Half-Speed Disasters

Linked here are more than 100 Half-Speed mastered records that have exceptionally poor sound compared to the Hot Stamper pressings we’ve auditioned, which inludes both vintage early pressings and reissues.

On this blog we detail precisely what problems Half-Speed mastering causes. These hundred or so pressings are proof of the damage it can do to perfectly good recordings.

Blood Sweat and Tears – An In-Depth Review of the 1996 MoFi LP

Blood, Sweat and Tears’ Second Album Is a Top Test Disc

Sonic Grade: D

We found a Hot Stamper copy for one of our best customers a while back and he wrote an incisive commentary which may be of interest to you. To see the results of his comparison between the Direct Disc Labs Half-Speed, the MOFI Anadisq, his original domestic pressing, and the Hot Stamper he bought from us, check out his letter.

I want to thank Roger Lawry for his extensive commentary on the BS&T’s second album. His critical listening skills are obviously quite well developed, especially since he agrees with me about what is the best sounding BS&T — the one I sold him! I have added some caveats in places to clarify a few issues, but basically Roger’s assessment is right on the money.

Hi, Tom:

I listened to 3 versions of the BS&T record and here is what I found (I wrote up a little review–you can use it on your website or laugh and delete it, whatever). (more…)

Songs in the Attic – CBS Half-Speed Debunked

More of the Music of Billy Joel

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Billy Joel

Sonic Grade: F

Records with too much bass and especially too much top end can’t be turned up loud.

The louder you play them the worse they sound.

Try playing the average MoFi at a loud volume. All that extra 10k starts to make your brain hurt.

The CBS half-speed of this album is like that. It’s frustrating — the music makes you want to turn it up but the sound says forget it.

Not the good pressings. They sounds BETTER when you play them loud.  

Year Of The Cat – Is the MoFi Good or Bad?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Al Stewart Available Now

Sonic Grade: D to B-

If you own the typical MoFi version of this album you happen to own one of the All Time Mastering Disasters of the modern era. Ridiculously boosted at both ends, their version is all but unlistenable on a high end stereo. 

Some copies are worse than others, so we are conservatively giving MoFi’s pressing a sonic grade of D. We’ve played some in the past that clearly deserved an F (F as in Failing), but we also once played one that sounded pretty good, which we describe below. If you’ve played half a dozen MoFi copies and plucked out the best one, yours might be good too. If you haven’t heard a bunch, chances are slim that yours is any better than awful.

There’s only one way to tell of course, and that’s to pull it off the shelf and give it a spin. You may be shocked at just how hyped-up it has gotten since the last time you heard it.

If you play your records back on an old console, with maybe a blown woofer or two, okay, I can see how the sound of the MoFi might work. But I’m guessing most of you have something better than that, and since you do, one of our Hot Stamper pressings will absolutely positively blow your mind, showing you the real Year of the Cat. We guarantee it. (more…)

Sticky Fingers Is a MoFi Disaster to Beat Them All – Now With Video

More of the Music of The Rolling Stones

If you click on the video you can read some of the silly comments people are making about this awful pressing, which happens to be one of the worst sounding versions of Sticky Fingers ever committed to vinyl.

When you stop to consider how awful most pressings are compared to the only version that has ever sounded good to us, the right original domestic LP,  that’s really saying something.

The MoFi pressing of this album is a joke. It’s so compressed, lifeless, and lacking in low end weight and power that it would hardly interfere with even the most polite conversation at a wine tasting. I consider it one of the worst sounding versions ot the album ever made.

We Don’t Need an Analog Revival If It Means Sound As Wrong As This

More Reviews for Albums Released by Analogue Productions

Acoustic Sounds had Stan Ricker remaster this record a number of years ago, and of course they (he) ruined it. A twinkly top end and flabby bass were just two of the major shortcomings of their version.

Nothing surprising there, as Stan Ricker is famous for his “smile curve“, boosting both ends of the audio spectrum whether they need boosting or not. 

And half-speed mastered bass is almost always bloated and ill-defined.

If you add too much top end to a guitar record and ruin the sound of the guitar, how can anyone take you seriously?

Please note that not a single title from the Analog Revival series is any good, to the best of my knowledge, and all should be avoided. The same is true for all the 180 gram jazz titles on Analogue Productions mastered by Doug Sax, as you may have read elsewhere on the site.

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Breakfast In America – MoFi Reviewed

More of the Music of Supertramp

Sonic Grade: C-

The MoFi Standard Operating Procedure of boosting the top end does this album no favors; it’s positively ruinous in fact. How dull does a system have to be to make this record sound right? Pretty damn dull.

And the bad bass definition just adds to the phoniness.

The average domestic copy is not that great either, so let’s give the MoFi a somewhat forgiving grade of C minus.  

More recently we played a copy that was too smooth. Go figure!

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Even In The Quietest Moments… on Sweet Thunder

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Supertramp Available Now

A hall of shame pressing and a Half-Speed Mastered disaster if there ever was one.

We’re big fans of this album here at Better Records and consider it to be one of Supertramp’s best. That said, this Half-Speed is a disgrace.

There is absolutely no presence to the sound of the copy we played. The guitars, which on some cuts are double tracked, each coming directly out of the speaker hard right and hard left, are so dull it sounds like the speaker is facing the back wall!  

I think I know why — there is quite a bit of processing distortion and grit on the vocals. The Audiophile Masterminds at Sweet Thunder thought the best way to deal with it was to suck the hell out of the presence region (3 to 6k), which takes off some of the edge on the vocals but throws a thick blanket over the acoustic guitars.

On the opening track of side one, the big hit off the album, it takes all the energy out of the one element that really drives the music — the guitars.

This is truly one of the worst Half-Speed mastered records we have ever had the displeasure of hearing.

Shame on you, Sweet Thunder.

This link will take you to some other exceptionally bad records that were marketed to audiophiles for their supposedly superior sound. On today’s modern systems, it should be obvious that they have nothing of the kind and that, in fact, they offer only the reverse: junk sound for bad stereos.

Further Reading

If you are still buying these remastered pressings, making the same mistakes that I was making before I knew better, take the advice of some of our customers and stop throwing your money away on Heavy Vinyl and Half-Speed mastered LPs.

At the very least let us send you a Hot Stamper pressing — of any album you choose — that can show you what is lacking on your copy of the album.

And if for some reason you disagree with us that our record sounds better than yours, we will happily give you all your money back and wish you the very best.

If That’s What It Takes – Another MoFi Disaster

More of the Music of Michael McDonald

The MoFi pressing of this album is a complete disaster — it’s even fatter, muddier and more compressed than the standard domestic copy, as improbable as that may seem.

It was mastered by Jack Hunt, a man we know to be responsible for some of the thickest, dullest, deadest MoFi recuts throughout their shameful catalog.

With mastering credits on this Michael McDonald album, Gerry Rafferty (058) and Blondie (050), you have to wonder how this guy kept getting work.  

Dire Straits on Phonogram Half-Speed

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Dire Straits Available Now

Sonic Grade: F

This has to be one of the worst sounding copies of Dire Straits’ first album we have ever played.

There are plenty of bad sounding pressings of this album around — most of the domestic copies we’ve auditioned over the years were clearly made from dubs — but half speed mastering did this recording no favors. In fact, it was positively ruinous.

The 10cc title from this same series wasn’t half bad, FYI, certainly not the joke this pressing is.

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Deja Vu – A Tale of Two MoFi’s

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Crosby, Stills, Nash and (Sometimes) Young

Sonic Grade: F (or not!)

Just for fun about 10 years ago [make that 20] I pulled out a MoFi pressing of Deja Vu I had laying around. I hadn’t played their version in a long time. I could have gone a lot longer without playing it, because what I heard was pretty disappointing. Playing their record confirmed all my prejudices. The highs sizzled and spit. The heart of the midrange was recessed and sour.

Know what it reminded me of? A bad Japanese pressing.

(Since most of them are pretty bad I could have just said a typical Japanese pressing, but that’s another story for another day.)

And if that’s not bad enough, the bass definition disappeared. Bass notes and bass parts that were clearly audible and easily followed on our Hot Stamper copies were murky, ill-defined mud on the MoFi.

If you own the MoFi you owe it to yourself to hear a better sounding version. You really don’t know what you’re missing.

But Then, A Few Years Later We Played This Copy…

Here is what we had to say at the time:

Hot Stamper Sound on the MoFi pressing of Deja Vu, can it be possible? I have NEVER heard the MoFi sound this good, not even close. This just KILLS the other copies I’ve heard. I wrote a scathing review of their badly mastered pressing which you can read below, and I still stand behind every word, because this copy is not your average MoFi. The average one still sucks. What we are selling here is a FLUKE. Here is the story from our Hot Stamper shootout we just did.

This week we picked up a very clean looking MoFi pressing and decided to throw it in the shootout just for fun. We were shocked — this one actually sounded good! Not as amazing as our best Hot Stampers, but much better than we had expected. We checked our old copy and heard the same bad sound described above. 

Pressing variations exist for audiophile records as well, and here was another example. It just goes to show that nothing short of playing a record will tell you how it sounds — except for reading our website. Who besides us could spend so much time playing so many bad records? It’s a dirty job, but we’re happy to do it. Hearing one amazing record makes up for playing 10 bad ones, so we’ll keep at it.

Keep in mind that the only way you can never be wrong about your records is to simply avoid playing them. If you have better equipment than you did, say, five or ten years ago, try playing some of your MoFi’s, 180 gram LPs, Japanese pressings, 45 RPM remasters and the like. You might be in for quite a shock.

It’s all good — until the needle hits the groove. Then you might find yourself in need of actual Better Records, not the ones you just hoped were better.

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