*Bad Audiophile LPs

Linked below are a group of audiophile records numbering more than 285 as of 2026. Most of them are here because these particular pressings have awful sound, awful enough to make us want to create this special list for them.

If you have any of this junk hiding in your collection, pull some of them out, play them and see if what we’ve said about them is true. If your stereo is any good at all, it should not take long to hear their many faults.

They do not deserve a place in any audiophile’s home. Sell them to those who collect audiophile records and remain ignorant of their poor sound quality. (Rest assured you will have no trouble finding willing buyers.)

TAS Thinks this Pressing Is a Super Disc?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Top Quality Jazz Albums Available Now

Is there something Super about it?

If there is we sure missed it!

We described one of the better OJC copies from our second-ever shootout for Dolphy’s Out There album this way:

This copy (the first to hit the site in over four years) was doing just about everything right: it’s rich, full-bodied and Tubey Magical, yet still super open and spacious.

Admittedly a bit generic, but good records tend to do pretty much all the same things well in our experience, so why complicate things?

Note that the best OJC pressings were dramatically better sounding than any of the earlier pressings we played, the ones mastered by Rudy Van Gelder.

At best the earlier stereo pressing was passable, and the mono original with the blue cover was just plain awful on side one (NFG) and passable on side two. Do you think the old school mono jazz collectors even noticed there was a world of difference between the two sides? I sure don’t.

But the 2016 remastered pressing (according to Discogs, we thought it was 2015 as you can see) puts them all to shame with ridiculously bad sound on side one, sound so bad we didn’t even bother to play side two. What would be the point? Whoever mastered this record was as clueless as they come, and then some.

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Back to the Stone Age with The Pines of Rome on Mobile Fidelity

Hot Stamper Pressings on Decca & London Available Now

An audiophile hall of shame pressing and another MoFi LP reviewed and found wanting.

MoFi’s version of this The Pines of Rome (#1-507) is one of the worst sounding classical records they ever produced, and that’s saying something, because practically all of their classical catalog is just awful — thin and bright, with sloppy bass and completely unnatural string tone.

As hard as it may be to believe, the MoFi of the Pines of Rome makes the typical Classic Records pressing sound good, shrill strings and all.

The UHQR is somewhat better, especially in the lower octaves, but it’s maybe a D+ or C-, not an audiophile record if we are using the term to mean what it no longer means —  a pressing with higher quality sound. (more…)

Gaite Parisienne Is Just More Smeary Dreck from Classic Records

More of the Music of Jacques Offenbach

Sonic Grade: F

The last time I played the Classic I thought it was nothing but a smeary mess, as awful as their awful Scheherazade. If I were to play it today, I’m guessing it would join the other Classic Records entries in our audiophile hall of shame.

Here are some other records we played and found had smeary strings. Orchestral recordings with smeary strings do not last long on our turntable.

I love Arthur Fiedler‘s performance with the Boston Pops and the 1954 two track RCA Living Stereo sound, but finding an original Shaded Dog pressing in clean condition under $500 with the right stampers is all but impossible nowadays.

If you want to go that way, more power to you. 

This 1954 2-track recording is RCA’s first stereo recording of the work. 1954. Can you believe it? A few mics and two channels and it blows away most of the classical recordings ever done! Some old record collectors and tube lovers say classical recording quality ain’t what it used to be. This record proves it.

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

Traveling Back in Time with Cat Stevens on Mobile Fidelity

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Cat Stevens Available Now

Our good customer Roger wrote us a letter years ago about his Tea for the Tillerman on Mobile Fidelity, in which he remarked, “Sometimes I wish I kept my old crappy stereo to see if I could now tell what it was that made these audiophile pressings so attractive then.”

It got me to thinking. Yes, that would be fun, and better yet, it could be done. There are actually plenty of those old school audio systems of the 60s and 70s still around. Just look at what many of the forum posters — god bless ’em — are running. They’ve got some awesome ’70s Japanese turntables, some Monster Cable and some vintage tube gear and speakers designed in the ’50s.

With this stuff you could virtually travel back in time, in effect erasing all the audio progress made possible by the new technologies adopted by some of us over the last 30 years or so.

Then you could hear your Mobile Fidelity Tea for the Tillerman sound the way it used to when you could actually stand to be in the same room with it.

My question to Roger was “What on earth were we hearing that made us want to play these awful half-speed mastered records? What was our stereo doing that made these awful records sound good to us at the time?”

In Search of a Bad Stereo

I know how you can find out. You go to someone’s house who has a large collection of audiophile pressings and have him play you some of them. Chances are that his stereo will do pretty much what your old stereo and my old stereo used to do — be so wrong that really wrong records actually start to sound right! It seems crazy but it just might be true.

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How Good Is the Sibelius Violin Concerto on Classic Records?

Hot Stamper Pressings Featuring the Violin

Classic remastered this title in the 90s — of course they did, it’s clearly one of the better Heifetz recordings.

As expected, Classic’s remastered pressing of the Sibelius Violin Concerto (LSC 2435) was awful, as bad as LSC 1903, 1992, 2129 and others too numerous to list. 

(There is one Classic violin concerto record that is actually better than every RCA Living Stereo we have ever played — which amounts to scores of them since we have done shootouts for them all — and one of these days you will be able to read about it right here on this very blog!)

The Classic is both aggressive and lacking in texture at the same time, the worst of both worlds.

Bernie’s cutting system is what I would call Low Resolution — the harmonics and subtleties you would expect to hear are simply not there. He brightens the tonal balance, causing screechy strings whenever they get loud.

The world is full of these kinds of third-rate records. They make up the bulk record collectors’ collections as well as the ones audiophiles have sitting on their shelves.

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The Most Serious Fault of the Typical Half-Speed Mastered LP?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Revolver Available Now

UPDATE 2026

This commentary must be fairly old because we haven’t bothered to play anything put out by Sundazed in longer than I can remember.

The most serious fault of the typical Half-Speed mastered LP is not incorrect tonality or poor bass definition, although you will have a hard time finding one that doesn’t suffer from both.

It’s dead-as-a-doornail sound, plain and simple.

And most Heavy Vinyl pressings coming down the pike these days are as guilty of this sin as their audiophile forerunners from the 70s. The average Sundazed record I throw on my turntable sounds like it’s playing in another room. What audiophile in his right mind could possibly find that quality appealing? (Apparently the guy who wrote this absurd list of records you should buy It has a number of inexcusably at best mediocre and mostly awful sounding Sundazed records.)

But Sundazed and other companies just like them keep turning out this crap. Somebody must be buying it.

So how does the famous MoFi pressing of Revolver sound? In a word, clean. Also not as crude as the average British import, and far better than any Japanese or domestic pressing we heard.

But it’s dead, man. It’s just so dead.

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More of the Same Heavy Vinyl Trash from Classic Records

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Jimi Hendrix Available Now

One of the worst things those dummies at Classic ever did. The mono mix is just plain awful.

Their reissue of the mono mix is flat and dry with practically no Tubey Magic whatsoever.

It positively screams “CHEAP REISSUE.” That two word description reminds me of this record, although to be fair the sound is quite a bit worse on the Hendrix.

Is it the worst version of the album ever pressed? It almost has to be, doesn’t it?

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Giant Steps Is Another in a Very Long Line of Disappointing Rhino Remasters

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of John Coltrane Available Now

UPDATE 2026

This review was written in the early 2000s, long before we had enough data to recognize just what a hack Kevin Gray would turn out to be, remastering one awful sounding record after another for the next twenty years.

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.

Reviewing an awful pressing such as this is simply a service we offer to help audiophiles from throwing away their money, at least those audiophiles who have not bought the hype surrounding this incompetent engineer’s consistently shameful work.

Scroll down to see proof that somebody actually paid 80 bucks for this lousy record, along with the rave reviews from a few of those who flushed their money down the toilet. What could be sadder?

Our 2003 Review

Mastered by Kevin Gray, this record has what we like to call ”modern” sound, which is to say it’s clean and tonally correct for the most part, but it’s missing the Tubey Magic the originals and the good reissues both have plenty of.

In other words, it sounds too much like a CD.

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Highway 61 Revisited – Not So Good on Sundazed in Mono

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Bob Dylan Available Now

I don’t think mono works for this Highway 61, so we never carried this Sundazed pressing, and we certainly would not have recommended it back in the days when we were still selling Heavy Vinyl, which we officially stopped doing in 2011).

Stick with the 360 stereo pressings for the best sound. (Other 360 pressings that win shootouts can be found here.)

To see our current selection of Hot Stamper pressings that sound better in mono, click here.

Dylan Discography

Here you will find his albums through 1989, after which you are on your own. The later recordings have never sounded right to us and we have no plans to do shootouts for any of them.

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Direct Hits – Not Bad on Track, Awful on Classic Heavy Vinyl

More of The Who

This is a very nice looking original Track Black Label British Import LP. As anyone who knows the Who’s back catalog can attest, most of these songs were poorly recorded. Like all compilations, the sound here varies from track to track. Side two definitely has the better sound.

We guarantee that this pressing sounds better than the Classic reissue, which was so bad we never carried it.

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