Records by Label 2

Roxy Music – Viva! Roxy Music

More of the Music of Roxy Music

  • Both sides of this original UK Island pressing (the first copy to ever hit the site) were doing everything right, earning INSANELY GOOD Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades from top to bottom – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • This is an album I have been playing regularly lately and it has really grown on me over the last couple of years – a truly fine album that rewards repeated plays, as should any classic release from this incredible band
  • A tough shootout, as no other copy earned a 3+ grade on either side, which simply means that when you find a top copy, it sets such a high standard that everything else ends up falling short of the standard and must be marked down accordingly
  • Guaranteed to be a huge improvement over anything you’ve heard, this Brit is big, punchy, and full-bodied – Bryan Ferry’s leads really soar
  • A killer pressing with energy and presence that positively JUMPS out of the speakers, two of the qualities that we prize most highly in our Hot Stampers, and two of things among many that Heavy Vinyl does so poorly
  • “…Viva! is a tough, powerful document of Roxy at the peak of their live powers, featuring a fine cross-section of their best work.”

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Aretha Franklin – Spirit In The Dark


  • You’ll find outstanding Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER throughout this vintage Atlantic pressing
  • It’s lively, open, present and natural; the soundfield is big and spacious and the bottom end is killer; Aretha fans, you won’t want to miss out on this one
  • We’ve done a ton of Aretha shootouts over the years and I’d put this one right up there with any of her titles for top quality sound
  • Our last shootout was 2020 — we simply cannot find copies of albums like these with audiophile quality surfaces, and the future does not appear to be any brighter in that respect than the present
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Spirit in the Dark was one of Aretha Franklin’s more overlooked albums from her Atlantic prime, despite the inclusion of a couple hit singles (the title track and “Don’t Play That Song”)… it’s an exuberant and remarkably consistent effort.”

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Genesis – Invisible Touch

More Rock and Pop

  • You’ll find outstanding Double Plus (A++) grades or close to them throughout this vintage UK pressing
  • We shot out a number of other imports and this one had the midrange presence, bass, and dynamics that were missing from most other copies we played (particularly on side two)
  • The sound is lively, punchy, and powerful (also particularly on side two) – with all due respect, it should murder whatever copies you may have
  • “Invisible Touch is, without a doubt, Genesis’ poppiest album, a sleek, streamlined affair…”

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Red Garland Trio – Groovy

More Jazz Recordings Featuring the Piano

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  • Boasting solid Double Plus (A++) grades or close to them, this vintage Prestige recording pressed on fairly quiet OJC vinyl was giving us the sound we were looking for on Red’s Jazz Masterpiece
  • The MONO sound is clear, spacious, relaxed, and full-bodied, with Tubey Magical richness and analog smoothness that only the better vintage pressings can offer (particularly on side one)
  • Another top jazz recording from Rudy Van Gelder – big, bold and lively (also particularly on side one), just the right sound for this music
  • 4 1/2 stars: “With bassist Paul Chambers and drummer Art Taylor, Garland has all the support he needs to wing it in a variety of directions. Recorded in that most legendary year of jazz, 1957, Garland is coming into his own in a more confident way, buoyed by his association at the time with Miles Davis.”

What makes this vintage piano trio album in mono so special? Allow me to quote a review from a few years back for a pair of recordings that Red Garland made with Miles Davis back in the mid-50s: Workin’ And Steamin’.

To the Jazz Fans of the World, we here present one of the best sounding jazz recordings we have ever had the privilege to place on a turntable. I cannot ever recall hearing a better sounding Rudy Van Gelder recording, and I have a theory as to why this tape is as good as it is: it’s MONO. It also sounds like it’s recorded completely live in the studio, direct to one track you might say. As good a recording as Kind of Blue is, I think the best parts of this album are more immediate and more real than anything on KOB.

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Who Can’t Hear Differences in Sound from Side to Side on Most Records?

rimskscheh_2446Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Rimsky-Korsakov Available Now

Both the Chesky [1] and Classic reissue pressings of LSC 2446 are just plain terrible. Embarrassingly, the latter is found on the TAS List.

There is a newly [2013, time flies!] remastered 33 RPM pressing of the album garnering rave reviews in the audiophile press. We didn’t like that one either.

It fails the violin test that we wrote about here.

Please note that in many of the reviews for the new pressing, the original vinyl used for comparison is a Shaded Dog pressing. In our experience almost no Shaded Dog pressings are competitive with the later White Dog pressings, and many of them are just plain awful, as we have noted previously on the site.

UPDATE 2024

Now that we know which stampers have the potential to sound the best in our shootouts, the Shaded Dog originals have lately been winning top honors, although the White Dog pressings can still sound quite good, just not as good.

The “original is better” premise of most reviewers renders the work they do practically worthless, at least to those of us who take the time to play a wide variety of pressings and judge them on the merits of their sound, not the design of their labels.

[A fairly embarrassing example of live and learn.]

rimskscheh_cheskyMissing the Obvious

The RCA White Dog with the best side two in our shootout had a very unmusical side one. Since reviewers virtually never discuss the sonic differences between the two (or more) sides of the albums they audition, how critically can they be listening? Under the circumstances how can we take anything they have to say about the sound of the record seriously?

The sound is obviously different from side to side on most of the records we play, often dramatically so (as in the case of Scheherazade), yet audiophile reviewers practically never seem to notice these obvious, common, unmistakable differences in sound, the kind that we discuss in every listing on the site. If they can’t hear the clear differences in sound from side to side, doesn’t that call into question their abilities at the most basic level?

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The Vintage Vinyl Sound You Won’t Find on Modern LPs and CDs

Classical Living Stereo Titles Available Now

Here is the kind of record that will make you want to take all your heavy vinyl classical pressings and put them in storage. 

It’s also proof positive that Decca’s choice of Kingsway Hall as a recording venue was a good one. The full range of colors of the orchestra are here presented with remarkable clarity, dynamic contrast, spaciousness, sweetness, and timbral accuracy.

If you want to demonstrate to a novice listener why modern recordings are so consistently unsatisfactory, all you have to do is play this record for them. In our experience, no CD and no Heavy Vinyl pressing ever sounded like this.

The richness of the strings, a signature sound for Decca in the Fifties and Sixties, is on display here for fans of the classical Golden Age. It’s practically impossible to hear that kind of string sound on any recording made in the last thirty years (and this of course includes practically everything pressed on Heavy Vinyl).

It may be a lost art, but as long as we have these wonderful vintage pressings to play, it’s an art that is not lost on us. I don’t think the Decca engineers could have recorded this music much better than they dhave here — it has all the orchestral magic one could ask for, as well as the clarity and presence that are missing from so many other vintage Golden Age records.

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Let’s Dance – MoFi Reviewed

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of David Bowie Available Now

I admit I used to like the MoFi pressing. It’s decent, probably better than the average domestic copy I suppose, but c’mon, this album is about punchy bass and drums. Since when does any Half-Speed mastered LP have punchy bass and drums?

Blurry blobby bloated bass and sloppy blurry cardboard drums is more like it. Compressed and lifeless too.

MoFi did two of the greatest Bowie albums of all time, Ziggy and Let’s Dance, and neither one 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.

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Ellington-Basie / First Time – The Count Meets the Duke

More of the Music of Duke Ellington

More of the Music of Count Basie

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  • This original 6-Eye Stereo pressing was doing most everything right, with both sides earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER
  • Huge amounts of three-dimensional space and ambience, along with boatloads of Tubey Magic – here’s a 30th Street recording from 1961 that demonstrates just how good Columbia’s engineers were back then
  • If all you’ve heard are the Classic Records reissues of Ellington, you are in for a treat, because there is a world of difference lying between the real things and the Classic wannabes
  • It’s yet another Tubey Magical Demo Disc from the golden age of vacuum tube recording
  • 4 1/2 stars: “… a very successful and surprisingly uncrowded encounter… Ellington and Basie both play piano (their interaction with each other is wonderful) and the arrangements allowed the stars from both bands to take turns soloing.”
  • It’s hard to imagine that any list of the best jazz albums of 1961 would not have The Count Meets the Duke on it. The sound is out of this world on the best copies.

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Elvis Presley / From Elvis in Memphis

More of the Music of Elvis Presley

  • Solid Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER brings Presley’s 1969 release to life on this vintage RCA pressing – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Both sides here are remarkably – big, full-bodied and Tubey Magical yet exceptionally clear, spacious and open
  • We guarantee there is dramatically more richness, fullness, vocal presence, and performance energy on this copy than others you’ve heard, and that’s especially true if you own whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing is currently on the market, made from who-knows-what tapes
  • 5 stars: “…one of the greatest white soul albums (and one of the greatest soul albums) ever cut, with brief but considerable forays into country, pop, and blues as well. Presley sounds rejuvenated artistically throughout the dozen cuts off the original album, and he’s supported by the best playing and backup singing of his entire recording history.”

Of the handful of Elvis albums to ever make it to the site, this is clearly the critics’ favorite, and one listen will tell you why. This is the album that single-handedly revived Elvis’ fortunes, setting the stage for his record-breaking series of shows in Las Vegas doing pretty much the type of music he had recorded for it.

The next year he would go on tour for the first time since 1957 (!)

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On Tarkio, Do All the Robert Ludwig Mastered Copies Have Hot Stampers?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Hippie Folk Rock Albums Available Now

UPDATE 2023

This commentary describes some observations we made after doing a shootout for Tarkio a few years back.

It’s one of those very special recordings that deserves credit for helping us dramatically improve the quality of our playback.

I learned a lot about unhyped, unprocessed, Tubey Magical sound from Tarkio and treasure the music it contains to this day.

Even though all the original Pink Label pressings are mastered by the great Robert Ludwig, they have a marked tendency to be dull, thick and opaque.

On too many of the original pressings we’ve played, even after a good cleaning the top end and upper midrange are a bit rolled off, causing the sound to be smoother than it should be. And of course the way we discover that fact is simplicity itself: the best pressings do not suffer from rolled-off sound.

Analog that is “super-smooth” is the kind of sound that is simply the reverse of the brighter, edgier quality that many CDs suffer from. But both of them are wrong. As Goldilocks will tell you, ideally there will always be a pressing with the correct tonality, neither smooth nor bright, and the way we know that is by playing a bunch of copies and finding the ones in the pile with that tonally correct sound.

We can’t predict which ones will have it, but we sure can hear which ones do.

But finding it without a pile of copies is very hard, almost impossible. How “tonally correct” is any given copy compared to “perfectly tonally correct?” You need plenty of copies to know that, as well as a tonally neutral system capable of playing them properly.

If you like your audiophile pressings to sound super smooth, smooth as mud, there is a guy that offers exactly what you are looking for. His name is Pete Hutchison. He has built a lucrative business for himself making all his records sound like they are being played back through 50s tube electronics.

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