Half-Speeds – Complete

Ein Heldenleben – A Half Speed I Used to Like for Some Reason

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Richard Strauss Available Now

As you may know, this is one of the earliest RCA stereo recordings, dating from 1954 and the same sessions as the famous Reiner recording LSC 1806. This two microphone, two-channel recording, however, was never released in stereo on vinyl until the Victrola era ten years later.  

We used to like the RCA Half-Speed pressing of the work, but playing it recently made me realize just how dark, smeary and thick it is.

Don’t know what I ever saw in it to tell you the truth.

We Make Mistakes

The first is that anyone who has been on an audio journey for very long has made a lot of mistakes along the way.

Uniquely among reviewers and record dealers, we go out of way to admit when we were wrong. You might say we are even proud of the fact that we used to get so many things wrong about records and audio.

Our experimental, evidence-based approach, requiring that we not only make mistakes but that we embrace them, is surely key to the progress we have made in understanding recordings and home audio. One of our favorite quotes on the subject is attributed to Alexander Pope.

“A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying… that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.”

To say that few audiophiles have followed our approach is not to admit defeat. Rather it is simply to say that the approach we use to find better sounding pressings involves a great deal of tedious, expensive, time-consuming work, work that few audiophiles seem interested in doing.

There are quite a number of other records that we’ve run into over the years with obvious shortcomings.

Here are some of them, a very small fraction of what we’ve played, broken down into the three major labels that account for most of the best classical and orchestral titles we’ve had the pleasure to play.

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Somethin’ Else on MoFi – How Is This Company Still in Business?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Recordings by Rudy Van Gelder Available Now

For our 2023 White Hot Stamper shootout winning pressing we wrote:

A triumph for Rudy Van Gelder, a top Blue Note title, and as much a showcase for Miles Davis as it is for Cannonball Adderley.

The best sides of this album have as much energy, presence, dynamics and three-dimensional studio space as any jazz recording we’ve ever played.

When you hear it on a copy like this, it’s hard to imagine it could get much better.

We’ve heard more than our fair share of tubby, groove-damaged originals and smeary, lifeless reissues over the years, but this White Hot Stamper blew them all away.

This is a record we could play every week and never tire of. 

But this expensive ($125) MoFi pressing had us wondering what the hell we were on about, because almost nothing about it is right except for something we were not expecting: it’s actually tonally correct.

What are the chances?

With Mobile Fidelity, slim and none, but in this case they managed to pull off slim. So let’s give credit where credit is due.

But the sound is still a mess no matter how tonally correct it is.

Allow me to list its faults based on the notes we took as the record was playing. The last line sums up the experience nicely.

  • 1) It’s very recessed and lean.
  • 2) The trumpet is thin and very squawky.
  • 3) There is an exaggerated resonance in the peaks.

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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.

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So Long So Wrong – Still So Wrong in the Vocal Department

Hot Stamper Pressings of Jazz and Pop Vocals Available Now

Most audiophiles have a soft spot for female vocals. It’s a sound that a high end stereo — practically any high end stereo — reproduces well.

But why do some audiophiles listen to the artificial-sounding junk that Patricia Barber and Diana Krall put out on album after album?

Their recordings are drenched in digital reverb. Who is his right mind likes the sound of digital reverb?

Rickie Lee Jones may not be my favorite female vocal of all time, but at least you can make the case for it as a Well Recorded Album. It’s worlds better than anything either of the above-mentioned artists have ever done.

The MoFi pressing of Alison Krauss (5276) is a disaster in the vocal department too.

Audiophiles for some reason never seem to notice how bad she sounds on that record. Can’t make sense of it. Any of the good Sergio Mendes records will show you female vocals that are hard to beat. Our best Hot Stampers bring the exquisite vocal harmonies of Lani Hall (aka Mrs. Herb Alpert) and Janis Hansen (and others) right into your living room.

Why bother with trash like this Mobile Fidelity?

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Close to You on Mobile Fidelity Vinyl – Is This the Sound Audiophiles Were Clamoring For in ’83?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Frank Sinatra Available Now

In 2024 we did a shootout for the first of Frank’s many releases from 1957, Close to You. We were fortunate to have the Mobile Fidelity pressing from the ’80s box set to play against the mostly original pressings we had accumulated since our last shootout in 2020.

It takes a long time to find enough clean copies to get a shootout going. Four years is fairly typical these days I would imagine.

As you can see from our notes, side one of this MoFi was just awful. Can you blame us if we didn’t bother to play side two?

P.S. I Love You

  • Over-textured violin
  • Spitty, gritty vocals
  • Hollow and dry

Close To You

  • Very clean
  • Bass and vocals really lacking body and warmth

Our grade, had we given it one, would have had to have been a big fat F.

Is it the worst version of the album ever made?

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The Fantasy Film World of… “Did MoFi bother to listen to this before they ruined it?”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Bernard Herrmann Available Now

Sonic Grade: F

Obviously our customers know by now that a Hot Stamper London or Decca pressing is going to be far better than the Anadisq that MoFi cut in the mid-90s.

How much better?

Words fail me.

Their record was a complete disaster. Perhaps some of the MoFi collectors didn’t notice because they had nothing to compare it to. 

God forbid they would ever lower themselves to buy as common a pressing as a London. Had they done so, what they would have heard is huge amounts of musical information that is simply nowhere to be found on the MoFi.

There is a place on this album, I failed to note exactly where, in which a group of tubas play a descending scale that is somewhat buried in the mix. On the London, they can clearly be heard and recognized as tubas. On the MoFi, I don’t think they can be heard except as some general group of low notes, and anyone thinking that they were tubas would be guessing, the sound is that murky, muddy, and ill-defined.

Robert Pincus once left a Post-It note stuck to the MoFi jacket of a copy he was playgrading for me that summed up our thoughts on the quality of their mastering to a “t”:

“Did MoFi bother to listen to this before they ruined it?”

It’s positively shameful. This music is so good. On top of that, it’s custom made for audiophiles. Audiophiles are the ones who can appreciate the new colors Herrmann created, using what a wise man once called the single greatest instrument ever invented: the symphony orchestra.

If this Mobile Fidelity LP isn’t the perfect example of a pass/not-yet record, I can’t imagine what would be. To find a more poorly remastered record, you would really have to work at it.

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Sounds Unheard Of! – Another Analogue Productions Disaster

Hot Stamper Pressings Featuring Shelly Manne Available Now

Remember the 90s Acoustic Sounds Analog Revival series mastered by Stan Ricker? This was one of the titles they did, and completely ruined of course, as was the case with all the titles from that series that we played.

Ricker boosted the hell out of the top end, as is his wont, so all the percussion had the phony MoFi exaggerated sizzle and tizziness that we dislike so much around here at Better Records.

Yes, it’s the very same phony top that many audiophiles do not seem bothered by to this day. 

The whole series was an audio disaster, but oddly enough, I cannot remember reading a single word of criticism in the audiophile press discussing the shortcomings of that series of (badly) Half-Speed mastered LPs — outside of my own reviews of course. Has anything in audio really changed?

If I were to try to “reverse engineer” the sound of a system that could play this record and hide its many faults, I would look for a system that was thick, dark and overly smooth, with no real extension on the top end to speak of. Stan’s 10k boost — along with other the colorations he favors — is just what the doctor ordered for such a system.

I know that sound. I had a system in the 90s with many of the same shortcomings, but of course I didn’t know any of that.

I didn’t know what I didn’t know back then.

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MoFi’s Pictures at an Exhibition Is as Wrong as Wrong Can Be

moussmofiHot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Mussorgsky Available Now

If you like orchestral spectaculars, have we got the record for you.

It’s the same recording of the works, but the one you want is on the real EMI label and pressed on UK import vinyl, not this awful Half-Speed recut from Japan.

The record you see pictured is awful sounding, a true hall of shame pressing.

And why are the colors of the album jacket so washed out? Compare their cover to the real thing below. As we often find ourselves asking after reviewing one of these MoFi records: What were they thinking?

The MoFi mastering of Pictures at an Exhibition and The Firebird here are a bad joke played on credulous audiophiles. And yes, I bought them both back when they came out. I was as credulous as everybody else buying these so-called superior pressings.

All that phony boosted top end makes the strings sound funny and causes mischief in virtually every other part of the orchestra as well. Not surprisingly, those boosted highs are missing from the real EMIs.

These appear to be the unbearably bright strings that Stan Ricker favors — why, we have no idea.

The proof? Find me a Mobile Fidelity classical record with that little SR/2 in the dead wax that does not have bright string tone. I have yet to hear one.

The last time I played a copy of the MFSL I found the sound so hi-fi-ish I couldn’t stand to be in the room with it for more than a minute. Of course the bass is jello as well.

The EMI with the right stampers is worlds better.

(Warning: The domestic Angel regular version and the 45 are both awful.)

MoFi had a bad habit of making bright classical records. (More reviews here.) I suppose you could say they had a bad habit of making bright records in general. A few are dull, some are just right, but most of them are bright in one way or another.

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The CBS Half-Speed of Off the Wall Is a Joke

Hot Stamper Pressing of the Music of Michael Jackson Available Now

Sonic Grade: F

Pure MUD. No top end whatsoever!

I remember when we audiophiles looked down our noses at CBS Half-Speeds because they weren’t pressed in Japan and sold at a notable discount to the offerings of Mobile Fidelity and their competitors.

But we were so desperate back then for top quality pressings that we bought them anyway!

Are audiophiles any less desperate today? They seem pretty desperate to me. They approach these new Heavy Vinyl records naively instead of skeptically, assuming they will be better sounding in exactly the same way I assumed the Half Speeds I was buying forty years ago would be better sounding.

The more things change…

If you are buying these modern pressings, take the advice of some of our customers and stop throwing your money away on Heavy Vinyl and Half-Speed masters.

At the very least let us send you a Hot Stamper pressing — of any album you choose — that can show you what is wrong with your copy. And if for some reason you disagree that our record sounds better than yours, we will happily give you all your money back and wish you the best.

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Imagine on MoFi Heavy Vinyl from 2003

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of John Lennon Available Now

Sonic Grade: B

The last time I played this record was probably in the mid-2000s. Not sure what I would think of it now. Probably not much. Back in those days we thought it was a reasonably good sounding pressing, but it’s doubtful we had ever heard an exceptionally good version of the album, as it would be years before we managed to do our first shootout for it. To see what we have to say about the record now, please click here.

Our review from many years ago:

I played this when it came out, and I have to hand it to the new MOFI, they did a great job with this one. It sounds better than I’ve ever heard it, and KILLS the old MoFi vinyl, which is the version we did the shootout with.

It was a short comparison, as in, no comparison. The earlier MoFi Half Speed (a different master tape, but still…) has that classic MoFi midrange suckout this awful label is famous for, so that Lennon and his piano on the first track sound like they are coming from another room. 

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