*Tom’s Audiophile Notebook

How We Rationalized Selling Heavy Vinyl Even as Late as 2007

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Who Available Now

UPDATE 2026

We were still recommending the Classic Records pressing of Who’s Next as late as 2007 (2007 being the year that everything changed) by considering its sound quality, quiet vinyl and price relative to the expensive, vintage Hot Stamper pressings we had started to offer at the time.

Hot Stamper copies are not particularly quiet, and they are never cheap, which is in marked contrast to Classic Records’ heavy vinyl pressings, which are fairly quiet and also fairly cheap. Some of you may think $30 is a lot of money for a record, but we do not. It’s a fair price.

When you buy Crosby Stills and Nash’s first album or Tapestry or Bridge Over Troubled Water on Classic for $30, you are getting your money’s worth.

But don’t kid yourself. You are not getting anything remotely close to the best pressing available, because the best pressings are hard to find. We do find them, and we do charge a lot of money for them, because they sound absolutely AMAZING in a direct head to head comparison to the Classic versions and anything else you may have heard.

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When you read a review of a record that was obviously reproduced with inferior equipment, what’s your first reaction?

When You’re Just Getting Started in Audio…

Mine is typically “what an idiot!“

But then I might step back and, taking a moment to reflect, recognize that I myself have written seriously mistaken reviews back in the days when my equipment was inferior. I have to recognize that could have been me, and maybe not all that long ago.

Here’s one from the mid-90s, about twenty years after I had purchased a pair of rather large floor standing speakers and a number of highly-rated, very expensive hi-fidelity components to drive them.

But all that hardware and all that money could not tell me how awful sounding some records were, and there are plenty more from my past.

In fact, there are so many that we thought they deserved their own special category here on the blog, under the heading dubious sounding records I once liked.

The explanation for all the nonsense one reads on the web could not be simpler or more obvious.

The lo-fi to mid-fi crowd doesn’t know what it’s missing and telling them doesn’t do them (or you) any good because they are not where they need to be yet. They are not where you are — they are where they are. And that just happens to be the same place you were at some point in your journey.

They are in the hole you used to be in. The difference is you managed to climb out of that hole. They’re still in it.

Keep in Mind

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We Didn’t Know How Good We Had It in the Seventies

Hot Stamper Pressings of Well-Recorded Folk Rock Albums Available Now

Stealin’ Home has long been a Folkie-Pop favorite of mine, mostly on the strength of the consistently smart songwriting, polished production and audiophile sound quality.

But really, to be truthful, what I found attractive right from the start was Iain Matthews’s especially clear, sweet tenor. That’s the hook that drew me to the album.

Only later would I be pleasantly surprised to find that the recorded sound was wonderful; that the production was equal to the best major label Rock and Pop around (a comparison to The Doobie Brothers would not be a stretch); and, with repeated listening, it was clear that the level of songwriting was high indeed (an a capella rendition of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught, which opens side two, can’t help but raise your averages).

ian_matthews_-_stealin_homeWe Didn’t Know How Good We Had It

Produced in 1978, the best copies are rich, smooth and sweet in the best tradition of ANALOG recording.

Only a few years later this sound was out of style, replaced by the edgy, hard, digital qualities preferred by synthpop bands like Tears for Fears and Simple Minds.

This would turn out to be a bad time for audiophiles (like me) who liked the pop music of the day but not the pop sound of the day. Heavy-handed processing as well as the overuse of synthesizers and drum effects, with the whole of the production slathered in digital reverb, have resulted in most of the albums from the early- to mid-80s being all but impossible to enjoy on a modern high-end system. Believe me, we’ve tried.

UPDATE 2026

Getting distortion out of the system, electricity, room and all the rest helps make the records from the 80s much more enjoyable. Brothers in Arms comes instantly to mind, but there are scores of others. Obviously some heavily processed recordings are going to sound much better than others, especially if you have the right pressings, but few of them can compete with the better recordings from the 70s.

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“Ninety percent of success can be boiled down to consistently doing the obvious thing for an uncommonly long period of time…”

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“Ninety percent of success can be boiled down to consistently doing the obvious thing for an uncommonly long period of time without convincing yourself that you’re smarter than you are.” — Shane Parrish

Everybody knows that practice of any skill with the idea of challenging yourself will more than likely make you better at practically anything you choose to do. But where have you ever seen those concepts applied to bettering your own audio skills other than right here on this blog? (And Robert Brook‘s of course.)

Just how would you go about challenging yourself as an audiophile?

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Money Down the Drain

Basic Audio Advice — These Are the Fundamentals of Good Sound

Readers of this blog know that I’m a fan of big speakers, but in a room that’s as bad for sound reproduction as this one is, these monsters would qualify as a form of torture at anything above a whisper.

There is an ideal balance between absorption and reflection that must be found for every room. The balance this fellow has chosen is 98% reflection, which will lead to 100% awful sound.

I don’t even like the picture between the speakers. If you must have something there, in my experience rarely will it sound good unless it is five or more feet off the ground. (See picture below.)

Note that sidewall absorption in our listening room is never more than about five feet high. For some reason that seems to work the best. We tried lots of different heights over the course of years and we always came back to nothing over five feet.

The back wall has 4 inch thick 4×8 sheets of styrofoam across most of it, leaving the corners empty (which always seems to work the best, again, who knows why).

A small piece of absoptive material in the middle up high seemed to help, but more than that was too much and less did nothing.

These may be the most wonderful speakers in the world in the right room, but in this room there is no speaker that could possibly reproduce music properly, which means this guy spent a lot of money and got nothing for it. He’s not alone.

He could get some carpet and pull his speakers well out into the room for starters, but then the whole thing just won’t have the elegance it did, so what on earth would ever make him do such a thing? His favorite music? Hah, that’s a good one.

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The One True Test for Records

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There is only one true test for records: Which ones do you want to play?

Collect those and sell off all the others.

Acquiring better sounding pressings and getting rid of those that are no longer satisfying will result in a collection that is a joy to own, a collection that will provide a great deal more satisfaction than one made up primarily of collectible records.

To me there is nothing more thrilling in audio than hearing a favorite, familiar recording sound better than I ever thought it could. If that’s the kind of thrill you are looking for, I recommend you visit the site as often as you can. Something of interest is sure to pop up.

It can’t be downloaded. It can only be found — as far as I know — on an old vinyl record.

Like many of our customers who’ve had their standards raised by our Hot Stamper pressings, you may be so exhausted and disappointed by the mediocrities being churned out these days by one Heavy Vinyl grifter after another that you finally make the pledge to swear off bad records for good. Only you can free yourself of the chains that are holding you back.

Once those chains are broken, a world of possibilities will open up, populated by vintage vinyl pressings that exist by the millions all over the world, waiting to show you just how sublime and immersive and enjoyable music can sound in your very own home.

Here is a good way to get started.

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Analog Shmanalog – Why Avoid the Only Question Worth Asking?

Saving the world from bad sound you say? Hey, that’s what I’m about too!

The following is my reply to the friend who sent me the NYT article linked above.

He had been to my studio and heard for himself the sound of the Heavy Vinyl pressings that “The Wizard of Vinyl” produces. Up against properly-mastered, properly-pressed vintage LPs, they are rarely better than mediocre, and more often than not just plain terrible. (We actually play one of his remastered records in this video.)

Mr. Kassem can’t seem to stop stepping on rakes, no doubt because he never made any effort to develop his critical listening skills, which for some reason he thought he already possessed. As a consequence of this mistaken judgment, he literally has nothing to guide him, a fact that should be obvious to anyone who has played any of his company’s records.

My letter:

This “pure analog versus analog tainted with digital” debate needs to stop.

It completely avoids the only question worth asking: are these new records any good?

Who cares how they make them?

Only the deaf! Those who can actually hear know how badly they suck and could not care less.

You sat me down and we played a batch of modern remastered records. They all failed. (More or less.)

That is the only true test.

Put all of these new records to the same test! Please, somebody!

Somebody with a top quality system can volunteer to do shootouts for any and all of them and let the chips fall where they may.

Finding such a system may be impossible, but we can at least try. This talk of master tapes and pure analog sound is getting us nowhere.

There is no testing going on, just claims being made with almost nothing to back them up.

None of this matters. Literally, none of it.

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To Find Out How Much Sound You’re Missing, Consider a Different Approach

Our Guide to Record Collecting for Audiophiles

We explain — for free! — how anyone can find better records here.

If you want to know what you’re missing, there is only one approach that allows you to do that.

It involves two things that have made the modern world what it is today:

  1. Empirical findings based on the use of
  2. The scientific method.

Any other approach is doomed, not to failure, but to findings that are both unreliable and unrepeatable.

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If You’re Just Getting Started, Beware of LPs that Will Inhibit Your Progress

Hot Stamper Pressings of Blue Note Albums Available Now

Robert Brook wrote a scathing review of the Tone Poets pressing of One Flight Up in 2023, much to the dissatisfaction of some of his readers. I was the first to leave a comment as I thought he hit the nail on the head when he said:

Overall, the Tone Poet is closed, distant and frankly boring to listen to. Where is the energy of the music? Where is the presence of these musicians? Where is the studio space?

The snare sounds muted. the piano weak, the horns, especially Gordon’s saxophone, resolves poorly and becomes increasingly tiresome to listen to. On my first listen I lasted about 3 minutes into side 1, mostly because I couldn’t stand the way the sax was sounding.

I posted the comments below on Robert’s review. (I have taken the liberty to rewrite some of my comments for the purposes of clarity, along with some additional thoughts.)

Robert,

Another great post. I have many comments to make, so here goes.

When audiophiles prefer records which are clearly second-rate, more often than not I chalk it up to their lack of a better record to play. In order to hear what they are missing, they have to have a record that somehow makes clear to them precisely which aspects of the sound are failing, or at the very least, not up to par.

You could give out the stamper numbers for your Blue Note reissue — I would be surprised if it does not have VAN GELDER STEREO in the dead wax — and those who like the Tone Poets release of One Flight Up could easily find one on Discogs or Ebay and do the comparison for themselves.

But you know what? I would bet you dollars to donuts they will never do that. They simply won’t bother.

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A Few Questions for the Record Reviewing Community Regarding Counting Crows

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I think I originally posted this in the comments section for Steve Westman’s youtube channel, but, to be honest, I cannot remember as it was way back in 2023 when I wrote it.

Tom Port here. Hello all. I come in peace with a quick question.

Much is made of price points when discussing these modern pressings, and rightfully so.

I admittedly do not know anything about The Counting Crows record being discussed, but I wanted to know more — what was available, from what year, mastered by whom, that sort of thing — so I went to Discogs to see what vinyl versions had been pressed recently.

The original import LP is probably made from a dub, or mastered right off the CD — that used to happen a lot in the 90s. (My beloved Jellyfish Spilt Milk on import vinyl is a dubby joke compared to every other copy I have, including the cassette. Watch for a review of the Omnivore LP coming to the blog soon.)

Then Analogue Productions put out a version in 2012, cut by Ryan Smith, which can be seen here.

There are 16 for sale starting at $127.49. It’s two discs at 45 RPM.

Chris Bellman cut the record in 2017, and his version can be found here.

CB in the deadwax. 2 discs at 33.

There are 43 available from $25.36. Since those were manufactured by Rainbo records, the vinyl may be terrible. Their stuff often is. I gave up buying their pressings in the 90s because they were so often warped and noisy.

Then there is one other which is a bit of a mystery, with no date of release, this one.

No CB in the dead wax. 2016 on the copyright info on the label though.

8 are available for $37.99

Question

Which one sounds the best?

Seems to me that this would be valuable information for your viewers to have. Why spend $100+ for an audiophile pressing when there are so many others around?

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