Hot Stamper Pressing of the Music of The Doobie Brothers Available Now
We actually recommended the Nautilus Half-Speed in the old days, but the last time we played one (2012 maybe?) the sound was Pure Audiophile BS — compressed to death and totally whomp-free.
The average domestic copy is terrible too, but that’s no reason to recommend this crappy remaster.
Stick to the green label originals. They can rock with the best of them.
More of the Music of John Klemmer
Presenting another entry in our extensive Listening in Depth series with advice on what to listen for as you critically evaluate your copy of Straight from the Heart. Here are more albums currently on our site with similar Track by Track breakdowns.
The best copies give you dynamics and immediacy like you have rarely heard outside of the live event.
Hell, this record IS live; it’s live in the studio. It’s a direct to disc recording, what else could it be?
There is simply nothing getting in the way of the music. If you have the system for it, you can recreate the live sound of this session in a way that few other recordings allow you to do.
This copy had one quality not heard on most of the others: Tubey Magic. The sound is rich and full-bodied, practically free of grit and grain – this is the kind of sound one hears occasionally on the best tube equipment and practically nowhere else. Of course this is an all-transistor affair, but tubey sound is what ended up on the record, so go figure.
Many copies were slightly lean, making the sax a bit aggressive in places. The killer copies fill out the horn sound, giving it the needed weight and body that the real instrument would have, without adding a euphonically artificial richness that the real instrument wouldn’t.
What Exactly Are Hot Stamper Pressings?
One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he has been buying lately [emphasis added].
Hey Tom,
I want to express my gratitude to your long-lasting efforts with regard to music.
It has fully changed my whole life as a listener of music.
It’s a great pleasure and I reached a complete different level of enjoyment and listening habits. To hear a Hot Stamper it’s also often a physical and emotional experience (sensation of heat, tears in the eyes, palpitations etc.). Thanks to your great Hot Stampers I might experience with so much pleasure.
Meanwhile I sold out near all my pseudo-audiophile LP’s (i.e. MFSL, Nautilus, DCC, Simply Vinyl etc.) – they are useless.
And last but not least it’s very important to buy these hot LPs now and here, before deafness, tinnitus (my greatest fear) and dementia are going to kill us. All LPs are worth their price, because I can imagine how much effort it takes to do the shootouts. (I did some.) (more…)
Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Sting and The Police Available Now
And to think we used to actually like the sound of the Nautilus pressings! They suffer from all the same shortcomings other Nautilus and similar half-speeds suffer from: the kind of pretty but lifeless and oh-so-boring sound that we describe in listing after listing.
Three of the Best, Or So We Thought
I just did shootouts with three of the best Nautilus Half-Speeds: Heart, The Police’s Ghost in the Machine, and Little Feat. None of them sound like the real thing, and especially disappointing was one of my former favorites, the Little Feat album.
On the title track the Nautilus is amazingly transparent and sweet sounding. There are no real dynamics or bass on that track, so the “pretty” half-speed does what it does best and shines. But all the other tracks suck in exactly the same way Night and Day does. Cutting the balls off Little Feat is not my idea of hi-fidelity.
We put audiophile beaters up for sale every week. Each and every one of them is a lesson on what makes one record sound better than another. If you want a wall full of good sounding records, we can help you make it happen. In fact it will be our pleasure. Down with audiophile junk and up with Better Records.
These kinds of records used to sound good on the systems of their day, and I should know, I had an old school stereo even into the 90s.
Some of the records that sounded good to me back then don’t sound too good to me anymore.
More of the Music of The Doobie Brothers
Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of The Doobie Brothers
Sonic Grade: D
You may remember reading on the site that we used to like the Nautilus Half-Speed of this title. Playing our Nautilus copy against the better domestic pressings made us wonder what the hell we must have been smoking.
The Nautilus was awful — veiled and compressed, with a lightweight bottom end. (The Nautilus of Threshold of a Dream is another one we used to like and boy does that record sound awful these days.)
Maybe we had played a better copy years ago, or maybe we had played some really bad domestics back then, who can say? A lot of water has gone under the bridge since then.
All we can say for now is that our Hot Stampers are going to blow that audiophile piece of junk — and any other pressing of the album that might exist — right out of the water. (Or your money back.)
And the gold CD too of course. I have never in my life heard a CD sound like this record does, and I don’t think anyone else has either. CDs do some things reasonably well, but few of them have the kind of richness, sweetness and Tubey Magic that the best vinyl copies of this album do, cleaned right and played on a proper stereo of course. (more…)
Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Heart Available Now
This review is probably from the mid-2000s. By 2007, only a couple of years later, a lot had changed, enough so that this Nautilus title, as good as it is, would likely not be worth shooting out.
This is a Nautilus Half-Speed Mastered LP with SURPRISINGLY GOOD SOUND on side two.
I think I finally figured out why people like these half-speed mastered records so much. If you get one like this, it’s great!
The mids and highs are transparent, sweet, open, and tonally correct. There’s none of that MOFI 10k top end boost here! Listen critically to the vocals — there’s almost no phony hi-fi-ish quality to the midrange, the kind you hear on so many half-speed mastered records.
Flip the record over to side one and there they are, plain as day: audiophile BS vocals. That makes this a Hot Stamper on side two and a pretty much run-of-the-mill stamper for side one.
Both sides actually have pretty good bass (for a half-speed), so maybe that’s being a bit too harsh. More accurately one could say both sides are better than average, with side two actually being pretty much right on the money. (more…)
Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Fleetwood Mac Available Now
Sonic Grade: D
A hall of shame pressing and another Half-Speed mastered audiophile pressing reviewed and found wanting.
So compressed and thin. For all I know the CD might be better than this barely listenable audiophile pressing. In fact I would be very surprised if it were not.
Is the digital remastering the source of the trouble?
Who the hell knows?
And what difference would it make?
A bad record is a bad record regardless of why it might be bad.
Sonic Grade: F
This Nautilus Half-Speed Mastered LP, like The Cars first album they did, is pure compressed muck. Another one of the worst half-speeds of all time.
If you are buying these modern pressings, take the advice of some of our customers and stop throwing your money away on Heavy Vinyl Pressings and Half-Speed Mastered Records.
People have been known to ask us:
More of the Music of Lee Ritenour
Hot Stamper Pressings of Jazz Fusion Albums in Stock
This review was written in 2010 or so, before we had done much work with the album. Even though the best Elektra pressings are sure to be much better than this half-speed, we haven’t been impressed enough with any of the copies we’ve played to get a shootout going.
This very nice Nautilus Half-Speed Mastered LP has SURPRISINGLY GOOD SOUND.
We played this pressing against the 180g Discovery reissue that Doug Sax remastered and it SMOKED it.
What a piece of muddy trash that Discovery pressing is.
Members of both Toto and Chicago play on this album, so fans of either might get a kick out of this music.
AMG Review
Lee Ritenour has long been the perfect studio musician, one who can melt into the background without making any impact. While he possesses impressive technique, Ritenour has mostly played instrumental pop throughout his career, sometimes with a Brazilian flavor. His few jazz efforts have found him essentially imitating Wes Montgomery, but despite that he has been consistently popular since the mid-’70s. After touring with Sergio Mendes’ Brasil ’77 in 1973, Ritenour became a very busy studio guitarist in Los Angeles, taking time off for occasional tours with his groups and in the mid-’90s with Bob James in Fourplay. He also recorded many albums as a leader.