Art Rock – Reviews and Commentaries

Letter of the Week – “This has to be the most dramatic improvement over a typical recording I’ve ever heard!”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of David Bowie Available Now

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

Hey Tom, 

Picked up your SHS of “Ziggy” last week–my daughter is 13 and starting to get into Mick Ronson, and I got this to show her what I think is his best work, not just on guitar, but in essentially creating the overall sound for the “Ziggy Stardust” album.

What I didn’t expect was how fantastic this album sounds. I’ve had other copies and they sound like I’m wearing a blanket over my head. Alongside my HS copy of “Freak Out” (first record I ever bought from you guys, I think), this has to be the most dramatic improvement over a typical recording I’ve ever heard!

Records like this justify Better Records in spades–wow!!

Stephen F.

Stephen, thanks for your letter.

Let’s face it: the average copy is pretty average. We wouldn’t even bother to play the average copy. Who needs it? Audiophiles want something that sounds good and record collectors can find records like these on ebay for under $10 or thereabouts, so no one in either group needs to come to our site to get some run-of-the-mill pressing of a title as common as this one.

Audiophiles come to us for the best, the copies that beat the Remastered Heavy Vinyl Con Jobs, the Half-Speeds, the whatever Audiophile BS pressing may be out there. We take them all on and beat them with ease.

You don’t need to spend a fortune to get a great record from us. It helps — don’t get me wrong, our Top Dollar copies are OUT OF THIS WORLD. But for the price of a good dinner (maybe an especially good dinner), you can have a record that will give you joy and pleasure far out of proportion to its cost.

UPDATE 2023

The bit about the record costing the price of a dinner is no longer true, unless you are in the habit of spending $1000 or more at dinner. Rarely are Hot Stamper pressings of Ziggy priced under that nowadays. Trying to balance the small supply with the high demand has resulted in the price getting somewhat out of hand, at least for those of us in the middle class.

If we could find more of the good pressings and sell them for cheaper, believe me, we would. At under $1000 the record would probably not last a day on the site. At $1500 and up, it’s there for those who love the album enough to pay the admittedly premium price we’re asking.

Stephen, we look forward to finding you more better sounding pressings of your favorite music.

TP

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Hot Stampers and Good Sounding Records Are Not the Same Thing

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Stevie Ray Vaughan Available Now

They are barely even related. Here’s why.

A good customer wrote to us recently to say that he was not happy with the Stevie Ray Vaughan White Hot Stamper pressings we had sent him.

Tom,

I also have a couple more returns for you: SRV Couldn’t Stand the Weather and SRV Soul to Soul. While these are good, they’re just not quite up to White Hot Stamper quality like some of the other records clearly are.

I took the opportunity to reply at length.

Dear Sir,

You appear to be conflating two concepts, Hot Stampers and good recordings. They are not the same thing. They are barely even related.

Hot Stampers are especially good sounding pressings of specific albums that we found through shootouts.

The recordings of these albums may be better or worse than others you are familiar with. That has nothing to do with how hot the stampers are of the pressings we sell.

It works this way: if you had a hundred copies of The Dark Side of the Moon, the median pressing– the one that would have ranked number 50 out of 100 — would sound substantially better than either of those two SRV albums.

Pink Floyd: amazing recording. 

SRV: good, not great recording.

We would never sell an average pressing of DSOTM. We only sell the best sounding versions of it.

We would never sell the average version of any SRV album. We only sell the best sounding versions of them.

But no SRV album is ever going to sound like a good Dark Side of the Moon! (more…)

Today’s Half-Speed Mastered Mess Is Meddle on Mobile Fidelity

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Pink Floyd Available Now

Sonic Grade: D

Same sonic shortcomings as the MoFi Thick As a Brick. Twenty years ago we wrote:

“The MoFi is TRANSPARENT and OPEN, and the top end will be lush and extended. If you prize clarity, this is the one.”

But if you prize clarity at the expense of everything else, you are seriously missing the boat on Meddle (and Thick As A Brick too).

The MoFi is all mids and highs with almost nothing going on below.

This is a rock record, but without bass and dynamics, the MoFi pressing doesn’t rock, so why would anyone want to own it or play it?

I suppose you could argue that on small speakers the shortcomings of this pressing would be much less bothersome, but on the reference system we use — including the one we had twenty years ago — the lack of low end is a real dealbreaker.

The One Thing They Do

The one thing these pressings have going for them is that they tend to be transparent in the midrange.

It sounds like someone messed with the sound, and of course someone did. They took out the bottom end so that the midrange would be clearer.

That’s one of the tricks these labels use to get their records to impress the audiophiles with small speakers, or ones that are pressed up against the wall, perhaps with a television screen mounted between them.

For some reason, some audiophiles like their records to sound pretty and lifeless with blurry bass.

That is not our sound here at Better Records. We don’t offer records with those qualities and we don’t think audiophiles should be paying good money for records that sound like that.

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The Pareto Effect in Audio – The 80/20 Rule Is Real

Please Consider Taking Some of Our Audio Advice

Even thought this commentary was written close to twenty years ago, we proudly stand behind every word.

Ambrosia’s first album does exactly what a good Test Disc should do. It shows you what your system is doing wrong, or poorly, and once you’ve fixed it, or made it better, it shows you that it actually is better, maybe even right, or at least more right than it was before.

We audiophiles need records like this. They make us better listeners, and they force us to become better audio tweakers. Because the amount of tweaking you do with your setup, components, room, electricity and the like is the only thing that can take you to the highest levels of audio.

The unfortunate reality audiophiles must eventually come to grips with in their journey to higher quality sound is that you cannot simply buy equipment that will get you there.

You can only teach yourself, painstakingly, over the course of many, many years, how to tweak and tune your equipment — regardless of its cost or purported quality — in order to reach the highest levels of audio fidelity.

And learning how to tweak and tune your equipment has other, fundamentally more important benefits in addition to its original purpose.

It helps you become a better listener. To notice aspects of the sound — the nuances and subtleties — you’ve been missing in your favorite recordings.

Breaking It Down

At most 20% of the sound of your stereo is what you bought.

At least 80% is what you’ve done with it.

Based on my experience I would put the number closer to 90%.

This is known as the Pareto Principle

The Pareto Principle, also known as the 80/20 Rule, The Law of the Vital Few and The Principle of Factor Sparsity, illustrates that 80% of effects arise from 20% of the causes – or in laymen’s terms – 20% of your actions/activities will account for 80% of your results/outcomes.

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Letter of the Week – “…this BR copy just lifted the veil.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Pink Floyd Available Now

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

Hi Tom,

Just a quick note about Meddle WHS. I also had an A!/B! XXX which does sound pretty good and is quiet, but this BR copy just lifted the veil.

Once I dialed in the sweet spot it was a delightful experience.

This copy is the bomb!!

Many Thanks,
Michel

Michel,

Not all A!/B!’s are created equal!

Most copies of the album with the right stampers will earn a grade of Super Hot, A++.

Some will be White Hot, A+++.

Almost all the pressings we play will have the same stamper numbers, although you may have read that we did just find another stamper for side two that can win shootouts.

Some of the difference in sound is the result of our using The Prelude Record Cleaning System, in conjunction with the Odyssey record cleaning machine we purchased in 2007 (more on that here).

Clean records sound better than they otherwise would, and properly cleaned records often sound much better than they otherwise would, oftentimes a full grade better.

Glad you liked our copy. Lifting the veil is a good way to put it.  We have a list of records we found to be veiled, and you can find it here. We describe them this way:

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What to Listen For on English Settlement

Hot Stamper Pressings of Arty Rock Albums Available Now

For big production rock albums such as this there are obvious problems that are heard on at least one or two sides of practically any copy of this four-sided album you might find on your turntable.

With so many heavily-produced instruments crammed into the soundfield, if the sound is at all veiled, recessed or smeared — problems common to 90+% of the records we play in our shootouts — the mix quickly becomes opaque, forcing the listener to work too hard to separate out the various elements of musical interest.

Irritation, if not exhaustion, is bound to follow.

Some general observations about the sound of the album:

  • Transparency, clarity and presence are key.
  • None of the British copies we played was thin and anemic.
  • The domestic copies are made from dubs and can’t begin to compete.
  • Almost all the copies we played had plenty of Tubey Magic and bottom end, so thankfully that was almost never a problem.
  • They did however tend to lack top end extension and transparency, and many were overly compressed.
  • There is plenty of tube compression being used in both the mixing and mastering, but most of the time it is working its magic to keep the bass big, punchy and loud. 

Speaking of Tube Compression

Robert Ludwig used humungous amounts of tube compression on another favorite album of ours, and we’re glad he did. All that massive compression is at least partly responsible for it being one of the ten best sounding rock and pop albums ever made.

The sides that had sound that jumped out of the speakers, with driving rhythmic energy, worked the best for us. They really brought this complex music to life and allowed us to make sense of it. This is yet another definition of a Hot Stamper — it’s the copy that lets the music work as music. (more…)

Letter of the Week – “…there is no comparison to the experience of this record vs any other of the ~15 pressings I have.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Pink Floyd Available Now

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

Hey Tom, 

I was finally able to give the White Hot Stamper a listen.

I was blown away.

This record sounds so amazing. The sound is expansive….big, wide, and deep. With higher highs and extended lows that are still clear and pure.

It’s such a huge difference, there is no comparison to the experience of this record vs any other of the ~15 pressings I have, including one super hot stamper.

Awesome.

Thanks,
Alex

Alex,

Glad you liked it as much as we did!

White Hot means it won the shootout and had the best sound of any copy we played.

It sounds like that’s what you heard too.

We love it when our customers take the time and make the effort to do their own shootouts, especially when we win, which is what happens about 99% of the time.

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Listening in Depth to So

Hot Stamper Pressings of So Available Now

With a digital recording such as this, the margin for mastering error is very slim. Most copies just aren’t worth the vinyl they’re pressed on. They can sound harsh, gritty, grainy, edgy, and thin. We love this music and we know there are great copies out there, so we keep picking these up. More often than not, we’re left cold.

This is a digital recording, and most of the time it is BRIGHT, SPITTY and GRAINY like a typical digital recording, which plays right into our prejudices. After hearing a bad copy, what audiophile wouldn’t conclude that all copies will have these bad qualities? After all, it’s digital. It can’t be fixed simply by putting it on vinyl.

Ah, but that’s where the logic breaks down.

Proper mastering can ameliorate many if not most of a recording’s sins. When we say Hot Stampers, we are talking about high quality mastering doing exactly that.

Side One

Red Rain

Peter Gabriel’s soaring vocals here are a great test for transparency, especially during the last minute of the song when they really become more intimate, present, delicate and breathy.

Sledgehammer

Not unlike “Red Rain,” the flute intro here is a solid test for transparency and texture. But this moment passes quickly to make room for the huge horns that fire up the biggest hit on this album. The trumpets should have weight, dynamics, and texture. If they are smeary, blary or lifeless, you probably are listening to the typically compressed, low-resolution copy. (Side note: listen for the chatter before the singing begins – is someone talking on the phone? Last minute instructions from Peter? If you can figure out what they are saying we’ll give you this record for free!)

Don’t be alarmed at the veiled sound of the first two bars of vocals – it’s just the recording talking. When the verse comes in full swing, you’ll probably notice a little bit of spit, which is unavoidable here, especially on the super-sibilant “steam train” or “blue sky back”. However, the good copies make this problem non-offensive, and actually beneficial to the life of the music. The spit should not sound gritty or grainy; if it has a somewhat silky quality that’s a very good sign. But it has to be there if your copy is to have any life or presence in the midrange.

The backup singers that come in at the end of the first chorus should be subtle yet still present and clear. Also, pay attention to the reintroduction of the horns at the beginning of the second verse. The dynamic here is extremely important. The last note of their phrases should really swell up and make you appreciate what those guys are doing. (Maybe it’s Peter talking in the background, reminding the horn players not to forget to do that little dynamic trick.) (more…)

Roxy Music’s Debut Is a Masterpiece

Hot Stamper Pressings of Roxy Music’s Albums Available Now

Folks, this is a true Demo Disc in the world of art rock.

It’s rare to find a recording of popular music with dynamics such as these.

In both music and sound, this is arguably the best record the band ever made. Siren, Avalon and Country Life are all musically sublime, but the first album has the kind of dynamic, energetic, POWERFUL sound that their other records simply never show us. And we’ve played them by the dozens, so there’s a pretty good chance we will never find copies with the abundant richness and power we find here.

We hope you will agree with us that it was entirely worth the wait, as this album is a MASTERPIECE of Art Rock, Glam Rock and Bent Rock all rolled into one.

AMG calls Roxy Music the “most adventurous rock band of the early ’70s” and I’m inclined to agree with them. Roxy are certainly one of the most influential and important bands in my growth as a listener and audiophile, along with Supertramp, Ambrosia, 10cc, Steely Dan, Yes, Bowie and others, groups of musicians dedicated to exploring and exploding the conventions of popular music.

Want to find your own killer copy?

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Way Back in 2007 We Discovered the Hottest Meddle Stampers of Them All

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Pink Floyd Available Now

UPDATE 2020

This review from 2007 describes our experience of having stumbled upon the right stampers for Meddle. To this day, only these stampers and no others have won the many shootouts we’ve done for the album in the ensuing years, perhaps as many as a dozen shootouts or more.

These stampers are also very hard to find, which is why you may not have seen a copy of Meddle hit the site in a while. If we could find them, believe me, we would have them up all the time, as this is one amazing sounding album.

To see more albums with one set of stampers that consistently win shootouts, click here.

Want to find your own shootout winner?

Scroll to the bottom to see our advice on doing just that.

This Harvest Green Label British Import pressing has a side one that goes FAR beyond anything we’ve ever heard for this album. We had no choice but to award this side one the very rare A with FOUR pluses. We’ve never given any side of any other Pink Floyd record such a high grade, so you can be sure that you’ve never heard them sound this amazing.

  • Our lengthy commentary entitled outliers and out-of-this-world sound talks about how rare these kinds of pressings are and how to go about finding them.
  • We no longer give Four Pluses out as a matter of policy, but that doesn’t mean we don’t come across records that deserve them from time to time.
  • Nowadays we often place them under the general heading of breakthrough pressings. These are records that, out of the blue, reveal to us sound that fundamentally changes what we thought we knew about these often familiar recordings.
  • When this pressing (or pressings) landed on our turntable, we found ourselves asking “Who knew?“
  • Perhaps an even better question would have been “how high is up?”

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