Digital – CDs, Digital Recordings, etc.

Letter of the Week – “…the look on his face when I dropped the needle on my record was absolutely priceless!”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Cars Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently:

Hey Tom,  

I really wanted to thank you for The Cars. What a sweet-sounding record! Everything about that one is so right; the guitars, the bass, the drums, the vocals, everything sounds completely natural.  

I have a good friend whose favourite band are The Cars. He has an expensive high-end system, but doesn’t want the “hassle” of vinyl.

Swears blind that nothing beats the DCC gold CD of ‘The Cars’, so I invited him round at the weekend and asked him to bring his DCC CD with him to compare on my relatively modest system.

After we had heard his CD, the look on his face when I dropped the needle on my record was absolutely priceless! A big thank you for the heads-up on that one.

Owais M.

Thanks, Owais, for writing to us. We enjoy hearing that our records are a shock to the system for some audiophiles. Think how much better off your friend would be if he could put up with the hassle of vinyl. He could hear The Cars sound better than he ever imagined.

He imagined that his Gold CD was sonically as good as it gets, but now that he knows just how much better the sound can actually get, courtesy of Better Records, do you think there is any chance the superior sound will help him get over his reservations about vinyl? My intuition says that such a thing is unlikely.

It seems that some aspects of audio are just too much work for a certain group of audiophiles. They pretend their oh-so-convenient CDs sound great, and they get away with believing it because most of them have no way of discovering disconfirming evidence like the kind you supplied your friend.

Unsurprisingly, Gold CD owners and Heavy Vinyl owners are often one and the same. For most of these CD guys, the Heavy Vinyl in this case can only confirm how much better the Gold CD sounds!

And given the choice between the excellent CDs Steve Hoffman (and others) have mastered and the typical Heavy Vinyl pressings being made today, who can be blamed for giving up on vinyl?

The DCC Gold CD is indeed excellent, as are most of Steve’s work. I own one and it sounds right to me. It might even beat most vinyl pressings. It will definitely beat this ridiculously bad sounding Heavy Vinyl pressing, the one ruined by Kevin Gray. (Nothing new there.)

And the MoFi is surely a joke, since all their records are a joke. How this company is still in business is a question we often ask ourselves after playing one of their albums.

And if you are a hard-of-hearing audiophile record reviewer with four copies of the album sitting on your shelves, it will beat at least three of them, and maybe even the fourth, especially if they haven’t been cleaned properly, which is a pretty safe bet for a one man band. I used to be one, so I know whereof I speak. The amount of work required to clean and then shootout the four records you see would take at a minimum two hours, and maybe three. Who can find the time?

But no need to bother. Do a quick needle drop and just tell your readers how great one of the audiophile pressings is, because that’s all they are interested in hearing anyway. Give them the answer and try to make it a record that is still in print so they can afford it. They’ll buy whatever you tell them to buy and they will like it because they don’t know any better, just like Owais’s friend.

(more…)

Yes – 90125

More Yes

  • A vintage Atco import pressing that was giving us the big and bold sound we were looking for, earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades or close to them from top to bottom – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • This side one is spacious, solid and dynamic with huge bass and analog richness that’s hard to find on this album, and side two is not far behind in all those areas
  • There’s an abundance of life and energy here, and the vocals sound just right (particularly on side one)
  • 4 1/2 stars: “A stunning self-reinvention by a band that many had given up for dead, 90125 is the album that introduced a whole new generation of listeners to Yes… there’s nary a duff track on the album.”

I’m pleased to report that we can now add 90125 to our small list of 80s albums that can sound excellent on the right pressing. Drop the needle on “Owner Of A Lonely Heart” and we bet you’ll agree!

So many copies we played were full of that digital grit and grain that we hear on so many records from the era. This one is an entirely different story. It has wonderful analog qualities, with more richness and smoothness than most pressings.

The recording itself is outstanding: punchy and lively with an especially beefy bottom end, the kind a good rock record needs. But you would never know it by playing the average pressing you might pick up for five bucks at your local used record store. The typical copy of this record is pretty average sounding. Let’s face it: every mastering mistake that can be made will be made sooner or later with mass-produced vinyl like this.

(more…)

Here’s How You Know You Have a Hot Stamper of Songs in the Attic

joelsongs600Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Billy Joel Available Now

It’s the side you play through to the end.

When the sound is right you want to hear more.

Since the opening track of this record is one of the keys to knowing whether it’s mastered and pressed properly, once you get past the sibilance hurdle on track one, the next step is to find out how the challenges presented by the rest of the tracks are handled on any given pressing. Some advice follows.

Actually, what you really want to know is how good each song can sound — what it sounds like when it’s right.

Once the quality of the mastering has been established, the fun part is to play the rest of the album, to hear it really come alive.

Side One

Miami 2017

This is usually the brightest cut on the first side, commonly found with some sibilance problems. On the high-res copies the sibilance is lessened, and the sound of the sibilance itself is much less transistory and spitty, with more of a silky quality, which is simply another way of saying it’s less distorted.

Of course one wouldn’t want the sibilance to be lessened by having a dull top end, but few of these pressings are dull. Most of them suffer from a brightness problem. The best copies keep the sibilance under control and balance the upper mids with extended highs. Without extension on the highs the sound will tend to be aggressive.

(more…)

Paul McCartney – Unplugged

More Paul McCartney

  • A true Demo Disc and superb sounding import pressing with solid Double Plus (A++) grades on both sides – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • A strikingly intimate document of a live show, fronted by one of the greatest performers in history, Sir Paul McCartney
  • You get more extension up top, more weight down low, and more transparency in the midrange, than on most other copies we played
  • 4 stars: “… it remains one of the most enjoyable records in McCartney’s catalog. McCartney is carefree and charming, making songs like ‘Be-Bop-a-Lula’ and ‘Blue Moon of Kentucky’ sound fresh.”

Superb sound for this amazing recording! On the better copies, the sound is warmer, richer, and sweeter, or in a word, more analog sounding. You get more extension up top, more weight down low, and more transparency in the midrange. It’s surprising how veiled and two-dimensional so many copies can be, considering that this is a live recording (by the legendary Geoff Emerick himself) with not a lot of “messing around” after the fact.

Finding The Best Sound

This isn’t your typical rock record that sounds crappy on eight out of ten copies. Most copies of Unplugged sound pretty good. We did hear quite a few that had a somewhat brittle quality to the top end, with no real extension to speak of. It wasn’t ever a dealbreaker, but the copies with a silky openness up there are much more enjoyable — and, unfortunately, fairly uncommon.

There are copies that lack warmth, copies that never fully come to life, and copies that are a bit dark. Some that we auditioned didn’t seem to get the breath in the vocals, and others lacked weight to the piano. Again — not one of the pressings we played sounded bad, but many of them definitely sounded dry, boring and lifeless.

Just for fun, check out Linda’s percussion and tambourine work in the right channel of the first track on side one, “Be-Bop-A-Lula.” Since that’s one of our test tracks, we had the opportunity to hear her ‘contribution’ to the song about twenty times or so, and it became a source of — to be charitable — ‘entertainment’ in its own right as the shootout progressed.

(more…)

Robert Brook Revisits a White Hot Stamper Pressing of The Eagles

Robert Brook runs a blog called The Broken Record, with a subtitle explaining that the aim of his blog is to serve as:

A GUIDE FOR THE DEDICATED ANALOG AUDIOPHILE

Here is a posting Robert wrote many years ago and has recently updated.

EAGLES: WHITE HOT and SOARING HIGHER!

A quote I rather liked:

You can throw a Hot Stamper onto your rig and hear that it sounds better than your crappy “audiophile” 180g reissue, but when you compare it to your high res digital file, you’re not quite sure which one you like better.

The digital vs. analog debate, perhaps the most enduring in all of audio, persists because only a handful of audiophiles have truly realized the full potential of analog in their systems.

You may be reading this thinking “hey whad’ya mean! My analog system sounds great!.” And it very well may sound great, but I thought and still think that my copy of Eagles sounds great, and let me tell you, the White Hot Stamper is a WHOLE new platter of wax!

The tubey jangle of the guitars, the room filling weight of the drums and bass, the airy, spacious, luscious vocal harmonies, and every last sumptuous element of the mix, unmoored, liberated from obscuration so completely that the music, freed from every conceivable resolution constraint, SOARS to life in the listening room.

That’s what this White Hot Stamper of Eagles sounds like, and that’s what analog is ALL ABOUT!

This record, The Dude be damned, is one of my all time favorites. It’s a delicious recording on even a decent copy. My current copy, which bested several others, was competitive on side 1, but laid to waste by the White Hot on side 2. And that was the side I thought mine had nailed!

Eagles lives and dies by the vocal harmonies, and when the backing vocals are as clear and present and alive as the lead vocal is on most other records then you know you’re hearing a very special copy.

Here is our description of a recent copy that is up on the site at this time.

Super Hot and $699 — affordable maybe for some, certainly not cheap, but as Robert makes clear in his review, one of the most amazing sounding recordings in the history of popular music on the right pressing, and the right pressings are the only ones we offer.

The notes for our Shootout Winning copy from 2024 can be seen at the very end of this post. Side two was a “strong 3+, ” which we would have called 4+, Beyond White Hot, way back when, but we stopped doing that many years ago.

Side two was HTF — Hard To Fault. This may have been the side two that Robert is raving about in his review.

My current copy, which bested several others, was competitive on side 1, but laid to waste by the White Hot on side 2. And that was the side I thought mine had nailed!

Eagles lives and dies by the vocal harmonies, and when the backing vocals are as clear and present and alive as the lead vocal is on most other records then you know you’re hearing a very special copy.

Can’t argue with any of that! That’s what we heard too.

(more…)

The Abbey Road Remix on Vinyl

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Beatles Available Now

We got a copy of the Abbey Road remix in, cleaned it and played it. Now we can officially report the results of our investigation into this modern marvel. Imagine, The Beatles with a new mix! Just what it needed, right?

So what did we hear?

The Half-Speed mastered remixed Abbey Road has to be one of the worst sounding Beatles records we have ever had the misfortune to play.

Hard to imagine you could make Abbey Road sound any worse. It’s absolutely disgraceful.

Is it the worst version of the album ever made? Hard to imagine it would have much competition.

I will be writing more about its specific shortcomings down the road, but for now let this serve as a warning that you are throwing your money away if you buy this newly remixed LP.

UPDATE 2022

As you may have guessed by now, I have completely lost interest in detailing the abundant shortcomings of this awful record. Do yourself a favor and don’t buy one.

If you did buy one, do yourself a different favor: order any UK pressing from 1970-1986 off the web and play that one head to head with it so you can hear how badly they screwed with and screwed up the new mix.

When the remastering is this incompetent, you do not need a Hot Stamper pressing to beat it. Almost any record will do.

Remastering a well-known title and creating a new sound for it is a huge bête noire for us here at Better Records.

Half-Speed mastered disasters that sound as bad as this record does go directly into our audiophile record hall of shame.

If this isn’t the perfect example of a pass/not-yet record, I don’t know what would be.

Some records are so wrong, or are so lacking in qualities that are critically important to their sound — qualities typically found in abundance on the right vintage pressings — that the defenders of these records are fundamentally failing to judge them properly. We call these records Pass/Not-Yet, implying that the supporters of these kinds of records are not where they need to be in audio yet, but that there is still hope. If they target their resources (time and money) well, there is no reason they can’t get to where they need to be, the same way we did. Our audio advice section may be of help in that regard.

(more…)

Listening in Depth to Famous Blue Raincoat

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Leonard Cohen Available Now

I’m a huge fan of this FBR. It’s the only album Jennifer Warnes ever made that I would consider a Must Own recording or a Desert Island Disc. Without question this is her Masterpiece.

Key Test for Side One

Listen to the snare drum on Bird on a Wire. On most copies it sound thin and bright, not very much like a real snare. Let’s face it: most copies of this record are thin and bright, and that’s just not our sound here at Better Records. If the snare on Bird sounds solid and meaty, at the very least you have a copy that is probably not too bright, and on this album that puts it well ahead of the pack.

While you’re listening for the sound of that snare, notice the amazing drum work of Vinnie Colaiuta, session drummer extraordinaire. The guy’s work on this track — especially with the high hat — is genius.

Key Test for Side Two

Listen to the sound of the piano on Song of Bernadette. If it’s rich and full-bodied with the weight of a real piano, you might just have yourself a winner. At the very least you won’t have to suffer through the anemically thin sound of the average copy.

Side One

First We Take Manhattan

Don’t expect this song to be tonally correct. It runs the gamut from bright to too bright to excrutiatingly bright. Steve Hoffman told me that he took out something like 6 DB at 6K when he mastered it for a compilation he made, and I’m guessing that that’s the minimum that would need to come out. It’s made to be a hit single, and like so many hit single wannabes, it’s mixed brighter than we audiophiles might like.

(more…)

Jennifer Warnes – Famous Blue Raincoat

More of the Music of Jennifer Warnes

More of the Music of Leonard Cohen

  • A Demo Disc quality pressing of this longtime audiophile favorite with solid Double Plus (A++) sound from first note to last
  • Turn this one up good and loud (which you can do when the sound is right) and you’ll have a living, breathing Jennifer Warnes singing her heart out right in front of you
  • The space, resolution, and clarity here are wonderful – for evidence, just listen to the rosiny texture on the strings behind the “Song of Bernadette”
  • 4 1/2 stars: “The high point may have been the Warnes-Cohen duet on ‘Joan of Arc,’ but the album was consistently impressive.”

We’re big fans of this album here at Better Records. It’s the only thing Jennifer Warnes ever did that we would consider a Must Own recording or Desert Island Disc. In my humble opinion, it’s clearly both.

This copy showed us the Famous Blue Raincoat Magic we know and love. The drums are big and punchy with plenty of WHOMP and the sound of skins being thwacked. Jennifer’s voice is clear and breathy. If you know the record well you will surely be amazed at just how good this music can sound on a pressing as hot as this one.

(more…)

The Nightfly on Heavy Vinyl – Rhino Plays Us All for Suckers Once Again

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Donald Fagen Available Now

We just finished a big shootout for The Nightfly, our first in nearly three years. There is a Hot Stamper pressing on the site as I write these words.

Since we do shootouts throughout the day on four out of the five days of the work week (the fifth is devoted to shopping for records locally by our main listening guy, Riley), there is nothing special about any of that.

It takes us about three years to find enough clean copies of an album like The Nightfly to get a shootout going these days, a marked depature from earlier in the 21st century when common domestic pressings were everywhere, and usually for cheap. Those days are gone and we will never see their like again.

These days we find a lot of Heavy Vinyl pressings mixed in with the vintage stuff we buy, and if the price is right, sometimes we pick up a copy of whatever album we plan to shootout down the road.

In this case it turned out to be the 2021 Rhino remaster on Heavy German vinyl, mastered by Chris Bellman. Or was it?

We of course found it to be awful, as we so often do with Mr. Bellman’s records. It’s lean and recessed. Over the 42 years I have been playing the original Robert Ludwig pressings of the album, I have heard some that sounded that way. I wrote about it many years ago, trying to make the point that when you hear a copy that sounds lean and bright like a CD, what you are hearing is a bad pressing.

The good ones are not like that. They are rich and smooth and even, gulp, kind of analog sounding.

Glossy and artificial, sure, and much too heavily-processed for my taste, but I can live with that sound, even though it’s hardly my idea of hi-fidelity.

Hold Your Horses

Somebody pulled a fast one it appears, as the pressings without the initials CB in the dead wax are not cut by him, even though he is credited on discogs and one assumes on the jacket or inner sleeve as well. The copy we played had no CB in the dead wax.

(more…)

Unplugged – Sonic Pros and Cons

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Paul McCartney Available Now

The best pressings of this album convey the immediacy of a live show, one which just happens to be fronted by one of the greatest performers in the history of popular music, Paul McCartney.

On the best copies, the sound is warmer, richer, and sweeter, or in a word, more ANALOG sounding. You get more extension up top, more weight down low, and more transparency in the midrange.

It’s surprising just how veiled and two-dimensional so many copies sound, considering this is a live recording with not a lot of processing.

As a digital recording, some of that processing is baked into the tape. Unplugged will  never sound as good as this McCartney album, but that’s to be expected.

The bulk of the recordings from 1991 are simply not competitive with those from 1970, not by a long shot. There were hundreds of great records recorded or released in 1970. There are 19 Hot Stamper pressings of them on the site as I write this. I would have a hard time finding even a half-dozen from 1991.

Stick with the Early Pressings

This isn’t your typical rock record that sounds like crap on eight out of ten copies. Most early pressings of Unplugged sound pretty good. The later reissues are terrible, which should come as no surprise. Rarely are late reissues of rock and pop albums any good.

We did hear quite a few copies that had a somewhat brittle quality to the top end, with no real extension to speak of. It wasn’t ever a dealbreaker, but the copies with a silky openness up there are much more enjoyable — and, unfortunately, not all that common.

There are copies that lack warmth, copies that never fully come to life, and copies that are a bit dark.

Some that we auditioned didn’t seem to get the breath in the vocals, and others lacked weight to the piano.

Again — not one of the early pressings we played sounded BAD, but many of them definitely sounded dry, boring and lifeless.

It’s nice when the copy in hand has all the transparency, space, layered depth and three-dimensionality that makes listening to records such a fundamentally different experience than listening to CD playback, but it’s not nearly as important as having a richer, more relaxed tonal balance.

A little smear and a lack of resolution are not the end of the world on this album.

Brightness, along with too much grain and grit, can be.

This record, along with the others linked below, is good for testing the following qualities.

  1. Grit and grain
  2. Midrange tonality
  3. Lower midrange richness
  4. Upper midrange brightness

Further Reading