*Hey, What’s the Big Idea?

Thoughts on The Big Picture from someone who has been playing records for almost 60 years. I bought a copy of She Loves You on Swan in 1964 and still own it. The disc may be cracked but the picture sleeve is in pretty good shape, just in case you were wondering.

Nirvana’s Nevermind – Live and Learn

More on the Subject of Record Collector Thinking

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently: 

Hey Tom, 

I have purchased about 85 LPs from you in the past 10 years, many of the various types of hot stampers. I was looking at an 11/18/06 article of yours, which said you would verify if my Nirvana/Nevermind LP “is the good one” if I would send you the runout information of side 2.

Well here it is: A339124425S2 320. Hoping you could help me with this. Thanks!

Kind Regards,

Alex 

Alex,

That is not the pressing we like anymore I’m afraid. That’s the old import pressing we used to like, but now we know that those pressings can be very good but they won’t win a shootout against the right domestic original LP. We have no info about that stamper still around either, sorry!

TP

That’s a drag as this is the exact pressing that I purchased from you on 11/18/06 due to an article where you said the following: “The perfect recording, the best of it’s kind, ever. The bass is perfect, the guitars are perfect. The vocals are perfect. Now how in the world could that be you ask?! This import is the first and only version that sounds the way it should: Perfect”. What is the deal here, have things changed so dramatically since then.. Your comments please.

Regards,

Alex

Alex,

It would be great to always be right about which are the best sounding records, but that is simply not possible. We discover new and better pressings for famous albums all the time, once every month or two on average I would say, which means that since 2006 we have found newer, better pressings than our former reference pressings at least a hundred times.

We write about it here under the heading live and learn.

An excerpt: (more…)

What Can You Learn from a Mercury Shootout Like This One?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Mercury Classical Recordings Available Now

The short answer is that you can’t learn much from this shootout, because we’re not telling you which title the stampers you see below belong to.

Be that as it may, in the case of this mystery title the conventional wisdom turns out to be correct — the earlier numbered pressings did better than the later numbered pressings, and the early labels did better than the later labels.

That happens a lot, and we are happy to admit that it does. Why? Because the experimental evidence — the data — say that is what happened.

As usual for posts in which the stamper sheet from a shootout is reproduced in its entirety, the stamper numbers shown below will belong to a different album than the one you see pictured.

These can be found under the heading of Mystery Stampers. Most of these posts will illustrate something to be learned from a Hot Stamper shootout, but because the information reveals the shootout winning stampers, the actual title of the record is rarely revealed.

Much more useful stamper information can be found using this link, which includes plenty of stamper numbers for specific titles that are best avoided by audiophiles looking for top quality sound. In addition, we post the winning and losing stampers for some titles that are an unreliable guide to good sound. Unreliable stampers are also quite common.

The right stampers are only one of the many reasons some copies win our shootouts and others don’t, but in the case of this rare Mercury, a record that we only had four copies of, the RFR-2/2 stampers were clearly the best, with no other set of stampers coming close. The best of the others earned grades no better than 2+/2+.

One lesson that was clear was that the best stampers were, to quote our reviewer, “a step up!”

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Why Does “Why” Matter in Analog Audio

Robert Brook runs a blog called The Broken Record, with a subtitle explaining that his 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 the highest fidelity — and are willing to go the extra mile and pay the extra dollar to make that happen.

Why Does “WHY” Matter in Analog AUDIO?

 

I wrote a piece about this subject years ago, exhorting audiophiles to forget their theories. An excerpt:

We don’t know what causes some copies to sound so good.

We know them when we hear them and that’s pretty much all we can say we really know. Everything else is speculation and guesswork.

We have data. What we don’t have is a theory that explains that data.

And it simply won’t do to ignore the data because we can’t explain it. Hot Stamper deniers are those members of the audiophile community who, when faced with something they don’t want to be true, simply manufacture reasons why it can’t be true or shouldn’t be true. That’s not science. It is in fact the very opposite of science.

Practicing science means following the data wherever it leads.

The truth can only be found in the record’s grooves and nowhere else.

If you don’t understand record collecting as a science, you won’t be able to do it well and you certainly won’t achieve the success that’s possible by using a scientific approach.

(For those who like to get into the weeds with data in the form of stamper numbers, we’ve got plenty on the blog to share with you.)

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All Truth Passes Through Three Stages

spock

More on the Importance of Critical Thinking Skills in Audio

All truth passes through three stages.

First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Here’s a blast from the past that may shed some light on the philosophical insight above.

I had an interesting conversation with one of our good customers a while back. He had recently been chatting with some of his audiophile buddies about Hot Stampers. Let’s just say they weren’t buying any of it. This is more or less how he related the conversation to me over the phone (which started out as an email, most of which is reproduced below).

First he told me how much he has been enjoying his Hot Stampers, then we talked about his audiophile buds.

The Hot Stampers have been phenomenal as always. No matter how many records I buy, none can hold a candle to anything in my Hot Stamper collection.

A couple of my friends happen to be longtime audiophiles. As still a relative beginner to the world of audiophiles, I had hoped that these audio vets would be fans of Better Records, if not regular customers.

Instead they seemed to be incredulous at the thought of Hot Stampers — even though they had never heard one!! Admittedly, they have more years of experience in this endeavor, but I thought, hey, at least I am willing to give a great sounding record a try, right? Perhaps over the course of many years, people believe they have it all figured out. [More on that subject here.]

Anyhow, even if they could ultimately be persuaded by playing a Hot Stamper from my collection, it just seemed like such a ridiculous attitude to dismiss something that you’ve never listened to. Don’t get me wrong — they’re nice people, but it certainly doesn’t inspire faith in their approach to audio. As such, I’m sticking with the Better Records advice, whether it’s a record or system upgrade. And so far the audio wisdom you guys have offered has never failed to impress me.

Equally important, I appreciate your approach to the whole process, which seems to be rooted in the apparently radical idea of objectivity. What a concept!

That’s the gist of the story. I told him that he had officially just had his first taste of those whose ears are plugged up with Audiophile Dogma. Welcome to my world.

Just to be safe, when I got off the phone I looked up the word “incredulous,” which is defined as “unwilling to admit or accept what is offered as true.” In this case, these guys not only don’t believe two identical looking records will often sound different, they cannot even accept the possibility that they would.

It’s fine to be skeptical; I’m as skeptical as they come, and proud of it. But pig-headed is something else. I wrote this bit of commentary on that very subject:

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Breaking Through Barriers and Crossing Bridges

More on Developing Your Critical Listening Skills

The Invisible Barrier Theory

Your ability to recognize that one side of a record more often than not will have sonic qualities that are different from the other side of the same disc is limited by an invisible barrier that exists between you, in your role as listener, and you, in your role as judge of the sound.

This barrier goes by another name: “the stereo.“ There really can be no other explanation for it, assuming you have something in the range of normal hearing.

What the stereo is incapable of showing you limits what you can hear, regardless of how much money, time and effort you may have dedicated to your system, or how good a job you think it is doing.

The solution is to get better sound. Then the differences between any two sides of the same record will become as obvious to you as they are to us.

Shootouts are the best way to highlight these often subtle differences, and, as an added benefit, they are also the best way to train your ears to identify them. Once you cross that bridge, there is no going back. ALL your records will start to reveal their true selves, one side at a time.

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Abandoned Luncheonette – Remembering the Glorious Sound of Tubes

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Hall and Oates Available Now

This record has the sound of TUBES. I’m sure it was recorded with transistors, judging by the fact that it was made after most recording studios had abandoned that “antiquated” technology, but there may be a reason why they were able to achieve such success with the new transistor equipment when, in the decades to come, they would produce nothing but one failure after another.

In other words, I have a theory.

They remember what things sounded like when they had tubes. Modern engineers appear to have forgotten that sound. They seem to have no reference for Tubey Magic. If they use tubes in their mastering chains, they sure don’t sound the way vintage tube-mastered records tend to sound.

Transistor Audio Equipment with Plenty of Tubey Magic

A similar syndrome was then operating with the home audio equipment manufacturers as well. Early transistor gear by the likes of Marantz, McIntosh and Sherwood, just to name three I happen to be familiar with, still retained much of the smooth, rich, natural, sweet, grain-free sound of the better tube equipment of the day.

I once owned a wonderful Sherwood receiver that you would swear had tubes in it. In fact it was simply an unusually well-designed transistor unit. Anyone listening to it would never know that it was solid state. It has none of the “sound” we associate with solid state, thank goodness.

Very low power, 15 watts a channel. No wonder it sounded so good.

Stick with the 4 Digit Originals (SD 7269)

If you’re looking for a big production pop record that jumps out of your speakers, is full of TUBEY MAGIC, and has consistently good music, look no further. Until I picked up one of these nice originals, I had no idea how good this record could sound. For an early ’70s multi-track pop recording, this is about as good as it gets (AGAIG as we like to say). It’s rich, sweet, open, natural, smooth most of the time — in short, it’s got all the stuff we audiophiles LOVE.   

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Heavy Vinyl – Audiophile Blessing or Curse?

More Letters Comparing Hot Stamper Pressings to their Heavy Vinyl Counterparts

Two editorial points to make up front:

The run-of-the-mill Heavy Vinyl pressing is so lifeless and opaque that we think the run-of-the-mill CD, on average, will sound better.

If you’re an audiophile who is currently collecting and playing Heavy Vinyl pressings, you are making the worst choice possible: second- or third-rate sound quality coupled with the hassle and expense of the modern LP.

In this letter Dan tells us of his disappointment with the new reissues he’s been trying:

I can’t tell you how many modern reissues I’ve bought over the past couple months that have lost, and lost badly, to just my one single original or early pressing of an album. Reissues by AC/DC, The Who, ZZ Top, The Rolling Stones, and Patti Smith have all failed miserably against my merely average sounding originals.

As a result, I have almost zero interest in buying anything that’s reissued nowadays. But I believe you said in a recent commentary that the less audiophile pressings you have in your collection the better. So I suppose the fact that I’m weeding these out from my collection is good news as far as my ears and stereo are concerned. But it’s still a sad state for the audio industry as a whole. It’s too bad we can’t tell a different story. I don’t know what in the mastering/pressing process needs to be different, but something does.

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Half-Speed Mastering – A Technological Fix for a Non-Existent Problem

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Joe Jackson Available Now

UPDATE

This commentary was written many years ago. We had a Hot Stamper Section back then, because we were selling lots of other kinds of records including direct-to-disc recordings, Heavy Vinyl, Half-Speeds, OJC‘s and various other pressings which we thought would appeal to those in search of higher quality sound.

In 2011, we officially stopped selling anything other than records we had cleaned, evaluated, and found to have superior sound.

We do a lot of MoFi bashing here at Better Records, and for good reason: most of their pressings are just plain awful. We are shocked and frankly dismayed to find that the modern day audiophile still flocks to this label with the expectation of a higher quality LP, seemingly unaware that although the vinyl may be quiet, the mastering — the sound of the music as opposed to the sound of the record’s surfaces — typically leaves much to be desired. 

Hence the commentary below, prompted by a letter from our good friend Roger, who owned the MoFi Night and Day and who had also purchased a Hot Stamper from us, which we are happy to say he found much more to his liking.

In my response, after a bit of piling on for the MoFi, I then turned my attention to three Nautilus records which I had previously held in high regard, but now find deserving of a critical beatdown. (We actually have a section for bad sounding records I once liked. Live and learn, right?) This one is entitled:

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Apparently Some of the Albums We Sell (For Big Bucks!) Are Poorly Recorded – Who Knew?

More on the Pitfalls of Conventional Thinking

It’s amazing how many records that used to sound bad — or least problematic — now sound pretty darn good. 

Every one of them is proof that comments about recordings are of limited value.

The recordings don’t change. Our ability — and yours — to find, clean and play the pressings made from them does, and that’s what Hot Stampers are all about.

You have a choice. You can choose to take the standard audiophile approach, which is to buy the record that is supposed to be the best pressing, check off the box for that title, file it alphabetically on the shelf where it goes and sleep soundly knowing that all is now right with the world, or at least that title.

You did the right thing, you bought the pressing you were told to buy, the one you read the reviews about, the one on the list, the one they said was made from the real analog tape, mastered by one of the greats, the one pressed on the best vinyl, in a limited run, and on and on down the list.

When — sometimes if but usually when — the sound of the record doesn’t live up to the hype surrounding it, you merely accept the fact that the recording itself must be at fault.

We did it too, more times than I care to admit.

Instead of heading toward that dead end, perhaps you should consider adopting our approach, an approach that allows you to hear those very same albums sound dramatically better than you ever thought possible. In fact, many of our customers have written to tell us what a revelation our Hot Stamper pressings of albums they were familiar with turned out to be.

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Hot Stampers Simply Do Not Exist for Some Audiophiles

Please Consider Taking Some of Our Hard-won Audio Advice

It is an unfortunate fact that, at least for some audiophiles, Hot Stampers simply do not exist.

They may be lovers of sound, the dictionary definition of an audiophile, but their systems are not revealing and accurate enough to allow them to hear how good a properly-mastered, properly-pressed, properly-cleaned vintage (or maybe not so vintage) pressing can sound relative to whatever other version of the music they may have — Heavy Vinyl, cassette, CD, etc.

They simply do not possess a system (power, equipment, room, tweaks) of the quality required to play them at their best. 

Others won’t have developed the rudimentary listening skills needed to recognize the superior sound of a Hot Stamper pressing when it’s playing on their turntable.

Speculation? Opinion? Not really. Not when the evidence is this overwhelming. Let’s look at some of the facts.

A great many analog-oriented audiophiles are quite happy with the sound of Heavy Vinyl LPs, the kind that we regularly trash around here.

Those pressings set a decidedly low standard for sound quality, to our ears anyway, so if the typical audiophile is happy with them, what does that tell you about the quality of his audio chain and the nature of his critical listening skills?

It may be hard to wrap your head around this unfortunate and depressing fact, but many of the audiophile records being made today are even worse sounding than the audiophile pressings that were made back in the bad old days of the 70s, 80s and 90s. (Maybe the bad old days, like the poor, will always be with us.)

Boat Rocking

Our Hot Stampers will of course sound quite a bit better on even a run-of-the-mill audiophile system than practically any Heavy Vinyl pressing you care to name. But if you’re happy with a $30 reissue, what’s your incentive to spend five or ten or twenty times that amount based on nothing more than our say-so?

Even with a 100% Money Back Guarantee, why rock your own boat?

On the site we take great pains to make it clear that there are many ways that an audiophile — even a novice — can prove to himself that what we say about pressing variations is true, using records he already owns.

You don’t have to spend a dime to discover the reality underlying the concept of Hot Stampers.

We not only tell you how to go about finding them, we also help you to do a better job of playing them.

Have You Noticed?

But perhaps you may have noticed, as we have, that most audio skeptics rarely go out of their way to prove themselves wrong.

And a little something psychologists and cognitive scientists call confirmation bias practically guarantees that they won’t hear something they don’t want to hear.

Which is fine. At Better Records we don’t let that slow us down. Instead, we happily go about our business turning skeptics into believers (one record at a time of course), taking a few moments out to debunk the hell out of practically any audiophile LP we run into, for sport if for no other reason.

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