Labels With Shortcomings – DCC/S&P/Audio Fidelity

DCC + RTI = Audio Enervation

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Bonnie Raitt Available Now

This commentary was the first one I wrote criticizing the sound of DCC vinyl, probably around 2008 or so. There would be many to follow.

A well-known Joni Mitchell album we played the year before didn’t exactly set us on a different path, but it did have the effect of kicking us up into a higher gear, and Bonnie’s album was one of the early fruits of that change.

During our shootout for Bonnie’s first Capitol album, we found that the DCC pressing was lacking in so many ways that I felt compelled to spell out for our customers what its shortcomings were.

I had enthusiastically recommended the album in 1996 when it came out, but our first big shootout had shown me how wrong that judgment would turn out to be. Our complete commentary from 2008 is reproduced below.

The no-longer-surprising thing about our Hot Stamper pressings of Nick Of Time is how completely they MURDER the DCC LP. Folks, it’s really no contest.

Yes, the DCC is tonally balanced and can sound very good, but it can’t compete with the best original pressings. It’s missing too much of the presence, intimacy, immediacy and transparency that we’ve discovered on the better original pressings. 

As is the case with practically every record pressed on Heavy Vinyl over the last twenty years, there is a suffocating loss of ambience throughout, a pronounced sterility to the sound.

Modern remastered records just do not BREATHE like the real thing.

Good EQ or Bad EQ, they all suffer to one degree or another from a bad case of audio enervation. Where is the life of the music? You can try turning up the volume on these remastered LPs all you want; they simply refuse to come to life.

We play albums like this VERY LOUD. I’ve seen Bonnie Raitt live a number of times and although I can’t begin to get her to play as loud in my listening room as she did on stage, I can try. To do less is to do her a disservice.

The DCC Approach

The DCC, like a lot of modern remastered titles we”ve played, is too damn smooth.

It’s an understandable approach for DCC to take, since this recording is more hyped-up than any of Bonnie’s earlier work. But this album actually has loads of personality and nuance. Just because an album sounds polished and maybe a bit too “clean,” it’s foolish to think that it lacks intensity or passion.

You listen to a track like “Thing Called Love” on the DCC, and it sounds good — the tambourine sounds like a tambourine, the bass guitar sounds like a bass guitar. The problem is you don’t hear the jingles of the tambourine hitting each other and the bass doesn’t smack you in the chest.

When these elements are veiled, the life and, for lack of a better term, the point of the music go with them.

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West Side Story – How Does the DCC Pressing Stack Up?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Oscar Peterson Available Now

I’ve known this was a well recorded album since I first heard the excellent DCC Gold CD back in the 90s.

If you happen to own the DCC vinyl, buy the CD and find out for yourself if it doesn’t have better sound.

The vinyl will most likely be thick, opaque, airless and tonally too smooth.

That is the sound their records tended to have back in those days, and at the time I bought into that mastering approach.

Over the course of the next decade I learned how foolish I had been to fall for that kind of euphonic EQ.

The better the system, the more second-rate Hoffman’s remastered vinyl releases will sound when they aren’t just terrible.

And Kevin Gray, his partner in crime, has been making a mockery of the audiophile LP for decades now.

Testing with Oscar

We write quite a bit about how good pianos are for testing your system, room, tweaks, electricity and all the rest, not to mention turntable setup and adjustment.

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The Law of Large Numbers Can Help You Find Better Records

More Commentaries for Heavy Vinyl LPs

Presenting another entry in our series of big picture observations concerning records and audio.

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently:

Hey Tom,   

I’m going out of my frigging mind on this White Hot stamper of Roy Orbison Greatest Hits. What a piece of sh*t is my DCC test pressing.

Naz

Naz,

I actually used to like the DCC vinyl. I suspect you did too back in the day.

Then my stereo got a lot better, which I write about under the heading progress in audio.

Eventually it became obvious to me what was wrong with practically all of the Heavy Vinyl pressings that were put out by that label.

The good ones can be found in this group, along with other Heavy Vinyl pressings we liked or used to like.

The bad ones can be found in this group.

And those in the middle end up in this group.

Audio and record collecting (they go hand in hand) are hard. If you think either one is easy you are most likely not doing it right,, but what makes our twin hobbies compelling enough to keep us involved over the course of a lifetime is one simple fact, which is this: Although we know so little at the start, and we have so much to learn, the journey itself into the world of music and sound turns out to be not only addictive, but a great deal of fun.

Every listing in this section is about knowing now what I didn’t know then, and there is enough of that material to fill its own blog if I would simply take the time to write it all down.

Every album shootout we do is a chance to learn something new about records. When you do them all day, every day, you learn things that no one else could possibly know who hasn’t done the work of comparing thousands of pressings with thousands of other pressings.

The Law of large numbers[1] tells us that in the world of records, more is better. We’ve taken that law and turned it into a business.

It’s the only way to find Better Records.

Not the records that you think are better.

No, truly better records are the records that we proved to be better empirically, by employing rigorous scientific methodologies that we have laid out in detail for anyone to read and follow.

Being willing to make lots of mistakes is part of our secret, and we admit to making a lot of them

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Letter of the Week – “Big, warm, mushy and limp”

Hot Stamper Pressing of the Music of Joni Mitchell Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about some records he played recently:

Hey Tom, 

I just had to drop you a brief note, to say THANK YOU, for your writings regarding DCC pressings many years back.

I was just going back through them on your site, after I unearthed my DCC pressings this afternoon and gave a couple of them (i.e., Elton’s Madman; Joni’s Court and Spark) a spin – as I recall y’all being the first to speak truth in the face of overwhelming adoration regarding these (when they first were released).

OMG. They are COMPLETELY lifeless, with ZERO energy!

Big, warm, mushy and limp, yes.

Probably sound comforting (at some level) on a low-budget lean solid state system. [High-budget ones too I would venture to guess.]

But on a system with any level of transparency and truth-to-pressing, YIKES. It just made me sad.

THEN, I went online, and checked the current PRICES for these pressings (of which I own several sealed), and I got SUPER HAPPY! People are paying some serious coin for these turkeys – so I can be well rid of them, and take that cash and buy some more of YOUR awesome pressings! Win-win! 👍😊

Warmest regards,

Steve

Steve,

I should say right off the bat that I think the DCC of Court and Spark is not a bad sounding record, at least the copy I had wasn’t bad sounding last time I played it. Your mileage apparently varied.

Madman I hope to write about before too long. I found my DCC copy to be lean in the lower midrange, and missing much of the Tubey Magic that makes that recording so special (along with many others by Elton from that era).

A few more thoughts:

The sound I think you are hearing that you refer to as lifeless and lacking in energy is really the result of Kevin Gray’s lousy cutting chain. The sound you hear on your DCC albums is precisely the sound I had heard on this DCC album many years ago. Played back-to-back with the properly-mastered, properly-pressed originals, the DCC was shockingly lacking in many of the most important qualities a record should have. Eventually Paul and Judy that showed me what a fool I had been.

Low resolution cutters like the ones used to cut the DCC discs sound dead and boring, even when the mastering choices are good ones and no obvious compression is being used.

Kevin Gray famously does not have a way to put compressors into his chain, as my friend Robert Pincus at Cisco found out when he cut 52nd Street and could not get some aspects of it to sound right, unable as he was to add compression in the mastering the way Sterling had.

That’s what it needed and that’s what it didn’t get. Kevin don’t play dat.

I have been beating this long-dead horse for about fifteen twenty years now. Any time I actually do play one of the DCC records these days, it usually sounds worse than I remember it.

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Add Made in Japan to the List of Ridiculously Bad DCC Titles

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Deep Purple Available Now

What a murky mess. The sound is dead as a doornail.

It’s yet another audiophile record hall of shame pressing, a Heavy Vinyl disaster if there ever was one.

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 kind of trash. Take our advice and don’t do it.

If you like the sound of old McIntosh tube equipment such as the Mac 30s shown here, a sound Steve Hoffman apparently cannot get enough of, DCC is the label for you.

We don’t sell junk like this, but every other audiophile record dealer does, because most of the current group of mastering engineers making records for audiophiles have somehow gotten into their heads that this is the way records should sound.

We’ve been telling them they are wrong about that for years now, that good records have never sounded this way, but the collectors and audiophiles of the world keep buying their wares, so why should they listen to us?

What a Fool Believes

I used to like some of the DCC vinyl titles just fine too. Didn’t play them very often, but I liked what I heard when I did.

Then my stereo got a lot better. Eventually it became obvious to me what was wrong with practically all of the Heavy Vinyl pressings put out by that label. (That story from 1998 gets told in some detail here.)

Heavy Vinyl

The good Heavy Vinyls can be found in this group, along with other Heavy Vinyl pressings we liked or used to like.

The bad Heavy Vinyls can be found in this group. And those in the middle end up in this group.

Audio and record collecting (they go hand in hand) are hard. If you think either one is easy you are very likely not doing it right, but what makes our twin hobbies compelling enough to keep us involved over the course of a lifetime is one simple fact, which is this: Although we know so little at the start, and we have so much to learn, the journey itself into the world of music and sound turns out to be both addictive and a great deal of fun.

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City To City on Gold CD

More of the Music of Gerry Rafferty

The DCC gold CD sounds very respectable; Hoffman did his usual excellent job.

But it’s still a CD, and no CD has the kind of warmth, sweetness and Tubey Magic that can be found on a properly-mastered and -pressed LP.

As we’ve noted in our listings, “Here you will find the kind of rich, sweet, classically British Tubey Magical sound that we cannot get enough of here at Better Records.”

A list of Must Own rock and pop albums from 1977 would have to have this album on it, somethere near the top I would think.

In our opinion, City to City is Rafferty’s best sounding album, and probably the only Rafferty solo release you’ll ever need.

Click on this link to see more titles we like to call one and done.

Night Owl (1979), Snakes and Ladders (1980) and Can I Have My Money Back (1971) strike us as weak albums, strictly for hardcore fans.

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Saxophone Colossus – Why Not Try the DCC CD or LP?

The Music of Sonny Rollins Available Now

Our last White Hot gold label mono pressing went for big bucks, 900 of them in fact.

Of course, a clean original goes for many times that, which is one reason you have never seen such a record on our site.

How much would we have to charge for a Hot Stamper pressing of an album we paid many thousands of dollars for?

Far more than our customers would be willing to pay us, that’s for sure.

You Say You Don’t Have Nine Hundred Bucks for This Album?

Try the DCC pressing from 1995.

The DCC Heavy Vinyl pressing is probably a decent enough record. I haven’t played it in many years, but I remember liking it back in the day.

It’s dramatically better than the 80s OJC, which, like many OJC pressings from that era, is thin, hard, tizzy up top and devoid of Tubey Magic.

(We have many reviews of OJC pressings for those who are interested. We created two sections for the label: one for the (potentially, it’s what Hot Stampers are all about) good sounding OJC pressings and one for the bad sounding ones.)

I would be surprised if the DCC Gold CD isn’t even better than their vinyl pressing.

They usually are.

Steve Hoffmann brilliantly mastered many classic albums for DCC. I much prefer DCC’s CDs to their records.

Their records did not have to fight their way through Kevin Gray’s opaque, airless, low-rez, modern-sounding (in the worst way) transistor cutting system, a subject we discuss in some depth here.

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Storyteller on SACD

More of the Music of Donovan

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Donovan

The review you see here was written in 2003.

This is an Audio Fidelity Dual Layer Hybrid SACD (playable on any CD player) with superb sound.

One of the best sounding CDs I’ve ever heard! I can’t play the SACD layer anymore — my SACD player broke and I decided the medium was not for me. I’m a record guy and don’t want to invest the time and money to find a player that gets the SACD layer right. My CD player tells me that this is some of the best digital around and that’s good enough for me.

This disc is so rich and sweet you would swear it was an LP. Hoffman did an AMAZINGLY good job with this title. Same with The Searchers. Both come highly recommended.

The chances of the Heavy Vinyl sounding as good as the CD on this title are nil, or very close to it.

I mention on this blog that many Heavy Vinyl releases of this kind had to fight their way through Kevin Gray’s transistory, opaque, airless, low-resolution cutting system. We discuss that subject on the blog in more depth here.

“Donovan first emerged as part of the ruling class of 1960s singer-songwriters. More than just roots into something truly unique and has endured the test of time. It encompasses a full blend of social commentary, introspective trippiness and, yes… cosmic sounds. This collection showcases the talents of the artist and his art. Combining Donovan’s Pye/Hickory recordings and his Epic label releases, this musical collection is a journey into the world of a musical poet….the world of a storyteller….the world of Donovan.” — Audio Fidelity

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Try the DCC of Harry, It’s Excellent

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Harry Nilsson Available Now

Until recently we had not done a shootout for this album in many years, and the good copies we are offering on the site are far from cheap.

You may not want to pay our prices.

However, the music is so good we think everyone deserves a chance to hear it, so pick up the Hoffman-mastered CD and enjoy the hell out of it in the meantime.

Hoffmann did a great job, as he did on so many of the DCC discs. (The Heavy Vinyl LPs are another matter entirely of course.)

The CD sound is excellent and it will probably cost you a very small fraction of what we would charge for the vinyl.

Harry is a forgotten gem that sank like a stone in 1969, but time has treated the album well, and it still holds up.

The production is superb throughout. Judging by this early Nilsson’s album, it appears he was already a pro in the studio, as well as an accomplished songwriter, and, more importantly, the owner of one of the sweetest tenors in popular music, then or now.

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Cannonball Adderley with Bill Evans – How Does the 80s OJC Sound?

More of the Music of Cannonball Adderley

This is a very old commentary about a favorite record of ours here at Better Records, one I have been selling since the late 80s, first as a sealed, in-print title for ten bucks or thereabouts, and later as a Hot Stamper pressing.

After hearing nothing that could compete with the right OJC pressing for more than a decade, we recently discovered an even better sounding pressing of the same music.

Live and learn, we say. It’s what makes record collecting fun. The future is not yet written.

George Horn was doing brilliant work for Fantasy all through the ’80s. This album is proof that his sound is the right sound for this music.

The DCC Gold CD of the album is also excellent. As with many of the better DCC CDs, it’s proof that Steve Hoffman’s sound is also the right sound for this music. I recommended that Steve consider doing the title on Gold CD — you can see my credit below — and I am glad he found it to his liking. In general, I much prefer the sound of the DCC Gold CDs to the sound of the records they released.

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