*Import or Domestic?

We attempt to answer that question for some of the records we’ve auditioned.

Emerson, Lake & Palmer – Islands Vs Cotillions

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Emerson, Lake and Palmer Available Now

UPDATE 2020

This commentary was written many years ago, around 2010 I would guess.

It was updated in 2020 when we realized we were wrong about the domestic pressings being superior on side two. At one time we thought they were, and now, with many more shootouts under our belts, we are pretty sure they are not. But you never know!

The findings from the latest shootouts have shown us the error of our ways, yet another example of live and learn.

This is what we used to think:

The Brit copies may take top honors for side one (“sweetness, openness, tubey magic, correct tonality, presence without aggressiveness, well-defined note-like bass, extended airy highs”) but the Hot Stamper Cotillion copies KILL on side two. They really ROCK, with greater dynamic contrasts and seriously prodigious bass, some of the best ever committed to vinyl.

The Brits tend to be a bit too “pretty” sounding. They’re too polite for this bombastic music. This music needs the whomp down below and lots of jump factor to work its magic.

The Brits are super-low distortion, with a more open, sweeter sound, especially up top, but the power of the music is just not as powerful as it can be on these very special Cotillions.

We prefer the British pressings on both sides now. After years of improvement to our playback, they have shown themselves to be a step up over even the best domestic pressings. The Cotillions don’t win shootouts now and would be very unlikely to win one in the future. At best they tend to earn Super Hot Stamper grades.

A top copy might be described this way:

  • This UK Island Pink Rim pressing makes the case that ELP’s debut is clearly one of the most powerful rock records ever made, here with incredible Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) grades from top to bottom – just shy of our Shootout Winner
  • Spacious, rich and dynamic, with big bass and tremendous energy – these are just some of the things we love about Eddie Offord‘s engineering work on this band’s albums
  • Analog at its Tubey Magical finest – you’ll never play a CD (or any other digitally sourced material) that sounds as good as this record as long as you live
  • “Lucky Man” and “Take A Pebble” on this copy have Demo Disc quality sound like you won’t believe
  • Our White Hot pressing had a one half plus better grade on one side and sold for $849, making this copy a “relative bargain,” if there could ever be such a thing on this site – but what an amazing sounding record!

Without a doubt this record belongs in our Top 100 Rock and Pop section.

I’d even say it belongs in the Top Ten (which of course is where you can find it, where it belongs).

The organ on this album is wall to wall and floor to ceiling. The quiet interlude during “Take A Pebble” is about as quiet as any popular recording can ever be — the guitar is right at the noise floor. It’s amazing! (Which explains why so many domestic copies have groove damage. The record is just too hard to play for the average turntable. Hell, it’s hard to play with an audiophile turntable.)

Credit engineer Eddie Offord, who would later go on to enormous and entirely justifiable fame with Yes.

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Most Domestic Pressings of On The Border Suck, and We Know Why

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Eagles Available Now

This is one of the pressings we’ve discovered with reversed polarity on some songs.

The domestic copies of On The Border have many tracks in reversed absolute phase, including and especially Midnight Flyer, a lifelong favorite of mine. The front and center banjo will positively tear your head off; it’s bright, sour, shrill, aggressive and full of distortion. Don’t look at me — that’s what reverse polarity sounds like!

I’ve known for some time that domestic pressings of On The Border have their phase reversed — just hadn’t gotten around to discussing the issue because I wasn’t ready to list the record and describe the phenomenon.

A while back [January 2005, time flies] I happened to play a copy of One Of These Nights and was appalled by the dismal quality of the sound. Last night I put two and two together. I pulled out both Eagles records and listened to them with the phase reversed. Voila! (On The Border is a favorite record of mine, dismissed by everyone else, but loved by yours truly.)

[I don’t think One of These Nights has its polarity reversed anymore, although some copies may.]

I’m of the opinion that only a very small percentage of records have their absolute phase reversed. Once you’ve learned to recognize the kind of distortion reversed polarity causes, you will hear recordings that may make you suspicious, and the only way to know for sure is to switch the positive and negative, wherever you choose to do so. 

With the help of our EAR 324 Phono Stage, the phase is reversible with the mere touch of a button, a wonderful convenience that we have grown to love, along with the amazingly transparent sound of course. (Hard to imagine living without either at this point.)

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Striving for Orchestral Clarity on Finlandia with Decca and Failing with RCA

More of the Music of Jean Sibelius

More of the Music of Edvard Grieg

The original RCA Living Stereo pressings we played in our 2014 shootout were not competitive with the best Deccas and London reissues of Finlandia.

Is the original the best way to go? In our experience with Finlandia, it is not. And it’s not even close.

The Decca reissue you see here is yet another wonderful example of what the much-lauded Decca recording engineers were able to capture on analog tape all those years ago. The 1961 master tapes have been transferred brilliantly using “modern” cutting equipment (from 1970, not the low-rez junk they’re forced to make do with these days), giving you, the listener, sound that only the best of both worlds can offer. [Not true, see Two Things below.)

When you hear how good this record sounds, you may have a hard time believing that it’s a budget reissue from 1970, but that’s precisely what it is.

Even more extraordinary, the right copies are the ones that win shootouts

Side One

Correct from top to bottom, and there are not many records we can say that about. So natural in every way.

The brass is HUGE and POWERFUL on this side. Not many recordings capture the brass this well. Ansermet on London comes to mind of course but many of his performances leave much to be desired. Here Mackerras is on top of his game with performances that are definitive.

The brass is big and clear and weighty, just the way it should be, as that is precisely the sound you hear in the concert hall, especially that part about being clear: live music is more than anything else completely clear. We should all strive for that sound in our reproduction of orchestral music.

The opening track on side one, Wedding Day at Troldhaugen, is one of my favorite pieces of orchestral music. Mackerras and the London Proms make it magical.

Side Two

The richness on this side is awesome. So 3-D, with depth and transparency to rival any recording you may own.

Two Things

When you hear a record of this quality, you can be pretty sure of two things: one, the original is unlikely to sound as good, having been cut on cruder equipment.

UPDATE

Let me stop myself right there. I no longer subscribe to this view. There are many original pressings mastered in the 50s that are as hi-rez and undistorted as anything made after them. Here’s one example. It would be easy to name a great many more. Live and learn I say.

And two, no modern recutting of the tapes (by the likes of Speakers Corner for example, but you can substitute any company you care to choose) could begin to capture this kind of naturalistic orchestral sound. [Mostly still true.]

I have never heard a Heavy Vinyl pressing begin to do what this record is doing. The Decca we have here may be a budget reissue pressing, but it was mastered by real Decca engineers (a few different ones in fact), pressed in England on high quality vinyl, and from fairly fresh tapes (nine years old, not fifty years old!), then mastered about as well as a record can be mastered.

The sound is, above all, real and believable.

The brass has weight, the top extends beautifully for those glorious cymbal crashes, the hall is huge and the staging very three-dimensional — there is little to fault in the sound on either side.

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The Domestic Stampers of 10cc’s Masterpiece Had Us Fooled for Years

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of 10cc Available Now

I haven’t run into many audiophiles who own a copy of The Original Soundtrack, or any other 10cc album for that matter.

It’s the rare person who has the the kind of system that can play a recording with such explosive dynamics.

As I have an uncontrollable habit of saying, this is the kind of record that is guaranteed to bring any audiophile stereo to its knees. 

Since that is the case, and audiophiles who build the kind of big systems in heavily-treated custom rooms to meet the challenge such recordings present are thin on the ground — very thin it seems, as I am the only one I have ever known — it stands to reason that practically no audiophiles have ever experienced the size and power of the recording as it was meant to be heard.

I thought I was doing a very good job reproducing the sound of the album, but recent research has proved that, once again, I was mistaken. Previously I had written:

The recording itself is a tour de force, the main reason I’ve been demonstrating my stereo with it for more than thirty years. The extended suite that opens side one, One Night in Paris, has ambience, three-dimensional sound effects, and incredibly dynamic multi-tracked vocals at the climax that will leave you with your jaw on the floor.

All true. But I had been playing both domestic pressings and British pressings over the course of those thirty years, and I don’t remember clearly preferring one to the other.

With our latest shootout the British pulled away from the pack in a big way, with no British pressing being beaten by any domestic competitor.

The domestic pressings ranged from very good — 2+ on both sides — to passable at best — 1+ on both sides.

I honestly used to think they were close, that they would be hard to tell apart. Those days are gone. We are operating at a whole ‘nother level, and I am glad that we are. We want to give out only the most accurate information and sell only the best sounding records.  What I had thought was true ten years ago turns out to have been off the mark.

When reality turns out to be dramatically different from what you thought it was, and you can prove it — you actually have the physical records to back up your newer, more correct understanding — that’s audio progress.

You might try proving yourself wrong more often.

Most audiophiles I have run into like having their biases confirmed, but look where that has gotten some of them — stuck in a rut. Break out of that way of thinking and you may very well find that you have broken through to another level.

Because if you don’t go out of your way to prove yourself wrong, who will?

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The True Test for Side Two (and How Wrong We Were about Domestic Pressings) of Backless

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Eric Clapton Available Now

During our shootout we discovered that the true test for side two was the second track, the old blues song Early In The Morning.

It’s by far the best sounding track on the album, with huge space, rich bass, a fat snare and Tubey Magic to die for. This is the kind of sound that the likes of Glyn Johns gets down on tape, live in the studio no doubt, and it made it easy to do the shootout for side two.

The bigger, the richer, the tubier, the more transparent the better. It’s THE track to demo with. 

Both sides have rich, smooth, clear sound. Listen for the guitars on the first track on side one; the grungier the better. Punchy bass too.

Turn It Up and Let It Rock

The typical pressing of Backless, much like the typical pressing of Slowhand, is just too thick, dull, compressed and veiled to be much fun.

At the very least you need to turn this album up good and loud to get it to do anything.

The copies that are solid and weighty love getting loud; the copies that are thin and bright only get worse as the level goes up, a sign that they leave a lot to be desired. This is a rock album after all.

We Was Wrong

We used to note the following regarding the country that produced the best sounding pressings:

We had top quality copies on both domestic and British vinyl. Both were cut here in L.A.. It makes sense that either can be good.

This should have been corrected a long time ago, as far back as 2017, perhaps earlier. The domestic copies, thought cut at The Mastering Lab, are not competitive with the British LPs also cut there and then sent to England for pressing.

Live and learn is our motto, and progress in audio is a feature, not a bug, of record collecting at the most advanced levels.

We may have liked the domestic pressings a long time ago, but with changes to the system and many shootouts under our belts, the sonic superiority of the Brits cannot be denied.

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Unlike the First Three Albums, on Security You Can Forget the Brits

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Peter Gabriel Available Now

The basics notes here were written in 2009, about the time we finished our album by album auditions of his early catalog.

On this title, forget the Brits. Every British pressing we played was badly smeared and veiled.

This took us somewhat by surprise because we happen to like the British PG pressings, but remember, So on British vinyl is awful too, so it’s clear (to us anyway) that the later PG records are bad on British vinyl and the early ones are better.

We are limiting our comments here to albums up through So. Anything after that is more or less terra incognita for us simply because we don’t care for the music he was making after 1986.

Plays Live, from 1983, takes the dark, overly-rich, overly-thick and way-too-smooth sonics of Security and lathers it over the material he had previouly recorded up through then. Some of it works well enough I suppose, but in my experience it usually isn’t long before the monotony of this approach grows tiresome.

What We Listened For

The best copies have sonic qualities that are not the least bit difficult to recognize:

  • Presence, putting PG front and center;
  • Dynamics, both micro and macro;
  • Energy, allowing the rhythmic elements to bring out the life in the music;
  • Transparency, so that we hear all the way to the back of the studio (where some of the many musicians that play in the densest parts no doubt had to stand); and
  • Ambience, the air that surrounds all the players and what instruments they played.

And of course we played the album VERY LOUD, as loud as we could. It’s the only way to get the massive druming to sound right.

The Music

This is one of the most important records in the Peter Gabriel canon, groundbreaking and influential on so many levels. The entire album is a wonderful journey; anyone with a pop-prog bend will enjoy the ride. Just turn the volume up good and loud, turn off your mind, relax and float along with PG and the band. You’re in good hands.

I’ve listened to this one more than other PG albums with the only exception being his second release, the one produced by Robert Fripp. That one is still clearly my favorite of the lot. I play it to this day and have never tired of it since I bought it way back in 1978.

Naturally, I would have originally picked up the domestic pressing, which is clearly made from a dub tape, but in 1978 what did I know about master tapes and imported pressings?

I was still a big Mobile Fidelity fan at that time, which is a simple way of saying that it’s clear that I had a very long way to go in this hobby and a great deal left to learn!

Nothing Peter Gabriel released after So did much for me so I resigned myself to the first five albums. Five excellent albums from one artist is plenty in my book.

If you like the albums after So, to each his own and more power to you. It’s my opinion that their appeal is limited, such that doing a shootout for them is not likely to be in the cards.

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Ziggy Stardust – MoFi Reviewed

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of David Bowie Available Now

Sonic Grade: C-

The MoFi pressing is decent, probably better than the average domestic copy I suppose, since those are clearly made from dubbed tapes.

The colorations and limitations of their cutting system would make it far too painful for me to listen to it though, especially the sloppy bass and dynamic compression.

You can do worse but you sure can do a whole lot better, hence the C grade.

MoFi did two of the greatest Bowie albums of all time, Ziggy and Let’s Dance, and neither one of them can hold a candle to the real thing. If you want to settle for a mediocre imitation of either or both of those albums, stick with Mobile Fidelity.

If you want to hear the kind of Demo Disc sound that Bowie’s records are capable of, try a Hot Stamper pressing. It’s guaranteed to blow your mind or your money back.

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Domestic Pressings of Clear Spot? Forget ‘Em!

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Captain Beefheart Available Now

We did this shootout many years ago, so many years ago that I cannot find a record of it.

I remember we thought the German pressings were perhaps a bit boosted on both ends and not as natural sounding as the domestic pressings.

After a multitude of improvements in our cleaning and playback, we would agree with our previous understanding that the German pressings are often wrong, but now we also know how right the right ones can be.

It turns out tha some German pressings are not particularly good, another piece of the puzzle that fell into place during our most recent shootout, as painful as that turned out to be considering the money wasted on them.

Did we have the bad German stamper pressings last time around? Who knows?

The producer, Ted Templeman, (Doobie Brothers, James Taylor) brought his mainstream talents to bear on this music, and when the Captain’s free-form tendencies smashed into Templeman’s conservatism, the result was this musical supernova — out there, but not too far out there.

(Play Trout Mask Replica sometime if you miss that feeling from your old hippie days of being on acid. With that music, drugs are entirely superfluous.)

I don’t know how many audiophiles like Captain Beefheart, probably not too many, but if you’re ever going to try one of his albums, this is the place to start: his masterpiece.

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Before and After Science – Rules Are Made to Be Broken

Hot Stamper Pressings of Art Rock Recordings Available Now

The domestic pressings of Before And After Science are typically grainy, low-rez and hard sounding — they’re simply not competitive with the smoother British Polydors.

But our best Hot Stamper pressing isn’t an import; it was made right here in the good old US of A.

Say what? Yes, it’s true. We were SHOCKED to find such hot stamper sound lurking in the grooves of a domestic Eno LP. It’s the One and Only.

In thirty plus years of record playing I can’t think of any domestic Eno LP that ever sounded this good.

Now hold on just a minute. The British pressings of Eno’s albums are always the best, aren’t they?

For the first three albums, absolutely. But rules were made to be broken. This pressing has the knockout sound we associate with the best British originals of Eno’s albums, not the flat, cardboardy qualities of the typical domestic reissue.

Kinda Blind Testing

Since the person listening and making notes during the shootouts has no idea what the label or the pressing of the record is that he is evaluating — this is after all a quasi-scientific enterprise, with blind testing being the order of the day — when that domestic later label showed up at the top of the heap, our jaws hit the floor.

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I Knew This Guy Was Full of Sh*t, But I Had to Be Sure

Skeptical Thinking Is Critical to Achieving Better Sound

Recently a fellow named Jared tried to correct our assertion that Rod Stewart’s early albums from the US are made from dubbed tapes, as is our contention.

Here is his letter:

Hey there. Just wanted to point out some errors on your listing for Rod Stewart’s “An Old Raincoat…” LP. The UK pressings are the ones made from dupes.

The first generation masters for all of Rod’s Mercury albums are in the US. All vinyl vintage pressings, UK or US, are made from EQ dupes.

The original US Polygram CDs mastered by Dennis Drake are straight off the original masters.
Thanks!

Naturally this information took us by surprise. We replied:

Jared,

Can you refer me to the source of your information?

Thanks,

TP

There was no answer to my query. Nor was I able to find any source for this information.

I hadn’t played a domestic copy of The Rod Stewart album, the title Old Raincoat was released under in the states, in at least twenty years, probably more like thirty. It had sure sounded dubby to me back then. I stopped buying them a long time ago.

Was I remembering the sound right? The odds were very high that I was, but I had to know for sure, even though I had no idea who Jared was or where his information came from.

I asked my main man Fred to get one in and give it a listen. Here is his report:

We played The Rod Stewart Album (domestic Old Raincoat) we got in and it sounds absolutely terrible. Super spitty and bright.

Are they all this bad? Who can say?

Could my UK pressing be made from copy tapes?

I suppose it’s possible. It doesn’t sound dubby to me, but it is not an especially good sounding record, unlike Rod’s third album, which is about as good sounding a rock record as is possible to make. (In the case of Every Picture, it’s the imports that are made from dubs. Go figure.)

Maybe Dennis Drake actually did get hold of the real master tapes when making his CD. He is a very talented engineer; I have many compact discs mastered by him and I don’t know of any that aren’t at least good sounding. For those of you who play CDs, you are free to give his version of An Old Raincost a try. Please let me know what you hear.

What’s that Smell?

But the reason Jared letter is being published is that it reeks of information that has not been verified by anyone’s ears. Certainly not Jared’s.

If, like Jared, you read something that sounds plausible, that you think might be true, why would you be so willing to believe it without any real evidence to back it up?

Even worse, the comments Jared makes weren’t even prefaced with “I’ve read that…” or “People seem to agree that…” No, Jared leaves no room for doubt. The information is presented as true.

Can anyone who has played both versions of Old Raincoat not hear how much better the UK pressing is?

We couldn’t. Nothing could have been more obvious to us than that one version is made from good tapes and one version is made from bad tapes.

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