More Bad Sounding Records Audiophiles Should Avoid
UPDATE 2025
I can find no record of the existence of any regular Zoo label pressing. The only ones on Discogs are mastered by Bernie Grundman, on 150 or 180 gram vinyl.
My advice now would be to buy the CD. I own one and it’s great.
Our Zoo label original LP MURDERED the Classic heavy vinyl reissue. It’s not even close.
More of the Music of Aretha Franklin
Hot Stamper Pressings of Soul, Blues and R&B Albums Available Now
Four Men with Beards recut this record back in 2002. When it came out I was still selling Heavy Vinyl, and I liked some of the titles they had remastered. This one, however, sounded terrible to me and I was not interested in carrying it.
I fancied myself a curator back in those days, but I was not able to set the standards that we can now set for our records, for one simple reason. We hadn’t learned how to do it yet.
We did our first shootout twelve years later, and that’s when our real record education began.
This is a Must Own Soul Classic from 1969 that belongs in every right-thinking audiophile’s collection
The complete list of titles from 1969 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here.
The music, of course, is top notch, and it’s even better when you don’t have the bad sound and groove distortion of the average copy getting in the way.
Sonic Grade: F
The DCC pressing is a complete disaster, one of the worst sounding versions of the album ever made.
As bad as the MoFi is, the DCC is even worse. Murky and bloated, to my ear it does almost nothing right, not on vinyl anyway. The DCC Gold CD is better, and it’s certainly nothing to write home about.
Our Hot Stamper commentary below sorts out the DCC, the Classic Records Heavy Vinyl pressing and the MoFi Half-Speed Mastered LP, as well as British and domestic originals.
We love this album and we’ve played every kind of pressing we could get our hands on. The winner? Read on!
Over the course of the last 25 years we was wrong three ways from Sunday about our down-and-out friend Aqualung here. We originally liked the MoFi.
When the DCC 180g came along we liked that one better, and a few years back I was somewhat enamored with some original British imports.
Our first big shootout disabused us of any notion that the British originals were properly mastered. As we noted in our Hot Stamper commentary, “The original Brits we played were pretty hopeless too: Tubey Magical but midrangy, bass-shy and compressed.”
The same is true for Thick As A Brick; the best domestic copies are much more energetic and tonally correct.
More of the music of Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)
More of the music of Edvard Grieg (1843-1907)
Sonic Grade: F
Classic Records ruined this album. Their version is dramatically more smeared and low-rez than our good vintage pressings, with almost none of the sweetness, richness and ambience that the best RCA pressings have in such abundance.
[This turns out not to be true, as we discovered to our chagrin in 2014.]
In fact their pressing is just plain awful, like most of the classical recordings they remastered, and should be avoided at anything other than a nominal price.
Our current favorite pressing is this one on a budget Decca reissue. Go figure.
Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Deep Purple Available Now
Mastered by Kevin Gray, this record has what we would call ”modern” sound, which is to say it’s clean and tonally correct, but it’s missing the Tubey Magic the British originals are swimming in.
In other words, it sounds like a CD.
I’m guessing that very few people have ever heard this record sound the way our best Hot Stamper pressings can sound.
For one thing, the domestic pressings are made from dubbed tapes, and that’s what most of us Americans would have owned. The original domestic pressings are smeary, veiled and small as a rule
Yes, the average copy may be nothing special, but this one is a boring, lifeless mess, so save your money.
Rhino Records has really made a mockery of the analog medium. Rhino touts their releases as being pressed on “180 gram High Performance Vinyl.” However, if they are using “performance” as a synonym “sound quality,” we have found the performance of their vinyl to be quite low, lower than the average copy one might stumble upon in the used record bins.
Who can be bothered to play a record that has so few of the qualities audiophiles should be looking for on vinyl?
Back in 2007 we put the question this way: why own a turntable if you’re going to play mediocrities like these?
Further Reading
Records are getting awfully expensive these days, and it’s not just our Hot Stampers that seem priced for perfection.
If you are still buying these modern remastered pressings, making the same kind of 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.
More of the Music of Oscar Peterson
Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Oscar Peterson
Sonic Grade: F
More vinyl dreck from Speakers Corner. I played this record back in the ’90s and was astonished at how bad the sound was.
They eventually realized that the tapes they had available to them should never have been used. The newer version has been remixed from the three-track masters. It may be fine, it may not, we will never bother to get one in and play it, but if you do decide to buy one, make sure to have a return guarantee.
Nothing this label does can be trusted.
It’s an Audiophile Hall of Shame pressing and yet another Disastrous Heavy Vinyl release that proves this label had no shame.
Is it the worst version of the album ever made? Hard to imagine it would have much competition. The CD I have is dramatically better.
If you put your faith in what Speakers Corner said about their process and bought this crappy remaster, I hope you learned at least one lesson from your mistake: never believe anything an audiophile label has to say about anything.
Cut from original master tapes, pure analog mastering on Neumann VMS 80
Superior sound quality
More of the Music of Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943)
For some background, in 2005 we were still selling Heavy Vinyl. We were fans of DCC and Cisco and carried many of the Speakers Corner remasters.
But things were starting to look grim. With every improvement to our playback system, these modern reissues seem to be falling further and further behind.
In the late-’90s, Classic had released some Mercury titles which we’d auditioned and disliked immensely. In 2005 it was Speakers Corner’s turn to have at the Mercury catalog, and they went a different way, finding a “new sound” for the legendary recordings, completely unlike any vintage pressing we’d ever heard.
This was very upsetting. I felt the need to say something.
By 2007 it was clear that Heavy Vinyl was a lost cause and had no business being sold by any audiophile record dealer who cared about sound quality, most especially me. And that was the end of it. This Mercury was one of the records that helped me see the error of my ways.
Part 1 of this discussion of Speakers Corner’s Mercury Series can be found here.
A blog entry on the site from 2005 about the new Mercury reissue series that was coming out noted that:
I am expecting the new Rach 3rd (90283) later this week, and will report my findings as soon as I have a had a chance to evaluate it.
[A few weeks later I followed up with this:]
The news on 90283 is here. It came today. Are you ready? In one sentence:
The most opaque, dull and lifeless 180 gram reissue in the history of the world.
My blog entry from 2005 continues below, transcribed practically word for word.
I hope it’s becoming clear to people now that this series is an enormous fraud perpetrated against all right thinking (right listening?) audiophiles. I can’t imagine a worse sounding record. It makes the most opaque ’70s Phillips or London LP sound positively transparent next to this thick piece of crap. I pulled out my late label copy, far from the best sounding pressing I’ve ever heard, and it killed the new version. The trumpets sound like they’re playing from under a pile of blankets on this 180 gram LP. The sound is so bad it defies understanding.
And the sad thing, in some ways the saddest aspect of this very sad affair, is that I can safely predict right now, with absolutely no fear of being proved wrong, that every major record dealer will rave about it. Mark my words. Every one. Except me of course. But I’m not one of the majors. Thank god I don’t have to sell crap like this to make a living.
And every audiophile who reads a rave review in a dealer’s catalog or on a website should take it for precisely what it is: a naked grab for his money, nothing more, nothing less. It’s all about the money. It’s not about the sound. It’s not about the music. It’s just about money.
Any record dealer who would stoop low enough to take money for a record this bad is telling you something very important about his business: he either can’t tell a good record from a bad one, or he doesn’t care. Either one would make me take my business elsewhere. How do these guys stay in business? (Maybe the fact that most of their catalogs are now given over to equipment explains it.)
And you should be outraged at this kind of fraud. If you give money to retailers who so obviously have nothing but contempt for you, you share in the blame. You’re keeping these guys in business. It makes me think of the scene in Network where Howard the veteran newscaster talks directly to his audience:
So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell: ‘I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take this anymore!’
I want you to get up right now. Sit up. Go to your windows. Open them and stick your head out and yell – ‘I’m as mad as hell and I’m not gonna take this anymore!’ Things have got to change. But first, you’ve gotta get mad!…You’ve got to say, ‘I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take this anymore!’
After playing this new Mercury, I was filled with questions.
What is to become of the record business?
Do we really need records that sound worse than the worse sounding CDs, at twice the price?
More Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of The Lovin’ Spoonful
Hot Stamper Pressings of Sixties Pop Albums Available Now
Sonic Grade: F
Flat as a pancake and dead as a doornail, like practically eveery one of the other Sundazed records we played all those years ago.
Can the CD sound this flat and dead?
I would bet money that it kills this piece of Heavy Vinyl trash.
If you own this awful record, buy the CD and find out for yourself if it isn’t better sounding.
Yes, this is yet another Audiophile Hall of Shame pressing and another Disastrous Heavy Vinyl release with godawful sound.
Below you will find our reviews of the more than 200 Heavy Vinyl pressings we’ve played over the years. Feel free to pick your poison.
Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Paul Simon Available Now
Click on the link below to read the story behind an interview conducted by a well-known reviewer of an engineer who was tasked (by whom I wonder?) with remastering Graceland on Heavy Vinyl.
He apparently had never played an original Sterling-mastered copy of Graceland. Either that, or this engineer thought the original “needed improvement,” the kind supplied by taking a hatchet to the sound of the original tape.
Analogplanet Visits Sterling Sound and Interviews Mastering Engineer Ryan K. Smith
The interviewer apparently does not know how bad the new version sounds, but we had no trouble recognizing its awfulness here at Better Records. As a public service, we soon set about describing what we heard when we put this remastered piece of junk to the test.
Up against a properly-mastered, properly-pressed early pressing, it earned a failing grade.
Is it the worst version of the album ever pressed on vinyl? Hard to imagine it would have much competition.
The title of our review gives away the game:
The reviewer who interviewed the remastering engineer responsible for this and no doubt many other awful sounding records has never been able to tell a good record from a bad one, and he carries on that tradition with Graceland.
Ryan Smith, the hack who cut this album, has done quite a lot of work for Analogue Productions. We can’t say we’ve played many of his recuts, but the ones we have played are hopelessly bad, with the overly smooth sound so much in vogue today.
We played his recut of Scheherazade, and rather than just give it the failing grade it deserved, we explained how any audiophile could go about using its mistaken EQ in order to recognize what is wrong with it, and of course, others like it.
(Contrary to popular opinion, it is no better than Bernie Grundman’s bad sounding version from the 90s, the one he cut for Classic Records.)
One of my good customers read this rave review from this same reviewer for the Texas Hurricane Box Set and made the worst mistake any audiophile can make: he believed it.
“His overdriven Stratocaster sound is one that guitar aficionados never tire of hearing live or on record, especially when it’s well recorded. … Yet again, Chad Kassem sets high the box set reissue bar delivering a “must have” package for SRV fans, every bit the equal of the one Doors fans have come to cherish. …every one of these records betters the originals and by a considerable margin. It is not even close…You’ve never heard these albums sound like this. That is a 100 % guaranty. …this is an impeccably produced box set physically and especially sonically. It’s the best these albums have ever and probably will ever sound.” — Music = 9/11; Sound = 10/11 — Michael Fremer
Sure, he’s out $400, but on the bright side he’s now learned a lesson he is very unlikely to forget.
Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Burt Bacharach Available Now
Casino Royale under the sway of Bernie’s penchant for bright, gritty, sour, ambience-challenged sound? Not a good match. There is no reissue, and there will never be a reissue, that will sound as good as a properly-mastered, properly-pressed, properly-cleaned original.
And I hope it would go without saying that most copies cannot begin to do what a real Hot Stamper original can.
As is often the case, the Classic Heavy Vinyl Reissue is simply a disgrace.
Is it the worst version of the album ever made?
That’s hard to say. But it is the worst sounding version of the album we’ve ever played, and that should be good enough for any audiophile contemplating spending money on this Heavy Vinyl trash. Our advice: don’t do it.
