portion of the audiophile community who love records and are looking to understand them better.
Here is one of Robert’s most recent postings.
More of Robert’s advice on equipment and setup:
Robert Brook runs a blog called The Broken Record, with a subtitle explaining that the aim of his blog is to serve as:
A GUIDE FOR THE DEDICATED ANALOG AUDIOPHILE
We know of none better, outside of our own humble attempt to enlighten that portion of the audiophile community who love records and are looking to understand them and reproduce them better.
Here is Robert’s latest posting. I changed the title a bit from his, since the dictionary definition of the term mischief-making implies “deliberately creating trouble for other people,” and it is not quite right that the purveyors of these products are in any way purposely going about screwing up the sound of perfectly good stereos.
The way I see it, these products are designed to do something positive for some stereos under some conditions when playing some recordings for audiophiles who prize some qualities more than others.
Knowing what these kinds of things are doing, on what kinds of stereos, under what operating conditions, when playing what specific recordings, for what sound qualities a particular audiophile might be listening for, is more than the work of a lifetime. It is, in fact, impossible.
After reading Robert’s story, I was inspired to write a long piece detailing my own lessons learned as I first embraced, then rejected, one tweak or piece of gear after another, starting in 1975 or thereabouts. (Many such stories are chronicled here. The picture of me you see was taken in the late-70s. I was in an audio cult at the time, but, of course, like today’s similarly-situated audiophiles, I had no way of knowing it.)
I am still working on the commentary mentioned above, but I expect it should be ready before long. The short version goes like this:
Dramatic limitations and massive amounts of colorations are endemic to home audio systems.
The only way to get rid of them is by doing the unimaginably difficult work it takes to learn how to identify them and then figure out ways to root them out.
This, in my experience, is a process that will rarely be accomplished, even by the truly dedicated. It unfolds slowly, over the course of decades, and only for a very small percentage of audiophiles. Most will simply give up at some point and choose to enjoy whatever sound quality they have managed to achieve up to that time. To attempt to go further feels like banging your head against a wall.
To push on in this devilishly difficult hobby we have chosen for ourselves is for the few, not the many.
(It helped that we got paid to do it. An undiagnosed but all-too-real obsessive personality disorder also played a part, as did certain records that I fell in love with a long time ago.)
The completed post can be found here.
Robert Brook runs a blog called The Broken Record, with a subtitle explaining that the aim of his blog is to serve as:
A GUIDE FOR THE DEDICATED ANALOG AUDIOPHILE
We know of none better, outside of our own humble attempt to enlighten that portion of the audiophile community who love records and are looking to understand them better.
Here is one of Robert’s more recent postings you may find of interest.
More on Robert’s system here. You may notice that it has a lot in common with the one we use. This is clearly not an accident.
And it is also no accident that these two systems just happen to be very good at showing their owners the manifold shortcomings of the modern remastered LP, as well as the benefits to be gained by doing shootouts in order to find dramatically better sounding pressings to play.
Robert Brook runs a blog called The Broken Record, with a subtitle explaining what the aim of this blog is:
A GUIDE FOR THE DEDICATED ANALOG AUDIOPHILE
We know of none better, outside of our own humble attempt to enlighten that portion of the audiophile community who love hearing music reproduced with higher fidelity and are willing to go the extra mile to make that happen.
Nothing will bring you as much joy as when you manage, by whatever means, probably against all odds, to make significant audio progress.
The more progress you make, the more you will enjoy your favorite music. At least that’s what happened to me over the course of the last fifty years as I set about working on my system, room and a great deal more.
Here is Robert’s latest posting.
“NUDE” Your Dynavector KARAT 17DX Cartridge for EVEN BETTER Sound
More on Robert’s system here. You may notice that it has a lot in common with the one we use. This is not an accident.
And it is also no accident that these two systems just happen to be very good at showing their owners the manifold shortcomings of the modern remastered LP, as well as the benefits to be gained by doing shootouts in order to find dramatically better sounding pressings to play.
Robert Brook has a blog which he calls
A GUIDE FOR THE DEDICATED ANALOG AUDIOPHILE
Below is a link to a review Robert Brook wrote recently for the MoFi One-Step pressing of one of our favorite albums of all time, Joni Mitchell’s Blue, originally released in 1971.
Blue Sounds Funny Now
Based on everything I am reading these days from Robert Brook, he has a good stereo, two working ears, and knows plenty about records and what they are supposed to sound like.
This was not always the case as he himself would tell you. His stereo used to be much better at hiding the faults of a record like the MoFi One-Step of Blue than the stereo he has now. He got rid of most of his audiophile electronics, got a better phono stage, cartridge and arm, improved the quality of his electricity, found some sophisticated vibration controlling platforms for his vintage gear and did lots of other things to make his playback more accurate and — we cannot stress this too strongly — more fun, more exciting and more involving.
When your stereo is doing a better job of reproducing what’s in the grooves of your records, the first thing you notice when playing a Mobile Fidelity or other Heavy Vinyl pressing is that the sound is funny and wrong. (Please excuse the technical jargon; those of you who have been audiophiles as long as we have will understand what I mean, the rest of you can just play along. All of this will make sense eventually.)
When you use colored-sounding audiophile equipment — but I repeat myself — then your colored-sounding audiophile records don’t sound nearly as colored as they would under other conditions.
For example, other conditions obtain if you have — again, sorry about the jargon — revealing, accurate, tonally correct, natural-sounding equipment, free from the colorations — euphonic and otherwise — that allow one piece of audiophile equipment to sound so different from another.
Are Hot Stampers for real, or are they for the birds?
(That’s a question I see asked a lot by audiophiles. You will have no trouble guessing what the answer tends to be.)
Below you will find some of the text from an email exchange I had with Robert, one of hundreds we’ve sent to each other as we found ourselves winding through the thicket of records and audiophile equipment.
It’s one we are constantly struggling to understand, in my case even after 40 years.
In this email he recounts a personal story about a yoga friend, exploring his reaction to an incident that occurred with a fellow yoga practioner and some of the psychological lessons he learned from it. What he learned, he has now come to realize, helped him see more clearly some of the things that are going on in analog audio, especially when it comes to the credibility of yours truly.
He also points out that I am not always as tactful as I should be, and I don’t doubt for a minute that he is right about that. Not my strong suit. I’m more in favor of the “tough love” approach, but after rereading some of my old emails, it’s often shocking — even to me — how blunt I can be. I’ll try to do better.
Please to enjoy Robert’s story.
A GUIDE FOR THE DEDICATED ANALOG AUDIOPHILE
Robert has approached the various problems he’s encountered methodically and carefully along these three fronts:
Robert Brook has a blog which he calls
A GUIDE FOR THE DEDICATED ANALOG AUDIOPHILE
Robert’s story begins:
Recently a friend and a frequent reader of my website suggested I review the 50th Anniversary Edition of David Crosby’s debut. He’d read my article from a while back in which I made comparisons between two different Hot Stamper copies of the record, and he knew I was a fan the album.
I’m sure he also knew, as any of my regular readers would, that I’m extremely skeptical of modern reissues. You can find many examples on this site of reissues I’ve written about that have failed miserably to impress me. But this friend was pretty insistent that this one, remastered by long time engineer Chris Bellman, was different. He also told me it was on par with original Monarch pressing of …My Name he also owned.
Bellman was responsible for cutting one of the few heavy vinyl reissues that my friend Tom Port has liked and recommended – a European pressing from 2020 of the Dire Straits record Brothers In Arms. Tom likes precious few “audiophile” reissues. He’s mentioned maybe 4 or 5 over the years as being worthy of any consideration. Given that, and the fact that my friend was so insistent, I figured why not give Bellman’s recut of . . .My Name a shot?
Click on the link to read the whole thing. I left some comments at the end you may enjoy reading. I hope to be able to address some of the other issues Robert brings up at a later date.
If you are interested in picking up an amazing Hot Stamper pressing of the album, we currently (as of 2/24) have some in stock. Click on this link to see what is available: If I Could Only Remember My Name.
On the website, we talk about just how much we love this album:
One of our good customers has a blog which he calls
A GUIDE FOR THE DEDICATED ANALOG AUDIOPHILE
Here is Robert’s review of ERC’s mono release of My Favorite Things. MFT happens to be one of our favorite Coltrane records, but we understandably prefer the stereo pressings, which is almost always the case when an album has been recorded in stereo, as My Favorite Things was in 1960.
We even tell you what to listen for to help you separate the best pressings from the merely good ones: the piano.
A solid, full-bodied, clear and powerful piano. As we focused on the sound of the instrument, we couldn’t help but notice how brilliant McCoy Tyner is. This may be John Coltrane’s album, but Tyner’s contribution is critically important to the success of My Favorite Things.
The engineering duties were handled by Tom Dowd (whose work you surely know well) and Phil Iehle, who happens to be the man who recorded some of Coltrane’s most iconic albums for Atlantic: Giant Steps (1960) and Coltrane Jazz (also in 1961).
Electric Recording Company
We’ve played a number of ERC releases.
In the video embedded in the Washington Post article “In Search of the Perfect Sound,” at some point you can hear me exclaim “This guy makes mud pies!” while listening to the ERC pressing of Quiet Kenny. I am happy to stand behind that judgment, and I think Robert Brook would agree with me about that.
Here is our review of ERC’s Forever Changes.
Our commentary making the case that these albums are aimed primarily at collectors and speculators, not audiophiles, can be found here.
We have now played the ERC pressing of My Favorite Things for ourselves and will be reviewing it soon.
Other Opinions
As much as we dislike these records, there are some music lovers who are quite pleased with them. A certain JLysaker wrote the following on discogs in 2021 about the ERC records a friend of his gave him (!) (edited for brevity).
I own 4 lps from this label. All sound amazing… The [Way] Out West pressing, stereo, is probably the best sounding LP I own… I also had an AP edition of one of the albums and the ERC pressing was hands down more natural sounding and imaged with greater clarity, and not just to my ears but to that of another buddy there for a listen.
Was it $500 better? I really doubt sonic differences translate into clear dollar amounts, but I would understand someone saying: ‘I’ll stick with damn good.’ Then again, some albums are dear to people and they want to hear it in the best possible fashion, and that probably won’t be through an original pressing — too rare, condition issues, and so forth as pointed out below. So they pop for one of these, as I did with My Favorite Things, which isn’t even a well recorded album.
And I am glad I did as Coltrane’s soprano never sounded better to me, and I have been listening to that recording for decades. So, from experience, these pressings are special. But acquiring them involves serious opportunity costs for anyone not rolling in the dough. And I doubt I ever would have sprung for one if an evil friend hadn’t given me some.
But here I am, feeling neither scammed nor screwed, and quite certain that those releasing these records are qualified to do so.
Others in the comments section were not so positive. Then again, nobody gave them the records and the price struck them as a bit high (median pricing for the album is currently $723.10).
We get similar complaints about our prices, but then again, we’re in the business of selling the best sounding pressings ever made, which is clearly not the case with ERC. They’re in the business of selling mud pies.
One of our good customers has a blog which he calls
A GUIDE FOR THE DEDICATED ANALOG AUDIOPHILE
In the listing below, Robert Brook recommends you buy a Triplanar tonearm. So do we. If you would like one, as dealers for this wonderful arm we may be able to help, although it typically takes about a year to get one since they are handbuilt to order. Worth the wait I say!
I hope to write a bit about getting my first Triplanar back in the late-90s, a life-changing event in my evolution as an audiophile.
Once I had learned how to dial in the VTA adjustment for every record I played, I quickly discovered that I was able to operate at a completly different level.
This is a sophisticated piece of equipment with very fine adjustments for every aspect of playback. I confess it actually took me about five years to be in full control of all the ins and outs of the Triplanar. The more I experimented with the settings, the more I learned and the better I could play records.
In 2005 I made a breakthrough while working with a favorite Borodin record I had been trying and failing to get to sound right. I wrote about the hours I spent adjusting the azimuth, VTA, anti-skate and tracking weight for that record, and what dramatic improvements resulted from my efforts all those years ago.
If you don’t have an arm of this quality, or don’t know how to adjust it for every record you play, it is our belief that you have not begun to hear how good your records can sound.
More on Robert’s system here. You may notice that it has a lot in common with the one we use.
Robert has approached the various problems he’s encountered scientifically, methodically and carefully, along these three fronts: