*Experimenting with Records

Experimenting with records is the only way to learn much about them of any real value.

Celebrate Me Home – Notes from a Shootout Winner

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Loggins and Messina Available Now

UPDATE 2026

Our first Shootout Winning pressing went up in 2011.

One thing we learned in that shootout was that only the copies mastered by Robert Ludwig have any hope of sounding good, and that is still true. We wasted our money on a few later pressings and they were hopeless against the best we played, one of which was a barely passable White Label Promo pressing (!).

White Label Promos are for collectors, not music loving audiophiles.

This WHITE HOT Stamper side one shows you just how good this record can sound, which is surprisingly good, considering how many copies of the album are just plain awful. Finally, most of the grit, grain and transistory opacity have fallen away, leaving in its place the rich, full-bodied and Tubey Magical 70s sound one would expect. 

As obvious as it may sound (especially to anyone on this site), the master tape is a whole lot better than the average copy of the record would have you think. This side one is proof positive. And side two is nearly as good, earning a solid Super Hot stamper grade of A++. Without a doubt this is by far the best copy of the album we have ever heard.

It’s also the only Loggins solo album that I’ve ever liked; it was actually a favorite of mine back in the day. I’ve owned this very copy for more than twenty years (bought it in 1988 according to the price sticker). Seems like a good time to send it on its way to find a new home.

Side One

A+++, taking top honors for its rhythmic energy and real frequency extension both high and low. (Most copies have no real top end; if you own one give it a listen and we think you’ll agree with us.) Great bass, plenty of Tubey Magic, clarity and richness — no other copy in our shootout could do what this one was doing.

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Clarity Was Never the Point

Hot Stamper Pressings of Live Recordings Available Now

Some audiophiles spend their time listening for details in their favorite recordings. I should know; I was as guilty as anyone of that behavior.

But is that where the music is – in the details? Lots of details come out when one copy is brighter than another.

Brighter ain’t necessarily better. Most of the time it’s just brighter. 

Listening for the details in a recording can be a trap, one that is very easy to fall into if you are not careful or don’t know where these kinds of pitfalls lie.

801 Live isn’t about clarity. It’s about the sound of a rock concert.

It’s about the raw power of one of the most phenomenal rhythm sections ever captured in performance on analog tape.

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The Said and the Unsaid – The Firebird on Mercury

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Igor Stravinsky Available Now

For our shootout years ago of The Firebird we had three minty, potentially hot copies of the Mercury with Dorati, as well as our noisy ref. (We have a noisy reference copy for just about every major title now. We have been doing these shootouts for a very long time. After thirty years in the record business we have accumulated a World Class collection of great sounding records that are just too noisy to sell.)

UPDATE 2024 

This is no longer true. Our customers seem to be able to put up with surface noise on the records we offer if the price is low enough. Not actually low, just low enough. We have a section for records with condition issues, and there are 175 entries in it as of today, which turns out to be more than a quarter of all the Hot Stamper pressings on the site as a matter of fact.

We had one FR pressing and two of the later pressings with the lighter label, the ones that most often come with Philips M2 stampers. This is how we described the winner:

So clear and ALIVE. Transparent, with huge hall space extending wall to wall and floor to ceiling. Zero compression.

Lifelike, immediate, front row center sound like few records you have ever heard.

Rich, sweet strings, especially for a Mercury. This side really gets quiet in places, a sure sign that all the dynamics of the master tape were protected in the mastering of this copy.

What we didn’t say — and what we never say in the listings — is what the second tier copies didn’t do as well as the shootout winner.

We used to. When you read the older entries, most of the time they mention the shortcomings that caused one side or another to be downgraded by some amount, usually something like a half to a full plus.

Not all the top end, not all the bass, not as present, slightly smeary, slightly congested — the list of potential faults for any given pressing is long indeed. These are all the problems we listen for and it’s the rare copy that doesn’t suffer from one or more of them.

We decided years ago that it was better just to let you hear the two sides of the record for yourself and make your own judgments about the sound, rather than make clear to you what areas we felt needed improvement.

Consider this example. If on our system the bass was lacking compared to the very best, perhaps on your system the bass was fine, not an issue, good enough. Without the top copy to compare yours to, how would you know how much better the bass could possibly be?

A classic case of “compared to what?”

Shootouts are the only way to answer that question, which, as we never tire of saying, is THE most important question in all of audio. This is why we do shootouts, and why you must do them too, if owning the highest quality pressings is important to you.

Click on the following link to see more records for which we’ve detailed the strengths and weaknesses of a specific copy.

What We Heard on The Firebird

With all that in mind, only the Triple Plus (A+++) copy, as described above, did everything right.

There were two Double Plus (A++) copies, and each of them fell short in different ways.

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Haydn / Symphonies 59 & 81 – The Best on Record

More of the music of Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)

Hot Stamper Mercury Pressings Available Now

These notes are taken from the first shootout we did many years ago.

These are THE BEST HAYDN SYMPHONIES I have ever heard on disc. Folks, until I heard Dorati and the Festival Chamber Orchestra perform these pieces I never knew there could be this much FIRE in Haydn’s music. (Please excuse the pun; the 59th Symphony is entitled “Fire”.)

The producers and engineers for Mercury bring the kind of recording energy and presence to this music that I have frankly never heard before. Credit must go to both Dorati and his players.

His tempi are fast and sprightly throughout, and the smaller orchestra allows the players to zig and zag with the musical changes much more quickly than would be the case with a larger and more inertia-bound group.

The FCO are so technically proficient and so light on their feet that Dorati was able to push them to dizzying heights of performance. For the first time I can honestly say that Haydn’s music really works — it’s wonderful!

(If you’ve ever heard Previn conducting Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony with the L.A. Phil from 1990 you will know what I mean. In his (their) hands the work is so lively it’s hard to hear it performed by anyone else. Bad digital sound but it’s worth it to hear the piece played with such gusto.)

Dorati and Haydn

As you may know, Dorati recorded all the symphonies of Haydn for London/Decca. Having played some of them I can tell you they certainly do not sound like this! (Perhaps my copies were not the best, but how many copies of these records can be found nowadays? Not enough to do shootouts with, that’s for sure.)

This recording is not your typical dry, bright, nasaly, upper-midrangy Merc, on side one especially. Here the sound is rich and smooth like a good London, with a big stage and lovely transparency. We graded it A++ to A+++ — side two had more texture to the massed strings than this side one, so we downgraded it half a plus. In virtually every other way it was SUPERB!

Side Two

A touch of that Mercury brightness can be heard on this side, but it is well under control at normal listening levels. The strings are textured and lively, the orchestra just bursting with enthusiasm for this music and the recording captures it all! A++ to A+++, again, superb, and priced accordingly.

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Speakers Corner Heavy Vinyl and the Loss of Transparency

Hot Stamper Pressings of Classical and Orchestral Music Available Now

We review yet another mediocre Speakers Corner Heavy Vinyl reissue.

We recently gave the Heavy Vinyl pressing from Speakers Corner, the same one that we had previously recommended back in the 90s, a sonic grade of C+. 

UPDATE 2024

Recently in this case means about twenty years ago.

To our ears now it has many more shortcomings than it did back then, which we discuss below.

So often when we revisit the remastered pressings we used to like on Heavy Vinyl we come away dumbfounded — what on earth were we thinking? These are not the droids sounds we are looking for. Perhaps our minds were clouded at the time.

Below are some thoughts from a recent classical listing that we hope will shed some light on our longstanding aversion to the sound of modern remasterings.

What is lost in these newly remastered recordings? Lots of things, but the most obvious and bothersome is TRANSPARENCY.

Modern records are just so damn opaque.

We can’s stand that sound. It drives us crazy.

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Wildflowers – Sometimes the Hits Are Mastered from Sub-Generation Tapes…

More of the Music of Judy Collins

And there’s not much you can do about it.

Both Sides Now, the Top Ten hit that finally put Judy on the map, is clearly made from a copy tape and doesn’t sound as good as the songs that follow it on side two. Hey, it happens, and I suspect it happens more often than most audiophiles think. I would wager that back in the day most people who bought this album never even noticed.

One thing I’ve noticed about audiophiles over the years is that they’re pretty much like most people.

The difference of course is that they call themselves audiophiles, and audiophiles are supposed to care about sound quality.

They may care about it, but are they capable of evaluating high quality sound? What is the evidence for the affirmative in this proposition?

Are they actually capable of critical listening?

Do they listen critically enough to notice a dubby track on an otherwise good sounding record when they hear it?

Or dubby sound in general?

Or to notice that one side of a record often sounds very different from another?

Or that some reissues sound better than the originals of the album?

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Who Can’t Hear Differences in Sound from Side to Side on Most Records?

rimskscheh_2446Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Rimsky-Korsakov Available Now

Both the Chesky [1] and Classic reissue pressings of LSC 2446 are just plain terrible. Embarrassingly, the latter is found on the TAS List.

There is a newly [2013, time flies!] remastered 33 RPM pressing of the album garnering rave reviews in the audiophile press. We didn’t like that one either.

It fails the violin test that we wrote about here.

Please note that in many of the reviews for the new pressing, the original vinyl used for comparison is a Shaded Dog pressing. In our experience almost no Shaded Dog pressings are competitive with the later White Dog pressings, and many of them are just plain awful, as we have noted previously on the site.

UPDATE 2024

Now that we know which stampers have the potential to sound the best in our shootouts, the Shaded Dog originals have lately been winning top honors, although the White Dog pressings can still sound quite good, just not as good.

The “original is better” premise of most reviewers renders the work they do practically worthless, at least to those of us who take the time to play a wide variety of pressings and judge them on the merits of their sound, not the design of their labels.

[A fairly embarrassing example of live and learn.]

rimskscheh_cheskyMissing the Obvious

The RCA White Dog with the best side two in our shootout had a very unmusical side one. Since reviewers virtually never discuss the sonic differences between the two (or more) sides of the albums they audition, how critically can they be listening? Under the circumstances how can we take anything they have to say about the sound of the record seriously?

The sound is obviously different from side to side on most of the records we play, often dramatically so (as in the case of Scheherazade), yet audiophile reviewers practically never seem to notice these obvious, common, unmistakable differences in sound, the kind that we discuss in every listing on the site. If they can’t hear the clear differences in sound from side to side, doesn’t that call into question their abilities at the most basic level?

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Rockin’ the Fat Snare on Dreams

More of the Music of Fleetwood Mac

This is a rock album — it needs to be played loud and it needs to be played on a dynamic system.

What do the best copies have that the also-rans don’t?

Lots and lots of qualities, far too many to mention here, but there is one you may want to pay special attention to: the sound of the snare.

When the snare is fat and solid and present, with a good “slap” to the sound, you have a copy with weight, presence, transparency, energy — all the stuff we ADORE about the sound of the best copies of Rumours.

Next time you are on the hunt to buy new speakers, see which ones can really rock the snare on Dreams. That’s probably going to be the speaker that can do justice to the entire Rumours album, as well as anything by The Beatles, and Neil Young’s Zuma, and lots of other favorite records of ours, and we expect favorites of yours too.

Side One

Dreams

The drums that open this track and the one monster cymbal crash at the beginning are PERFECTION on the best pressings. If you took ten copies of this album and just played that cymbal crash, I’m guessing you could tell the difference in the sound of every copy. If that cymbal crash doesn’t splash you in the face like a bucket of cold water, you do not have a killer copy. It’s way out front in the mix and that’s the way they want it.

Ideally the bass is very prominent on this track. It should be way up in the mix, loud, tight and note-like, with the guitar and kick drum clearly separated. It absolutely drives the song; the copies that got the bass right on this track really came to life. If you want to know why Fleetwood and Mac are revered as one of the all-time great rhythm sections, this song should provide all the evidence you need. (Try Werewolves of London if this song doesn’t convince you. Same sound too.)

Listen for Stevie Nick’s humming before she starts to sing. On the good copies it’s quite clear.

Punchy bass and punchy drums are key to the best sounding copies of Rumours.

What to Listen For in General

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360 Original or Red Label Reissue?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Chicago Available Now

UPDATE 2026

This commentary has to be close to twenty years old by now.

Both can be good. I did the shootout and often tried to guess the label for the copy I was hearing, for fun more than anything else. I have to admit that my batting average was not much better than chance. 

The 360s tend to be a little fuller and smearier, but plenty of red label copies sound that way and some 360s don’t, so trying to match the sound to the label was even more pointless than usual.

When comparing pressings in a shootout it’s too late for the label to have any predictive value.

We’ve already bought the records, cleaned them up and now just want to know what they actually sound like — not which ones might be the best, but which ones are the best.

The time for guessing games has passed. Of course, if we do actually figure out what the right stampers are, this helps us next time around.

What Stampers Mean

Stampers mean something, but sometimes, as is the case here, they don’t mean much.

(If you don’t know that by now you probably haven’t done that many big shootouts on your own. Can’t blame you — without lots of helpers in the cleaning and needle-dropping departments, they’d be an even bigger pain than they already are. Even with three people involved it can still take almost all day, and that’s if you just happen to have ten or fifteen copies handy. It took us about two years to find that many, hitting multiple stores every week.)

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One Customer’s Story of Listening in Depth and Seeing the Light

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Fleetwood Mac Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about a Hot Stamper pressing of Fleetwood Mac’s Self-titled album (1975) he purchased recently:

Hey Tom, 

Sorry to say I will be returning this White Hot Stamper. Did a lot of research before ordering, understand and fully appreciate what you’re doing, seriously sad to not be keeping it. Pretty obviously you are crazy dedicated to this so wanted to fully explain why. Especially since there’s still good odds I would like to try again.

First let me say it was quite the experience unpacking and seeing a cover still in its original shrink wrap. Probably quite a few would consider that alone worth the price. I never even slipped it out of the excellent plastic sleeve you shipped it in, that’s how much instant respect I have for the unbelievably unlikely existence of this thing. It truly is amazing. I bought it for the music not the cover, but still….

The reason I will be returning this is Side 1. Monday Morning was a disappointment, but I really think we are kind of at the mercy of the master here. Warm Ways is a whole lot better, and yes quite a bit better than my copy, with a fair bit more inner detail and palpable presence but overall not much more than I have got from some good 45 or heavy vinyl pressings.

Just so you know, yes I do follow all your suggestions. Warm up, demagnetize, anti-static, all of that and more. Have a demagnetizer much more effective than the Talisman. Been doing all this stuff over 20 years now. Because I hear and appreciate. Cables elevated off the floor. Every wire from the breaker to the speaker been cryo’d. Yes I pulled the wire out of the house, drove it down to Cryo One, had them do it all.

Part of the problem. I hear how much better Side 1 is, it goes into that frame of reference. For over $300 it needs to be at least as great an improvement over my copy as I can get from warm-up, demagnetize, etc. Its not. Well your rating did say Side 2 was a bit better. Frankly, I think you could stand to correct that. Side 2 is a whole lot better. Right from the first track its just way more lively, present, dynamic, punchy, you name it. Not sure why you say Say You Love Me is “rich and sweet and tubey” probably that is one of the stock phrases you use throughout the site because this track offers, relative to the others on this side, less of this.

Which brings me to Landslide, and World Turning. These two tracks totally deserve all the most glowing Better Records accolades! Simply superb sonics. Better even in some ways than my MoFi 45 of Brothers in Arms. Now this is what I was hoping for! The spellbinding sound of these two tracks is almost enough to make me forget Side 1.

Almost. And its not like the rest of Side 2 is bad. Honestly, when it gets to this level (of pressing quality) you can hear so deeply what’s going on it becomes inescapable we are at a level where we are at the mercy of the mastering engineer. Or if not him then someone even further along up the recording chain. You know what I mean. I know you know what I mean. Because, in reading one of your glowing reviews was the comment, basically, “but get real, its Springsteen.” Because for whatever reason he could never be bothered to turn out a good recording.

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