Mastering Info

Helpful title-specific information on mastering houses and engineers to help you find better pressings and avoid the worst ones.

What to Listen For on Carly Simon’s Debut

Hot Stamper Pressings of Singer-Songwriters Available Now

Too many copies we played erred on the hi-fi-ish side, with not enough warmth.  The copies that sound clean and clear just didn’t do much for us. They weren’t able to convey the intimacy and emotion of the music.

I’m sure you’ve had a similar experience playing CDs of some of your old favorites. You keep wondering why you liked the music in the first place.

Don’t blame the music. Blame those crappy CDs, or badly mastered records.

By the way, stick with Robert Ludwig-mastered pressings. Nothing else will be much good.

(more…)

And Here I Thought the Porky/Pecko Pressings Would All Sound Awesome

Hot Stamper Pressings of British Folk Rock Albums Available Now

This is a highly unusual post for us here at Better Records, the first of its kind. We just did a shootout for Solomon’s Seal last week and here we are practically the very next day giving out the Shootout Winning stampers on the blog, and for free no less.

As you might have expected, we have a self-serving reason for revealing this information, and it should become obvious to you what that reason is by simply checking out the stamper sheet from the shootout shown below.

We often get requests from our readers to give out the “right” stampers, the “best” stampers, the stampers they should “look for.”

Well, readers, here you go. Have at ’em. Everything you need to know is right there on the sheet: the stampers, the grades, the engineer’s marks, even the grades for the not-recommended domestic pressings.

All the UK stampers are A4/B4 with PORKY/PECKO in the dead wax. (The early domestic pressings are decent, but they cannot begin to compete with the Brits for sound quality. You can safely avoid them unless you are on a strict budget and do not own very high quality equipment, or don’t care much for The Pentangle.)

As you can see from the grades, the best copy was killer, but a copy with the same stampers had sound that would not even qualify as a minimally Hot Stamper pressing. That’s quite a range, but it’s a range that we come across more often than many audiophiles might think would be the case.

If you have only one copy of the original British LP, where do you think yours would rank in terms of sound quality? Is it 3+, or 1+, or perhaps something in between?

(Chances are good it is something in between. Where in between, who can possibly say? That’s a question only a shootout can answer.)

And make special note of the fact the only one copy had even one Triple Plus Shootout Winning side. What would have happened if that one copy had not been part of the shootout?

Oh, this whole shootout business seems to be getting much too complicated much too quickly. Let’s just do what audiophiles have been doing for decades and ignore all these complications. Let’s pretend that the original Reprise British pressings with PORKY/PECKO stampers sound great and leave it at that. Anything else is just too much trouble, don’t you think?

It turns out that knowing the best stampers for Solomon’s Seal is no help at all. The best stampers and the worst stampers are the same stampers!

(more…)

And Here I Thought The Mastering Lab Made Nothing But Good Sounding Records

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Ambrosia Available Now

We just did a shootout for Ambrosia’s One Eighty album, describing our Shootout Winning copy this way:

Analog at its Tubey Magical finest. You’ll never play a CD (or other digitally sourced material) that sounds as good as this record no matter how long you live.  This is smooth, rich analog at its best, easy on the ears as we like to say.

But none of what we said about our best Hot Stamper pressings would apply to the copies with the stampers you see below.

One of the copies we played with JW1 stampers was good, not great, earning a barely-hot 1.5+ grade. 1.5+ is four grades down from the best. That’s a steep dropoff as far as we’re concerned. 1.5+ only hints at how good a recording One Eighty can be on the best pressings.

The other pressing with those stampers did not qualify as a Hot Stamper at all. We would say it had passable sound, better than average but not really good enough for the serious audiophiles we cater to.

Had it not been cleaned to make it quieter and improve its sound quality, it most likely would not have earned that single plus at all. In that respect it would have much in common with the kinds of LPs filling up the shelves of record collectors everywhere. Who needs another mediocre sounding record sitting on the shelf? And yet there they are.*

Our two best sounding copies were cut at The Mastering Lab and had exactly the same stampers. Like a lot of Warner Bros. records, JW (Jacksonville) pressings rarely sound as good as those pressed elsewhere. (You record experts out there will know what the other plants are.)

(more…)

Shootout Winning Stampers for the Scythian Suite Revealed

Hot Stamper Pressings of Orchestral Spectaculars Available Now

When it comes to the Scythian Suite, we’ve decided that there is no good reason to put the Ansermet recordings in our shootouts anymore.

Don’t get me wrong. They are perfectly good records, but the Abbado is a step up both in performance and sound. Our main listening guy summed up the differences of the two recordings this way.

  • I prefer the DG version (2530 967) for sound and performance.
  • The London is very rich and lively but the big drums on the DG are killer, hard to beat!

So, out of the goodness of our hearts, we can now reveal the Shootout Winning stampers: 1W/1W.

However, in the case of CS-6538, knowing the right stampers is not going to get you very far.

You will actually need a pile of copies with those stampers in order to find one worthy of a 3+ White Hot stamper grade.

Obviously, knowing the “right” stamper information in this case gets you in the ballpark, but it won’t help you hit the grand slam home run you were hoping for. To do that you have to clean and play at least six copies the way we did.

(more…)

Strawberry Studios Dropped the Ball When They Mastered This One

Hot Stamper Pressings of Elvis Costello’s Albums Available Now

We described a Shootout Winning Hot Stamper pressing of Armed Forces we listed not long ago this way:

This vintage UK pressing will show you just how good sounding Elvis’s best recording can be, with a KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side two mated to a solid Double Plus (A++) side one.

It’s some of the biggest, boldest rock sound ever recorded. A Top 100 Demo Disc – every track is Elvis at his best.

Armed Forces is one of the best-sounding rock records ever made, and a copy like this is proof enough to back up that claim. The better copies are extremely transparent and silky sounding, but with unbelievably punchy, rock-solid bass and drums.

I would say the sound of the rhythm section of this album ranks up there with the very best ever recorded. Beyond that, the musical chops of this band at this time rank with the very best in the history of rock. Steve, Bruce and Pete rarely get the credit they deserve for being one of the tightest, liveliest backing bands ever to walk into a studio or on to a stage.

All true, if you happen to be playing the right UK pressing. The ones with Strawberry in the dead wax on side one, however, are not remotely competitive with the best pressings we played in our last shootout, as you can easily see from the stamper sheet below.

1.5+ is four grades down from the top copy. That’s a steep dropoff as far as we’re concerned. 1.5+ only hints at how good a recording Armed Forces can be on the best vintage pressings.

(more…)

Anatomy of a Failed Shootout

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Beethoven Available Now

By the early 2000s we had finally come to the conclusion that the RCA pressings of the Beethoven 7th offered the best combination of sound and performance we could find.

By 2024 we had enough copies — seven in total — to do a shootout. The best copy we were able to salvage from this debacle is described, perhaps too generously, below.

This Decca-recorded, Shaded Dog pressing of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 debuts on the site with big, spacious, and lively Double Plus (A++) Living Stereo sound or close to it.

Side one is doing just about everything right – it’s rich, clear, undistorted, open, and has depth and transparency to rival the best recordings you may have heard, and side two is not far behind in all those areas.

The full stamper sheet shown below makes clear what happens when your luck just plain runs out. The Soria pressings were by far the best — they were the only ones to earn 3+ on either side — but side two of all three copies we played was defective, rendering them all but worthless.

When RCA recut the record for their regularly priced Living Stereo release, LSC-2536, the dropoff in sound quality was profound, a fact readily seen from our notes. (“Rich but bright, side two is worse.”)

(more…)

Biggles Let Us Down on this Pressing of Who Are You

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Who Available Now

We described a recent shootout winning pressing this way:

This copy has the Glyn Johns big, bold sound we demand from this famous producer/engineer.

Forget the domestic pressings, forget the DD Labs Half-Speed, forget whatever lame reissues have come or will come down the pike – if you want to hear this album right, a Hot Stamper British pressing is the only way to go.

The title song sounds amazing on this killer Triple Plus side two – the dynamic power of the recording comes through loud and clear.

Of course, not all stampers are hot enough to win a shootout. This British A3/B2 cut by none other than Biggles was judged to have middling sound quality.

1.5+ is four grades down from the top copy. That’s a steep dropoff as far as we’re concerned. 1.5+ only hints at how good sounding a recording Who Are You can be on the best pressings.

(more…)

We Don’t Offer Domestic Pressings of Pour Down Like Silver for One Very Simple Reason

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Richard Thompson Available Now

In spite of the fact that the domestic pressings of this Richard and Linda Thompson classic from 1974 were mastered by the likes of Kendun and Sterling — two of the greatest mastering houses of all time, — they have never impressed us with their sound quality.

The biggest problems with this record would be obvious to even the casual listener: gritty, spitty vocals; lack of richness; bright tonality; lack of bass; no real space or transparency, etc.

The domestic Island pressings did not do nearly as well in our shootout as the best Island imports, no surprise there as the early UK records were mastered by one of our favorite engineers.

Avoid the Carthage pressings mastered by Sterling. They came in last in our shootout.

The domestic breakdown follows:

(more…)

Stick with Porky on East Side Story

More Hot Stamper Pressings We Only Offer on Import Vinyl Available Now

Porky cut the original British pressings of this Squeeze album, one of countless personal favorites of yours truly. They are records (and cassettes and CDs) I have played hundreds of times and still listen to regularly to this very day, in this case more than forty years after I purchased my first copy. (Good albums age well.)

I would have picked the record out of the bin at my local Tower Records, probably based on the radio play Tempted was getting.

That copy undoubtedly would have been domestic and made from a sub-generation tape, although I’m quite sure I could not have recognized what constituted dubby sound back then. In 1981, what I understood about the importance of different record pressings would have fit comfortably in a thimble.

I had my MoFi’s, and although I hate to admit it, that’s about as far as I had gotten in my quest for superior sounding pressings. You could add Nautilus and a few other Half-Speeds to the list of what pressing I thought were impressive, leaving plenty of room in that thimble unfilled.

Thankfully those bad old days are gone, and the music can now, finally, live and breath on the best of these imports from the UK. Of course they are the only ones we buy these days for our shootouts. The others are what are known around these parts as “mistakes.”

Sometimes the imported pressings are mastered by Porky and sometimes they are not. The ones that are not tend to have a lot of problems, as you can see from our stamper sheet below.

When Porky is not on side one, that side will tend to be hard, lean and bright. Side two of that copy had decent sound, earning a minimal Hot Stamper grade of 1.5+.

(more…)

Wild Things Run Fast – A Personal Favorite

Hot Stamper Pressing of the Music of Joni Mitchell Available Now

One of our favorite Joni Mitchell albums.

A Desert Island disc for me and one of the few good reasons to listen to new music in the 80s. 

My personal Must Own Joni Mitchell list includes:

  1. 1968 Song to a Seagull
  2. 1971 Blue
  3. 1974 Court and Spark
  4. 1982 Wild Things Run Fast

WTRF is a TAS list Super Disc with many good qualities, but you’d never know it from the typically lean, bass-shy pressing you might find on your turntable.

Also, since this record can be a little cold sounding — it’s a modern recording after all, and 1982 is sadly nothing like 1972  — filling it out and warming it up is just what the doctor ordered.

John Golden (JG) mastered the originals. The best of them prove that he did a great job at least some of the time. (To find “the best of them,” aka Hot Stampers, read on.)

You can count on the fact that our Hot Stamper pressings will be unusually rich and full-bodied, with lovely warmth and presence.

(more…)