Audiophile Pressings

Can You Hear the Bloated Bass on This DCC Pressing?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Linda Ronstadt Available Now

UPDATE 2026

This review was written many years ago, around 2004 I think. This was one of the first DCC records I did an early pseudo-shootout for up against run-of-the-mill Mastering Lab domestic pressings.

I found, somewhat surprisingly, at least at that time, that the DCC came up short, as you will see in the review below. Down the road, Paul and Judy showed me once again what a fool I had been. In 2007, Joni was the last straw.

As much as I admire Steve Hoffman’s work for DCC, on this title the DCC is not as good as the best domestic copies.

The best domestic pressings are just plain more fun.

The DCC sounds thick in the midrange and fat in the bass, although some of that boost in the bass could have been used to the advantage of some of the domestic pressings we played. 1 DB or so at 50-60 cycles would help, but the DCC has a boost in the middle and upper bass that causes the bass to sound bloated next to a properly-mastered, properly-pressed LP. 

I like rich sounding records just like Steve does, but his version of this title is too rich for my blood. If your system is lean sounding you may prefer the DCC, but we found it less than agreeable over here.

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Look Around on Speakers Corner Heavy Vinyl

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Sergio Mendes Available Now

UPDATE 2026

This commentary, about how wrong I was about the Look Around album on Speakers Corner, was written shortly after that pressing came out in the early 2000s.

My foolishness is a textbook case of live and learn. One thing I can tell you for certain is that, although I didn’t know it, I sure had a lot to learn back in those days.

2007 was the year that the penny finally dropped and we finally gained a better understanding of what was going on with the sound of the modern Heavy Vinyl reissue.

Practically everything we would do in audio from that point onward would take us down a very different path than the one we had unknowingly been on. We saw the light, and there was simply never going to be a way to unsee it.

Our Old Review

We were fairly impressed with the Speakers Corner pressing of this album when it came out on Heavy Vinyl in 2001.

Since then we have learned a thing or two. Their version is decent, not bad, but by no stretch of the imagination can it compete with any Hot Stamper pressing found on our site.

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More Bright and Harsh Sound from Classic Records

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now

Ridiculously bright and harsh, sounding nothing like the good pressings we sell.

We are proud to say this was one of the Classic Records Led Zeppelin releases that we refused to carry back when we were selling Heavy Vinyl (along with II and Houses, both of which stink to high heaven).

You will find very few critics of the Classic Zep LPs outside of those of us who work for Better Records, and even we used to recommend three of the Zep titles on Classic: Led Zeppelin I, IV and Presence.

Wrong on all counts. Live and learn, right?

Since then, we’ve made it a point to review many of the Classic Zeps, a public service from your friends at Better Records. We don’t actually like any of them now, although the first album is by far the best of the bunch.

Is this pressing of III the worst version of the album ever made?

There may be too much competition to make that claim – in our experience, most pressings of Zep records tend to be poorly mastered, barely hinting at how well recorded their albums really are — but it is certainly a record no audiophile should want anything to do with.

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Time Out Is a Classic Case of Live and Learn

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Dave Brubeck Available Now

When we did a shootout for this album way back in October of 2007, we took the opportunity to play the Classic Records 200 gram pressing. Maybe we got a bad one, who knows, but that record did not sound remotely as good as the real thing. (6 eye or 360, both can be quite good. Skip the Red Label ’70s reissues.)

The piano sounded thin and hard, which was quite unexpected given the fact that we used to consider the Classic LP one of their few winners and actually recommended it. Another example of we was wrong.

As we said in our shootout: “We dropped the needle on the Classic reissue to see how it stacked up against a serious pressing. Suffice it to say, the real Time Out magic isn’t going to be found on any heavy vinyl reissue!”

If I were in charge of the TAS Super Disc List, I would not have put this record on it.

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Let It Be on Heavy Vinyl – The Gong Rings Once More

Hot Stamper Pressings of Let It Be Available Now

At the end of a shootout for Let It Be back in June of 2014, we decided to see how the 2012 Digitally Remastered Heavy Vinyl pressing would hold up against the 12 (yes, twelve!) British copies we had just critically auditioned.

Having evaluated the two best copies on side two, we felt we knew exactly what separated the killer copies (White Hot) from the next tier down (Super Hot). Armed with just how good the recording could sound fresh in our minds, we threw on the new pressing. We worked on the VTA adjustment for the thicker record for a couple of minutes to get the sound balanced and as resolving as possible, and after a few waves of the Talisman we were soon hearing the grungy guitar intro of I’ve Got a Feeling.

My scribbled first notes: not bad!

Sure, there’s only a fraction of the space and three-dimensionality of the real British pressings, but the bass seemed to be there, the energy seemed decent enough, the tonality was good if a bit smooth and dark. All in all not a bad Beatles record.

Then we played One After 909 and the sound just fell off a cliff. It was so lifeless and compressed! The parts of the song that get loud on the regular pressings never get loud on the new one. The live-in-the-studio Beatles’ rock energy had somehow disappeared.

We couldn’t take more than a minute or two of the song. It was just too frustrating and irritating. What the hell did they do to make this record sound this way? We had no idea.

Didn’t matter. It was game over. The gong from The Gong Show had rung. The record had to go.

We had played twelve British copies, all with stampers that we knew to be good on side two. Two or three of those copies did not merit a Hot Stamper sonic grade. Nothing new there, happens all the time.

Yet even the worst copy we played of the twelve had more jump factor, more life and more dynamic energy than the new Heavy Vinyl pressing.

Which means that there’s a very good chance that any copy you pick up on British vinyl will be better sounding — maybe not a 100% chance but easily a 90+% chance. Which makes buying the new Heavy Vinyl LP, not to mention playing it, pointless unless…

Unless you are more of a record collector than an audiophile or music lover. And if you are one of those guys, you are definitely on the wrong blog, unless…

Unless you are here to repent and swear off the error of your ways.

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Living Stereo Vs. Classic Records

Hot Stamper Pressings of Living Stereo Recordings Available Now

We described a Hot Stamper pressing of Symphonie Fantastique (LSC 2362) we put up not long ago this way:

The size and power of a large orchestra in Living Stereo sound.  The hall is huge, the brass solid and powerful, the top and bottom extends properly, the stage is wide and clear — what more can you ask for? 

So open and spacious, with gorgeous, richly textured strings — this is the VIVID sound we love from the Golden Age!

Classic Records and Their Abysmal String Tone

Of course, this was always the most obvious shortcoming of the Classic Records RCA remasterings — just not obvious to the audiophile press or the audiophiles who bought the records. None of them seemed to notice how the strings of the new pressings never sounded remotely the way they had on the originals and early reissues (reissues which were, unsurprisingly, sometimes better).

Classic’s pressings had bass and dynamics, no one could deny it, but the strings were unusually shrill and smeary, and the hall practically non-existent. (We chalked it up to the bad transistor cutting equipment Bernie was using back then, but how could anyone know for sure what was really going on? All we knew was that most of the classical titles they released did not sound good, so there was simply no need to investigate further.)

We found out some years ago that there was a new series of recuts coming from Acoustic Sounds. Based on their dismal track record, I will be very surprised if they are much better than mediocre.

UPDATE 2024

We finally got one in and put it in a shootout. The results: a passable-at-best side one and a bad sounding side two.

In other words, really not worth the vinyl it’s pressed on. Almost any White Dog or Shaded Dog will beat it (although it should be noted that there are plenty of vintage pressings of the album that don’t sound much better than mediocre. Still, on side two it should be no contest.)

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MoFi Sure Added Plenty of Sparkle to These Acoustic Guitars

Hot Stamper Pressing of the Music of Ry Cooder Available Now

UPDATE 2026

This review is from many years ago, the last time we had a copy of the album in stock to play. Hard to imagine I would not still agree with it though.

As you probably know, the MoFi of Jazz goes for big bucks nowadays — $500 and up. Is it worth it? 

You’ve got to be kidding. It’s a nice record as far as it goes, but it suffers from the same shortcomings as just about every Mobile Fidelity pressing we bother to play these days (with some obvious exceptions of course).

We have a test pressing, and knowing that the MoFi is the standard against which many audiophiles prefer to judge our Hot Stampers, we listened to it first before going about our comparison test.

Our MoFi copy is actually tonally correct, which was a bit of a surprise. (Yours of course could very well be otherwise.)

Right away we could hear exactly what people like about it, the same thing that has always impressed audiophiles about half-speed mastered records: their often outstanding transparency.

Jazz on MoFi has zero-distortion, utterly clear, spacious, see-through sound.

But listen past that and what do you hear?

Don’t those guitars seem to have that MoFi Tea-for-the-Tillerman “sparkly” quality you hate: all pluck and no body, all detail and no solidity?

Nothing has any weight.

Nothing sounds natural.

Nothing sounds real.

It’s pretty, maybe, but it sure ain’t right.

It’s the kind of sound that shouts out to the world “Hey, look at me, I’m an audiophile record! See how I sound? So clear! So clean!”

Which isn’t bad for about two minutes, and then it’s positively insufferable.

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Put Us to the Test! We Can Tell a Good Record from a Bad One, Digital or No Digital

Skeptical Thinking Is Key to Finding Better Sounding Records

And we don’t need to know anything about how it was made in order to judge it!

For those of you who did not follow this story from a few years back, you may want to catch up here.

Although it’s behind a paywall, you can get a free test drive easily enough.

Now that you are up to date on the overall contours of this mess, here is another one of the many thoughts I have had concerning the revelation that Mobile Fidelity has been secretly sourcing at least some of their masters digitally since 2015.

Back in August of 2022, I wrote what you see below to Geoff Edgers, the reporter who exposed this ridiculous mess. (I toned it down quite a bit. The original version was not suitable for publication.)

Earlier that same year he had visited me at my studio, where I played him the awful Dire Straits first album that MoFi remastered, one of the worst half speeds ever made (review coming, but you can get a good idea of my take on it here).

By August of 2022 he was starting to see just how crazy the world of audiophiles actually is, and the more he learned about some of these people, the crazier they seemed. And he was not wrong about that.

My letter (with a few additions):

Jim Davis (of MoFi) is not one to be trusted and would have loved to cover up this whole thing if he could have figured out how to do it. It got away from him, and as far as I’m concerned, good.

And you heard how shitty their Dire Straits record is. Who cares if it’s digital? The sound is bad. Why bother trying to figure out the reasons this crappy label doesn’t know how to make good records? It’s just a fact. Accept it.

Many of MoFi’s now-exposed records were on Fremer and Esposito’s own lists of the best sounding analog albums.

Of course they were. I defy you to find me two “audiophile experts” who are wrong more often than these guys!

From the article:

One of the reasons they want to excoriate MoFi is for lying,” says Howarth. “The other part that bothers them is that they’ve been listening to digital all along and they’re highly invested in believing that any digital step will destroy their experience. And they’re wrong.

These people who claim they have golden ears and can hear the difference between analog and digital, well, it turns out you couldn’t.

The best ears? Are you kidding me? In their dreams. These guys give every indication that they are virtually devoid of critical listening skills. The evidence supporting this reality has been laid out in this very blog in scores of commentaries over the course of more than twenty years.

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Luck of the Draw – 2012 Was a Long Time Ago

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Bonnie Raitt Available Now

UPDATE 2026

We’re close to having enough copies to do another shootout, our first in four years.

In 2012 we did our first one for Luck of the Draw, at the end of which we found a pressing that was clearly superior to the DCC, our default favorite at the time.

That was 14 years ago, and 14 years is a long time in audio. Having done the shootout many, many times since then, I can tell you two things we have learned:

1) Yes, of course, the domestic copies are better sounding than the DCC.

I often mention that DCC’s releases had to fight their way through Kevin Gray’s opaque, airless, low-resolution cutting system (more here). That gives an advantage to practically any pressing not mastered by him.

His list of failures is surely one of the longest in the business. Of course, we can only guess about most of them, as we are not in the business of playing junk Heavy Vinyl. We much prefer the business we are in: selling the best sounding vintage pressings of the greatest albums of all time.

2) The domestic pressings are very unlikely to ever win a shootout.

They tend to earn grades of A++ or A+ to A++, and none of them lately has managed to earn a grade of A++ on both sides.

The imports are just too good. They are clearly better sounding, and it does not take a pair of golden ears to hear it. Why that is we have no idea, and we are congenitally opposed to speculating about the subject. (More on that subject below.)

Our 2012 Shootout

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Crisis? What Crisis? – The Exception that Probes the Rule

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Supertramp Available Now

UPDATE 2026

This commentary was written more than fifteen years ago, so please take it with an oversized grain of salt.

The best import pressings of Crisis? What Crisis? kill this audiophile record.

All those years ago we thought that the Half-Speed copies were surprisingly good, but they’re really not good enough to bother with these days since the UK pressings are just so much better sounding.

We did another shootout for this album in 2026 and here is how the Half-Speed did relative to the other pressings we played.

Two copies, neither of which is good enough to put up on the site as they did not earn our minimum Hot Stamper grade of 1.5+/1.5+. Which makes them passable sounding records, not much more than that, and not really worth the money we paid or the time we wasted cleaning and playing them.

None of the Half-Speeds we mention below are good enough to play in a shootout and there is little chance that will ever change. There is one exception though, and that’s John Klemmer’s Touch album on MoFi, a pressing we have never been able to beat, and believe me, we’ve tried.

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