Digital – CDs, Digital Recordings, etc.

“We Have Different Views of Digital”

Basic Concepts Every Audiophile Needs to Understand

A friend writes:

We have different views of digital. I think I’m more with Neil Young. When you have a choice, you go analog and find the best sounding record. But there is a world out there that uses digital. We’re not going to stop that. So the fact that digital is markedly better than it was years ago is significant. Now I think your view is… why would I want to bother with digital when I know the answer: The best sounding record I can find.

You don’t even use your car stereo to listen to music, right?

I used to really rock out in my 2002 3 series BMW outfitted with Harmon Kardon components. That was a killer system, the best car stereo I ever owned. (The Burmester in our new German SUV does some things well, but since it does not offer CD playback, and I’ve never hooked my phone up to it (or anything else for that matter), I’m sure I have never heard it at its best.)

In some ways my BMW system brought to light faults I did not know existed in my old tube home stereo, and that’s when I knew I needed to make a change. Talk about a wake up call! (More on that subject coming down the road I hope.)

I would take issue with modern digital being better. I am not sure if there is much evidence to support that. The best digital sound I have heard, and guys like my friend Robert Pincus swear by, are the CDs created in the 90s, before they learned how to “make them better.”

Back in the day we played them on the CD players we had picked up at reasonable prices (why spend the money?) that seemed to offer a more natural, analog sound. Out of the two dozen or so CD players I’ve tried over the years, I might have found three or four that offered sound that was strikingly similar to analog.

(None of the ones I heard with lots of fancy clocks and separate components ever did anything for me, but of course I would never say that that approach to digital can’t or doesn’t work. I just never heard one that did. If you have one, more power to you.)

I’ve thrilled to “digital that doesn’t sound digital” for thousands upon thousands of hours. Done a lot of work tweaking and tuning the stereo using CDs. Like the records we’ve listed that helped us dramatically improve our playback, there are plenty of CDs that fit that bill too.

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Pitchfork’s Review of the 2012 Roxy Music CD Box Set

More of the Music of Roxy Music

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Roxy Music

Tom Ewing has written a beautiful piece here about one of my favorite bands of all time.

This career-spanning box set to mark Roxy Music’s 40th anniversary is often startling, usually wonderful, and more affecting than expected. It’s also fascinating as the story of a gradual hardening of an elegant, enigmatic persona, of Bryan Ferry’s transformation from art-school pop star to self-made sphinx.  

In their 1970s heyday, Roxy Music enjoyed enormous critical and commercial success, but even so, they and their art-school rock were admired more than trusted. American critics snipped at leader Bryan Ferry’s arch romanticism, while the Brit press considered the models Ferry squired and the suits he doffed and dubbed him “Byron Ferrari”. Almost everyone affirmed that the band were great, while disagreeing as to when, exactly. For some, the great achievement was 1982’s farewell, Avalon– impeccably designed pop for weary grown-ups. Others went a decade further back, to the early, playfully experimental albums Roxy released when Brian Eno was in the band, playing androgyne peacock to Ferry’s tailored lothario. Whether you see their development between those points as progress or cautionary tale, it’s easy to let this contrast define the band.

This box set of remasters to celebrate the band’s 40th anniversary– not lavish, but thorough and reasonably priced– is an opportunity to break free of narrative and see what sets every phase of Roxy Music apart. The answer is Bryan Ferry, one of rock’s great, sustained acts of self-definition. In classic 70s style, like Bowie or Bolan, Ferry invented a pop star. A sybarite with a plummy, awkward croon, gliding through his own songs like they were parties he’d forgotten arriving at. A flying Dutchman of the jet set, doomed to find love but never satisfaction. Having worked his way into character over an album or two, he simply never left it, becoming more Bryan Ferry with every record and every year, whether performing or not.

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Tears For Fears – Songs From The Big Chair

More of the Music of Tears For Fears

  • An incredible vintage UK pressing with Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound on the first side and solid Double Plus (A++) sound on the second side
  • Rich, spacious and lively, with an open, extended top end – this is the sound you’ve been waiting for from Tears for Fears
  • More great songs than practically any other record made in the ’80s – “Shout,” “Everybody Wants To Rule The World” and “Head Over Heels” are just a few of the better known hits from this, their breakthrough third album
  • 4 1/2 stars: “It is not only a commercial triumph, it is an artistic tour de force. And in the loping, percolating “Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” Tears for Fears perfectly captured the zeitgeist of the mid-’80s while impossibly managing to also create a dreamy, timeless pop classic. Songs From the Big Chair is one of the finest statements of the decade.”

This is a classic in the Tears for Fears canon, probably the album most people regard as their best. I myself prefer Seeds of Love, which should take nothing away from Big Chair — both are exceptional productions from the ’80s no matter how you look at them.

SFTBC went to Number One on the charts for a reason. There’s really not a bad song on either side and mostly absolutely brilliant ones.

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Bruce Springsteen – Tunnel of Love

More of the Music of Bruce Springsteen

  • You’ll find solid Double Plus (A++) sound throughout this original copy – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • On the better pressings like this one, you get something approaching the warmth and unforced clarity of analog we audiophiles crave
  • Some of Bruce’s best material is here: the title track and “One Step Up” are two of our favorites
  • 5 stars: “Bruce Springsteen followed the most popular album of his career, Born in the U.S.A., with [a] low-key, anguished effort, Tunnel of Love.”

As is the case for the Bob Clearmountain mix of Born in the USA, the sound is not exactly vintage analog at its best, but at least on vinyl you get more analog qualities than would otherwise be possible. This is 1987, not 1967 and not even 1977. That said, the copies that earned the better grades were big and rich, with plenty of studio space and nicely present vocals.

Mostly what they do well is that they fill out the sound and take the edge off of it without losing musical information, dynamics or energy. Not many copies managed that feat but this one did. (more…)

Carmina Burana on Telarc – A Very Old Review

Hot Stamper Pressings of Orchestral Spectaculars Available Now

This IMMACULATE Telarc Double LP with Virtually No Sign Of Play is one of the greatest audiophile records of all time and Telarc’s greatest recording! No recording gets more realism with this work … depth, dynamics, colors & performance!

Why don’t more of their recordings sound like this? Telarc is not a label I would normally associate with good sound but you have to give them credit here: they knocked this one out the park. They have made good records in the past — this one is proof enough, and some of the Fennel titles are quite good — but most of their catalog leaves much to be desired and is hard to recommend. (more…)

Dire Straits – Love Over Gold

More of the Music of Dire Straits

  • A Love Over Gold like you’ve never heard, with solid Double Plus (A++) grades from top to bottom
  • Quiet vinyl for this album too – owing to the fact that there are so many quiet passages, it is the rare vintage pressing that can play quiet enough to earn even our Mint Minus Minus grade
  • The open, spacious soundstage, full-bodied tonality and Tubey Magic here are obvious for all to hear on these TAS-approved sides – huge, punchy, lively and rockin’ throughout
  • This Hot Stamper is far more natural than any other pressing you’ve heard – we guarantee it
  • “Certainly a quantum leap from the organic R&B impressionism of the band’s early LPs and the gripping short stories of Making Movies, Love Over Gold is an ambitious, sometimes difficult record that is exhilarating in its successes and, at the very least, fascinating in its indulgences.” – Rolling Stone

This modern album (from 1982, which makes it 40+ years old, but that’s modern in our world) can sound surprisingly good on the right pressing. On most copies, the highs are slightly grainy and can be harsh, not exactly the kind of sound that inspires you to turn your system up good and loud and really get involved in the music. I’m happy to report that both sides here have no such problem – they rock and they sound great loud.

We pick up every clean copy we see of this album, domestic or import, because we know from experience just how good the best pressings can sound. What do the best copies have? REAL dynamics for one. And with those dynamics, you need rock solid bass. Otherwise, the loud portions simply become irritating. (more…)

We Get Letters – “That is the only CD I have ever heard that had Hot Stamper sound quality.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Doors Available Now

A customer wrote the following to us not long ago:

Recently I fired up my CD circuit, which does not happen very often.

Once the system was warmed up I played some MoFi gold CDs.

Nothing special, but I did like the Yes Fragile CD. Actually enjoyed it.

Guns and Roses Appetite was nasty…

Supertramp Breakfast was nasty…

Enough of that. Then I read your blog on the Doors LA Woman DCC gold CD. Found I have it!

Played the whole thing and I wanted more of it. That is the only CD I have ever heard that had Hot Stamper sound quality.

Dear Sir,

Steve did a great job on L.A. Woman, let me be the first to say. Of course the real thing on vinyl is even better, but it’s a great way to test how good your front end is, assuming you have a killer copy of the vinyl, something that is very unlikely to be the case but something that cannot be ruled out entirely. (Tell me your stamper numbers and I will tell you if you are close.)

I worked through a lot of changes to my system in the 90s and 2000s partly because I had CDs that sounded better in some ways than my vinyl versions of them.

That never happens now, but it took me 20 years to get there!

For example, in the early 2000s this title did not sound as good as the CD until I got rid of all my tube equipment and discovered the life-changing sound of the EAR 324P, the Dynavector 17d and a lot more. The transient attack of the drums and cymbals went from “well recorded — it’s a direct to disc, what did you expect?” to suddenly sounding like real drums you might hear if you were sitting right in front of the kit in a small club.

(I recently took a trip to Nashville and had a chance to see and hear more than a dozen drum kits on the main boulevard. There seemed to be one in every club, facing inwards with the glass of the window removed to give the passers by a taste of what was in store for them inside. Standing three feet from a guy banging a drum kit is something that can teach you a lot about sound, mostly by showing you the enormous gulf that separates live sound from recorded sound in the most audiophile systems.)

That CD of The Three showed me what I had been missing — the presence, dynamics, and most importantly speed and complete freedom from smear of any kind on any instrument. It changed many of my ideas about audio in the most fundamental ways imaginable. Nothing in my audio world was the same after that.

Of the many audio breakthroughs I’ve undergone in the fifty years I’ve been pursuing audio , I might be inclined to put this one right at the top of the list.

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Talking Heads – Stop Making Sense

More of the Music of Talking Heads

 

  • A vintage Sire pressing with STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it from start to finish – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Every five years, like clockwork, we do a shootout for this superb title — our last was in 2021
  • Both of these sides are big, bold and dynamic, with the kind of energy that you rarely find outside of the live event
  • “. . . ‘A bona fide classic,’ opined Neil Jeffries in a five-star review of the reissue for Empire, ‘a perfectly measured snapshot of a widely loved and respected band playing at the height of their powers … No other band could do this. No other music movie soundtrack sounds this good.'” -Wikipedia

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Folks, This Is Why We Love Vintage Analog

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Emerson, Lake and Palmer Available Now

This is ANALOG at its Tubey Magical finest. You ain’t never gonna play a CD that sounds like this as long as you live. I don’t mean to rain on anyone’s parade, but digital media are evidently incapable of reproducing this kind of sound. There are nice sounding CDs in the world but there aren’t any that sound like this, not in my experience anyway.

If you are thinking that someday a better digital system is going to come along in order to save you the trouble and expense of having to find and acquire these expensive original pressings, think again.

This is the kind of record that shows you what’s wrong with your BEST sounding CDs. (Best not to talk about the average one in your collection, or mine. The less said the better.)

This is the kind of record that somebody might hear in a stereo store and realize that the digital road he’s been going down for so many years is nothing but a sonic dead end.

The organ captured here by Eddie Offord (of Yes engineering fame — we’re his biggest fans) and then transferred so well onto our Hot Stamper pressings (that’s partly what makes them Hot Stampers, right?) will rattle the foundation of your house. This music really needs that kind of megawatt reproduction to make sense.

It’s big bombastic Prog Rock that wants desperately to rock your world.

At moderate levels it just sounds overblown and silly.

At loud levels it actually will rock your world.

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Good Digital Beats Bad Analog Any Day

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Sonny Rollins Available Now

And this is some very bad analog indeed!

We here present our 2010 review of the Sonny Rollins Plus 4 album, the one remastered on two slabs of 45 RPM Analogue Productions Heavy Vinyl.

It has everything going for it, right?

Steve Hoffman, Kevin Gray, 45 RPMs, Heavy Virgin Vinyl, fancy packaging — clearly no expense was spared!

The ingredients may have been there, but the cake they baked was not only not delicious, it was positively unlistenable — I mean, inedible.

I cannot recall hearing a more ridiculously thick, opaque and unnatural sounding “audiophile” pressing than this Rollins record, and believe me, I’ve heard plenty. (And it seems the bad news will never stop.)

As I noted in another commentary “Today’s audiophile seems to be making the same mistakes I was making as a budding enthusiast more than thirty forty years ago. Heavy Vinyl, the 45 RPM 2 LP pressing, the Half-Speed limited edition — aren’t these all just the latest audiophile fads, each with a track record more dismal than the last one?”

It reminds me of the turgid muck that Doug Sax was cutting for Analogue Productions back in the 90s. The CD has to sound better than this. There’s no way could it sound worse.

CD Update:

I managed to track down a copy of the CD and it DOES sound better than this awful record, and by a long shot. It’s not a great sounding CD, but it sure isn’t the disaster this record is.

Buy the CD, and whatever you do, don’t waste money on this kind of crap vinyl.

This is a very bad sounding record, so bad that one minute’s play will have you up and out of your chair trying to figure out what the hell is wrong with your system. But don’t bother. It’s not your stereo, it’s this record.

It has the power to make your perfectly enjoyable speakers sound like someone wrapped them in four inches of cotton bunting while you weren’t looking.

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