*Bad Audiophile LPs

Linked below are a group of audiophile records numbering more than 275 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. (You should have no trouble finding buyers.)

An RCA Direct Disc with Bad Music & Bad Sound, Like Most Audiophile Albums from the ’70s

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Beatles Available Now

The records being marketed to audiophiles these days may have second- and third-rate sound, but at least they now have good music. That’s progress, right?

It is progress, because this RCA direct to disc recording is the kind of crap that used to qualify as an “audiophile record” when I was starting out in the mid-70s. These records were displayed on the walls of all the hi-fi stores I used to frequent back in the day.

They cost a lot more than regular records did too. Many were pressed in Japan, and I vaguely recall that the retail prices were in the range of $15 to $18. That’s $77 to $92 in today’s money. Can you imagine paying that for a record with such poor sound and music?

The Beatles Medley is particularly misguided. These guys have no idea what to do with the music of The Beatles.

A record such as this clearly belongs in our audiophile hall of shame, which is a general catchall section for the many bad sounding records that have been marketed to audiophiles over the last fifty years. We’ve played and reviewed more than 300 to date, which of course is but a mere fraction of the many thousands of questionable pressings that have been produced since the 70s. There has always been a mid-fi collector market, and no shortage of enterprising types to take advantage of it.

It turns out that many of the most shameful offenders for sound are more recent releases that have only come our way in the last few years. Here are some of their stories.

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Turning Master Tapes into Mud Pies – The Magic of the Electric Recording Company

Hot Stamper Pressings of Psychedelic Rock Recordings Available Now

UPDATE 2026

This commentary originally came out in 2023 I believe. The comments section at the end is a bit of a hoot. Man, there sure are some real wackos in the world of audio.

““It’s magical what they’re doing, recreating these old records,” Fremer said as he swapped out more Electric Recording discs.”

Swapped them out? Anyone with an ounce of respect for Love’s music would have tossed them into the nearest trash bin.

We did a shootout for Love’s Forever Changes earlier this year, and it was our good luck to get hold of a copy of the Electric Recording Company’s pressing of the album in order to see how it would fare against our Gold Label Stereo original LPs.

As you can see from the notes, to say that we could hardly believe what we were hearing clearly understates the depth of our befuddlement.

We simply have no context for a record that sounds as bad as this record sounds. We’ve never heard anything like it, and we’ve played a lot of records in the 37 years we’ve been in business. After critically auditioning thousands upon thousands of pressings in our shootouts, all day every day for the last twenty years, we’ve worn out scores of cartridges and even our Triplanar tonearm.

But this is new ground for us. A quick recap:

  • Incredibly dull,
  • Has no top or space at all,
  • One of the worst reissues I’ve ever heard.

You get the picture. What more needs be said? Last year I wrote the following:

Pete Hutchison of The Electric Recording Company makes some of the worst sounding records I have ever played in my life.

If you play me one of his awful records, and don’t tell me who made it, I can judge the record on its merits, the way we judge all records. We test records blindly for precisely this reason. We let the record tell us how well it was made, what it does right and wrong relative to other pressings of the same album, comparing apples to apples.

His records tell me he loves the sound of the murkiest, muddiest vintage tube equipment ever made, and wants every record he produces to have that sound.

In my book that is an egregious case of My-Fi, not Hi-Fi. We wrote about it here.

It’s astonishing to me that anyone takes this guy seriously.

In the Washington Post video, we did a little comparison on camera for two pressings of Quiet Kenny, a record I will have more to say about in Part Two of this commentary. Here is Geoff Edgers’ description in the article of how it all went down.

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When I Wrote this Years Ago I Was Being Far Too Charitable

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Chet Atkins Available Now

It’s been quite a while since I played the Classic pressing, but I remember it as nothing special. Like a lot of the records put out by this label, it’s tonally fine but low-rez and lacking space, warmth and, above all, Tubey Magic.

When I wrote that years ago I was being far too charitable.

A remastered pressing of a Chet Atkins recording from 1959 that lacks Tubey Magic is one that is failing fundamentally to understand why it has any reason to exist.

The premise of the modern Heavy Vinyl pressing, as its legions of defenders constantly remind us, is to allow the listener to hear the music as it was meant to be heard — with two added bonuses: better vinyl, and affordable, non-collector prices.

(The dirty little secret of the mid-fi collector market is that affordability, not sound quality, is at the heart of it. The knock on our records is that they are expensive, but how is that relevant to the sound quality of the pressings we offer? A better sounding pressing is a better sound pressing, regardless of its price.)

These newly remastered pressings are meant to offer the music lover the opportunity to hear the true sound of the master tape. This elusive holy grail they will stop at nothing to acquire can be summed up in three words: Master Tape Sound. Or so they think.

(The fact that vanishingly few audiophiles have ever heard a master tape or would know oen if they heard one is an inconvenient truth that must not be allowed to interfere with their righteous desire to own whatever pressing purports to offer it.)

But I digress. Back to Chet Atkins in 1959. Let me sum up my position this way, with a nod to the Brits:

A Living Stereo recording that lacks Tubey Magic is one that has completely lost the plot.

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You’ll Be Crying When You Get This Record on Your Turntable

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Linda Ronstadt Available Now

UPDATE 2026

This review was most likely written when the record came out, circa 2008 I’m guessing. The intro is of course new for 2026.

You’re looking at one of the worst sounding audiophile releases in recent memory, a remastering disaster that has no reason to exist other than to satisfy the needs of the mid-fi collector market for numbered, limited editions on premium vinyl, perhaps so that they can be sold at a later date for a profit (discogs average price today: $62.50.)

This is a label that should have gone under decades ago but, with a nod to Frank Zappa channeling Edgar Varese, refuses to die.

Like this guy, this guy and far too many others, they are making money hand over fist at the expense of audiophiles who have yet to get very far — anywhere, really — in audio. (I know whereof I speak. I was one of those guys and you couldn’t tell me anything back then.)

We go to great pains to lay out the problems with these records in detail, but what good does reading about their problems do if the systems playing these records iare not only hiding their flaws, but making up for some of their weaknesses. The junk pressings these collectors are buying practically guarantee they will never manage to put together a system that can show them what is really on their records.

Regardless of what kind of equipment they own, if this crap is sounding good to them, which it seems to be based on the comments section I make the mistake of reading on Discogs from time to time, nothing we say can possibly interfere with them buying more of it.

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Cat Stevens Part 2 – Is This the Truest Tillerman of Them All?

More of the Music of Cat Stevens

More Reviews and Commentaries for Tea for the Tillerman

If you haven’t read Part 1 of this story, please click here.

Back to our real story. I listened to my good original pressing. I call it White Hot at least!

Then I put the new pressing on the table, set the SDS for 45 RPM, and got the volume just right. I proceeded to carefully adjust the VTA by ear, going up and down with the arm until the sound was right, which is simply standard operating procedure for every record we audition.

These are my actual notes for But I Might Die Tonight.

This is what I heard as the song worked its way through the various sections, in real time.  The first thing I heard at the start was Zero Tubey Magic for the first verse. One of the last things I heard at the end was No Real Space. Space is what you hear at the end for the big piano and drums finish.

Let’s take it line by line. First up:

Zero Tubey Magic

I didn’t hear much Tubey Magic on the new pressing. The best early pressings — domestic A&M Browns, Pink or Sunray UK Islands — often have simply phenomenal amounts of the stuff. It’s a hallmark of the recording.

If a new pressing comes along without it, that’s a problem. I guess that George Marino‘s cutting system at Sterling could probably do some things well, but it sure doesn’t seem to be able get the sound of tubes right. His 33 RPM cutting had no Tubey Magic, and this one has no Tubey Magic. If I had hired him to cut a record for me and it came out sounding like this, I would find somebody else to cut records for me.

He’s dead now, rest in peace. I would doubt that anyone at Sterling has a better cutting system, and therefore no one should expect any records that have been mastered there to sound very good.

Vocal Is Clear, Clean and Dry

This is the sound you sometimes get with modern, super-clean transistor cutting equipment. It’s low distortion, like a CD is low distortion. We don’t think we should have to put up with dry vocals on records when the good pressings we have been playing all our lives have noticeably richer vocals.

Not rich like Dream With Dean, nothing is that rich, but rich and full-bodied the way the good pressings of this album always make them sound.

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How Paul and Judy Finally Turned Me Against DCC

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Paul Simon Available Now

When I finally got around to comparing the two, I remember being taken aback by how much better my original Artisan pressing sounded than the supposedly superior DCC, the one pressed at high quality Heavy Vinyl at RTI to the most exacting standards possible, yada, yada, yada.

What finally turned me completely against DCC were the awful Paul Simon solo albums they remastered.  Two were released, two I had as unreleased test pressings, and all of them were clearly and markedly inferior to the good original pressings I had owned.

So much for believing in DCC.

Since that time we have learned that placing your faith in any record label or cutting operation is a mistake.

You have to play the records to know how they sound.

Nothing else works, and nothing else can work.

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Diamonds and Rust – Another TAS Listed Anadisq Disaster

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Joan Baez Available Now

Mobile Fidelity released their version of Diamonds and Rust on Anadisq in 1995, and if you want to hear a pressing that’s not murky, compressed and opaque, you would be wise to avoid their Heavy Vinyl Half-Speed.

Somehow it ended up on the TAS Super Disc List, but we could find nothing “super” about it. We felt it more properly belonged on our list of records that have no business being called Super Discs.

It was a real muckfest, as was to be expected from a record mastered by this awful label during the Anadisq era, the darkest chapter in the disgraceful history of Mobile Fidelity, which, considering the consistently dismal quality of their output, is really saying something.

Ken Lee Strikes Again

Many of the worst of them were mastered by a Mr. Ken Lee. If you happen to come across a record in a store with his name in the credits, or his initials in the deadwax, you are best advised to drop it back in the bin and keep moving. Anything else is just asking for trouble.

To be fair, MoFi made some reasonably good sounding records too. For those of you whose budget is on the limited side, if you find an affordable copy of any of these MoFis, you are probably not wasting your money.

Although I had a long way to go in this hobby in the early days of my audiophile record business, even then I could tell how bad the Anadisq series that Mobile Fidelity released in the 90s was. They produced one awful sounding record after another, with not a single winner that I knew of. I sold them — my bad, an ethical lapse for which I must apologize — but I sure never recommended them or had anything good to say about them.

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The Cisco Pressing of Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata

Hot Stamper Pressings of Recordings with Heifetz Performing

An audiophile hall of shame pressing from Cisco / Impex / Boxstar / whatever.

The Cisco pressing of LSC 2577 should not have sound that is acceptable to any person who considers himself an audiophile.

There is no violinist in front of you when you play their pressing.

There is someone back behind your speakers under a thick blanket, and his violin sure doesn’t sound very much like a real violin — no rosiny texture, no extended harmonics, no real body.

In short, the sound of this reissue is much too smeary, veiled, and lacking in presence to be taken seriously.

Unfortunately for those of us who love good music with good sound, Cisco’s releases from this era (as well as DCC’s) had to fight their way through Kevin Gray’s transistory, opaque, airless, low-resolution cutting system. We discuss that subject in more depth here.

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Imagine on Mobile Fidelity from 1984

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of John Lennon Available Now

This Jack Hunt-mastered Half Speed has the midrange suckout that Mobile Fidelity was notorious for.

Lennon and his piano on the first track sound like they are coming from another room.

And yet somehow there are still “audiophiles” in this day and age that defend the records put out by this ridiculous label.

Oy vey. What is wrong with these people?

I Have a Theory

Actually, I have a good idea why so many so-called audiophile records have a sucked-out midrange.

A midrange suckout creates depth in a system that has difficulty reproducing depth.

Imagine that instead of having your speakers pulled well out from the back wall as they should be, instead you have placed your speakers right up against the wall.

This arrangement, though preferable aesthetically and dramatically more family- and wife-friendly, has the unfortunate effect of seriously limiting your speakers’ ability to reproduce whatever three-dimensional space exists on your recordings.

I hinted back in 2022 that I was going to discuss this idea down the road, and like most things that I was supposed to write about down the road, we’re still waiting to see it.

The album I was going to write more about was Kind of Blue.

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Analogue Productions Fails Spectacularly Right Out of the Gate with Jazz Giant

Hot Stamper Pressings of Contemporary Albums Available Now

You may remember what a disaster the Analogue Productions version of Jazz Giant from the 90s was.

Or maybe you agree with a certain writer that they were god’s gift to the record lovers of the world in need of higher quality pressings. We thought they were crap right from the get-go and were not the least bit shy about saying so,

I haven’t heard the new 45 RPM version and don’t intend to play one, but I seriously doubt that it sounds like our good Hot Stamper pressings. We have yet to hear a single Heavy Vinyl 45 that sounds any good to us, judged by the standards we set in our shootouts.

Actually, to run the risk of sounding even more pedantic than usual, the records themselves set the standards.

We simply grade them on the curve they establish for themselves.

We guarantee that none of their LPs can hold a candle to our vintage records or your money back. If you have one of the new pressings and don’t know what’s wrong with it, or don’t think that anything is wrong with it, try one of ours.

It will show you just how much better a real record can sound, with more space, more transparency, more energy, more presence, more drive, more ambience — more of everything that’s good about the sound of music on vinyl.

It is our contention that no one alive today makes records that sound as good as the vintage LPs we sell. Once you hear one of our Hot Stamper pressings, those Heavy Vinyl records you bought might not ever sound right to you again.

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