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.
Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now
Considering how bad (or at best mediocre) the average copy of the first Zep album sounds, let’s give credit where credit is due and say that Bernie’s remastered version on Heavy Vinyl is darn good (assuming you get a good one, something of course that neither I nor you should assume).
It’s without a doubt the best of all the Classic Zeppelin titles, most of which we found hurt our delicate ears.
Our Thinking Circa 2010
[The last time we played a copy.)
We like the Classic, albeit with reservations. It’s without a doubt the best of all the Classic Heavy Vinyl reissues of the Zeppelin catalog, most of which are not very good and some of which are just awful.
Why is this one good? It’s tonally correct for one thing, and the importance of that cannot be stressed too strongly.
Two, it actually ROCKS, something a majority of pressings we’ve played over the years don’t.
Three, it’s shockingly dynamic. It may actually be more dynamic than any other pressing we have ever played.
UPDATE 2023
It might have been back in the day, but it’s highly unlikely we would agree with that assessment in 2023. Much like this record, we had a lot of R&D ahead of us before we could know just how dynamic this recording could be.
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.
Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Who Available Now
Back when we were carrying a select group of Heavy Vinyl pressings in 2005, Who’s Next on Classic Records was one of the ones we recommended.
We felt the Classic Records pressings of this album and the others mentioned below were a good value for those who had thirty bucks to spend on a record.
By 2007 we had already changed our minds about Who’s Next on Classic — and a whole lot more.
More of the Music of Frank Sinatra
Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Frank Sinatra
Sonic Grade: D
An audiophile hall of shame pressing and another Classic Records popular music LP badly remastered for the benefit of audiophiles looking for easy answers and quick fixes.
There is a boatload of TUBEY MAGIC to be heard on the early pressings, no doubt due to the fact that they are mastered with tube equipment, but you would never know it by playing this barely passable Classic repressing.
The difference is night and day.
It’s been quite a while since I played the Classic pressing, but I remember it as nothing special. Like a lot of the records put out by this label, it’s tonally fine but low-rez and lacking space, warmth and above all, Tubey Magic.
I don’t think I’ve ever played an original that didn’t sound better, and that means that the best grade to give Classic’s pressing is probably a D, for below average. It sounds far too much like a CD.
Who can be bothered to play a record that has so few of the qualities we audiophiles are 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?
Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now
A classic case of live and learn.
Back in the day I thought the Classic 180 and then 200 gram pressing was the king on Zep IV. In late 2006 I wrote:
“You can hear how much cleaner and more correct the mastering is right away…”
Folks, I must have been out of my mind.
No, that’s not quite fair. I wasn’t out of my mind. I just hadn’t gotten my system to the place where it needed to be to allow the right original pressings to show me how much better the best of them can sound.
Our EAR 324 phono stage and constantly evolving tweaks to both the system and room are entirely responsible for our ability to reproduce this album correctly. If your equipment, cleaning regimen, room treatments and the like are mostly “old school,” getting the album to sound right will be very, very difficult.
Without the myriad audio advances of the last couple of decades you are pushing your luck with an album such as this. It’s what progress in audio in all about.
How Does It Sound Now?
More of the Music of Led Zeppelin
More Led Zeppelin on Classic Records Reviewed
Sonic Grade: D
This was one of only three Classic Records 180 gram (later 200 gram) titles that I used to recommend back in the day.
Now when I play the heavy vinyl pressing, I find the subtleties of both the music and the sound that I expect to hear have simply gone missing.
It may be tonally correct, which for a Led Zeppelin pressing on the Classic Records label is unusual in our experience (II and Houses being ridiculously bright), but it, like Physical Graffiti and some others, badly lacks resolution compared to the real thing, the real thing being a run-of-the-mill early pressing.
Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Billie Holiday Available Now
It’s been quite a while since I played the Classic Records pressing that came out in 1998, but I remember it as nothing special, tonally correct but with somewhat low-rez (not breathy) vocals and lacking in both space and warmth.
Records made for audiophiles are rarely any good, so rarely in fact that we are positively shocked when such records are even halfway decent. After playing so many bad audiophile records for so many years it’s practically a truism here at Better Records.
A recording like this is the perfect example of why we pay no attention whatsoever to the bona fides of the disc, but instead make our judgments strictly on the merits of the record spinning on the table. The listener normally does not even know the label of the pressing he is reviewing. It could be a Six Eye original, the 360 reissue, or even a (gasp!) ’70s-era LP.
We don’t care what the label is.
What does that have to do with anything? We’re looking for the best sound. We don’t play labels, we play unique pressings of the album. We assume that every pressing sounds different from every other pressing. Our job is to figure out what each of them is doing, right or wrong.
We mix up all our copies and play them one after another until we come across the best sounding one.
This approach has opened up a world of sound that most audiophiles — at least the ones who buy into the hype associated with the typical audiophile pressing — will never be able to experience.
Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Peter Gabriel Available Now
I wrote this commentary many years ago after a review I spotted online prompted me to crack open one of the Classic Records 200 gram Peter Gabriel titles and play it.
Let’s just say the results were less than pleasing to the ear.
Bernie Grundman had worked his “magic” again. As usual I was at a loss to understand how anyone could find his mastering in any way an improvement over the plain old pressings, even the domestic ones.
[UPDATE 2022: This is a foolish statement on my part, since the domestic pressings are by far the best sounding versions of the album. Live and learn, right?]
The Original Commentary
I had a discussion with a reviewer for an audiophile web magazine concerning his rave review for the Peter Gabriel records that Classic pressed.
I have just now played one, and it’s not as bad as I thought it would be. But of course it’s not very good either.
Not surprisingly, reviewers have a tendency not to notice these things. I’m not exactly sure how these people are qualified to review records when the most obvious tonal balance problems seem to go unnoticed.
The Classic is brighter and less rich.
Like a lot of the records that Bernie Grundman has cut in the modern era, the tonality is off. It is simply too lean.
This is not the right sound for this album.
That’s Bernie for you. After all these years, no amount of mischief he did for Classic — or any other label — surprises me.
Sonic Grade: B?
Probably a fairly good jazz vocal album from Classic Records.
Back in the day we noted that: “This is one of the best Billie Holiday records around” and we stand by that statement, at least until another copy of the Classic comes our way and we have a chance to play it.
By the way, we have never had a Hot Stamper pressing of the album on the site. We simply cannot find enough clean copies with which to do a shootout!
Not sure we’ve ever found one that played quietly and sounded good.
For thirty bucks the price of this Heavy Vinyl pressing has to be seen as a bargain.
But…
Who the hell thought that the label below was better looking than the ones Verve used?
Classic Records was run by some of the most clueless audiophiles there ever were, and this label is a good example of a pitifully poor choice they made in the design of the labelling. (The Shaded Dog “shading” was all wrong but hey, it didn’t seem to bother too many people.)
A self-inflicted wound, and for no reason. Nobody could figure out how to make an authentic looking vintage Verve stereo label? I’m pretty sure it’s been done.
What was the point of this one? It’s ugly and modern. Who wants to collect classic albums with ugly modern labels?
The shiny jackets are bad enough. Now they have to ruin the labels too?