*Record Pressing Advice

The advice here should help you in your search for better sounding pressings.

At the very least it may help you avoid some of the worst ones.

Wildflowers – Sometimes the Hits Are Mastered from Sub-Generation Tapes…

More of the Music of Judy Collins

And there’s not much you can do about it.

Both Sides Now, the Top Ten hit that finally put Judy on the map, is clearly made from a copy tape and doesn’t sound as good as the songs that follow it on side two. Hey, it happens, and I suspect it happens more often than most audiophiles think. I would wager that back in the day most people who bought this album never even noticed.

One thing I’ve noticed about audiophiles over the years is that they’re pretty much like most people.

The difference of course is that they call themselves audiophiles, and audiophiles are supposed to care about sound quality.

They may care about it, but are they capable of evaluating high quality sound? What is the evidence for the affirmative in this proposition?

Are they actually capable of critical listening?

Do they listen critically enough to notice a dubby track on an otherwise good sounding record when they hear it?

Or dubby sound in general?

Or to notice that one side of a record often sounds very different from another?

Or that some reissues sound better than the originals of the album?

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Bryan Ferry / In Your Mind

More of the Music of Roxy Music

  • In Your Mind makes its Hot Stamper debut with KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them on both sides of this original UK import pressing – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • May I point out that the copy with the Shootout Winning stampers had exactly the same stampers as the copy that came in last in our shootout?
  • If such an unlikely thing strikes you as odd, please go the blog and read about the scores of other shootout titles for which this was true
  • The stampers are one thing, the sound of the pressing on the turntable is another
  • The sound is big and rich, the vocals breathy and immediate, and you will not believe all the space and ambience – which of course are all qualities that Heavy Vinyl records have far too little of, and the main reason we have lost all respect for the bulk of them
  • A personal favorite, one that I have easily played more than a hundred times
  • We were never able to complete a shootout for it back in the day — the blog has that story — but thankfully things have changed
  • “In Your Mind still burns more fiercely than both the later solo and group albums, at least on certain tracks – like Siren, it balances between rockier and smoother paths, most often favoring the former. Ferry’s lyrics remain in his own realm of intelligent, romantic dissipation, and are some of his best efforts.”

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“One begins to notice what is wrong with them — they sound tinkered with”

 

Hot Stamper Pressings of Rock and Pop Albums Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased in 2017.

Hey Tom, 

Bless You Tom! Much appreciated! Funny thing is, I never had this album or properly heard it before now. Back in the late ’70s and early ’80s, I too was buying audiophile pressings and Half Speed Masters and at first, I thought they were great! But before too long, one begins to notice what is wrong with them– they sound tinkered with! I think that is exactly what MoFi did.

I tried these again when I came back to vinyl in 2009. That first year I began buying audiophile pressings but when I played them back I found they were not the holy grail nor the sound I was looking for at all! Certainly not even the claimed ‘Sourced from the Original Master Tape’ was true! More like, from the digital master/remasters or a third generation master. I spent a whole lot before I put the brakes on and went for original recordings/early pressings such as ED1 or ED2.

Now, when I want a record for serious listening of something special, I know the only place to get what I want first time and every time for the best sounding records– Better Records, of course!

Michael

Michael,

Thanks for your letter. “Tinkering” with the sound is what these audiophile labels do. They think they know how to “fix” the recordings that the original producers and engineers got wrong.

Like you, I was fooled.

It took me a while but eventually I started to see where I had gone wrong.

And don’t write off all reissues. You can stick to first and second editions, but by doing that you will miss out on the superior sound of these 150+ reissues. (If I had time to really go deeper into it, I could probably list three times that many.)

Even better, these superior sounding reissues can actually be bought.

Best, TP

This link will take you to our reviews and commentaries for the more than 140 Half-Speed Mastered pressings we’ve played over the years.

Some audiophile records — Half-Speed Mastered and otherwise — are so dreadful sounding that I got pissed off enough to create this special list for them.

Setting higher standards — no, being able to set higher standards — in our minds is clearly a mark of progress.

Judging by the hundreds of letters we’ve received, especially the ones comparing our records to their Heavy Vinyl and Half-Speed Mastered counterparts, we know that our customers see things the same way.

Further Reading

360 Original or Red Label Reissue?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Chicago Available Now

UPDATE 2026

This commentary has to be close to twenty years old by now.

Both can be good. I did the shootout and often tried to guess the label for the copy I was hearing, for fun more than anything else. I have to admit that my batting average was not much better than chance. 

The 360s tend to be a little fuller and smearier, but plenty of red label copies sound that way and some 360s don’t, so trying to match the sound to the label was even more pointless than usual.

When comparing pressings in a shootout it’s too late for the label to have any predictive value.

We’ve already bought the records, cleaned them up and now just want to know what they actually sound like — not which ones might be the best, but which ones are the best.

The time for guessing games has passed. Of course, if we do actually figure out what the right stampers are, this helps us next time around.

What Stampers Mean

Stampers mean something, but sometimes, as is the case here, they don’t mean much.

(If you don’t know that by now you probably haven’t done that many big shootouts on your own. Can’t blame you — without lots of helpers in the cleaning and needle-dropping departments, they’d be an even bigger pain than they already are. Even with three people involved it can still take almost all day, and that’s if you just happen to have ten or fifteen copies handy. It took us about two years to find that many, hitting multiple stores every week.)

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Midnight Blue on Classic Records (with Badly Mistaken Commentary about Original Blue Notes)

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Kenny Burrell Available Now

Sonic Grade: D

Flat and lifeless. You would never understand why audiophiles rave about this recording by listening to the Classic Records pressing of it. That happens a lot with their remastered pressings. Why do audiophiles think so highly of them when they make records that sound the one this one does?

We played it up against our best, and as expected it was nothing to write home about. Since Rudy has remastered and ruined practically all the Blue Note CDs by now, you will have your work cut out for you if you want to find a good sounding version of Midnight Blue. This sure ain’t one.

Of course we would be more than happy to get you an amazing sounding copy — it’s what we do — but the price will be five to ten times (or more) what the Classic costs. In our opinion it’s money well spent, as you will see in our review below.

Since the Classic conveys very little of what the musicians were up to whilst recording the album, our advice is to cross it off your list of records of interest.

It’s thirty bucks down the drain.

From a recent Hot Stamper listing:

I’ve never heard an original Blue Note pressing with this kind of resolution, sharp leading edge transients, tight, articulate bass definition, and on and on.

Collectors routinely pay hundreds of dollars for original copies that don’t sound nearly as good as this one.

Which is fine by us. We’re not in that business. We’re not selling the right labels; we’re selling the right sound. There is a difference. Collecting original pressings is easy (albeit expensive). Collecting good sounding pressings is hard; in fact nothing in the record collecting world is harder. But if you actually like playing your records as opposed to just collecting them, then the best possible sound should be at the top of your list and the rarity of the label down at the bottom.

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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Out of Polarity Stampers for Bang-Baaroom Revealed

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Dick Schory

Presenting another one of the many pressings we’ve discovered with reversed polarity on some copies.

An amazing discovery from Better Records. Many copies of this album are have their polarity reversed on side two (the side with Buck Dance, one of the better tracks on that side and a great track for testing).

We had two 4s copies of the album and both of them had side two out of polarity.  

UPDATE

7s on side two is out of polarity too.

Just played one today. There’s practically no real top end extension until you reverse the polarity.

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Julie Is Her Name – What a Record!

Hot Stamper Pressings of Pop and Jazz Vocals Available Now

UPDATE 2026

We were shocked to discover a knockout Four Plus copy of Julie Is Her Name way back in 2010.

Our lengthy commentary entitled outliers and out-of-this-world sound talks about how rare these kinds of pressings are and how we go about finding them. We no longer give out Four Pluses as a matter of policy, but that doesn’t mean we don’t come across records that deserve them from time to time.

Nowadays we most often place them under the general heading of breakthrough pressings. These are records that, seemingly out of nowhere, revealed to us sound of such high quality that it conpletely changed our appreciation of the recording itself.

We found ourselves asking “Who knew?” Perhaps a better question might have been “How high is up?”

Our Old Review

Beyond White Hot stamper sound on side one of this Turquoise Liberty Mono pressing – the sound is guaranteed to blow your mind. Julie is in the room with you – intimate, breathy and Tubey Magical like practically nothing you’ve ever heard. For late night listening this may be the best Sultry Female Vocal recording ever made.

Side One

This side had breathy resolution that was hard to believe, along with size and immediacy that no other side of any copy could touch. Phenomenal. (more…)

We Review the DCC and an Original Pressing of Lush Life

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of John Coltrane Available Now

Sonic Grade: B or so (DCC) 

The DCC heavy vinyl pressing is a nice record. I remember liking it when it came out. Nowadays I would probably call it passable, similar in quality to those on this list.

If for some reason we could not find copies of the album that substantially beat the sound of remastered LPs such as the DCC LP, we simply would not have anything to offer.

It was only a few months ago, early in 2016 in fact, that we chanced upon the right kind of pressing — the right era, the right label, the right stampers, the right sound. Not just the right sound though. Better sound than we ever thought this album could have.

Previously we had written:

“There are great sounding originals, but they are few and far between…”

We no longer believe that to be true. In fact we believe the opposite of that statement to be true. The original we had on hand — noisy but with reasonably good sound, or so we thought — was an absolute joke next to our best Hot Stamper pressings. Half the size, half the clarity and presence, half the life and energy, half the immediacy, half the studio space. It was simply not remotely competitive with the copies we now know (or at least believe, all knowledge being provisional) to have the best sound.

Are there better originals than the ones we’ve played? No doubt. If you want to spend your day searching for them, more power to you. And if you do find one that impresses you, we are happy to send you one of our Hot Copies to play against it. We are confident that the outcome would be clearly favorable to our pressing. Ten seconds of side one should be enough to convince you that our record is in an entirely different league, a league we had no idea even existed until just this year.

By the way, the mono original we played was by far the worst sound I have ever heard for the album. By far. (more…)

Three Key Tracks on Younger Than Yesterday

Hot Stamper Pressings of Hippie Folk Rock Albums Available Now

Having played a killer sounding copy of Younger Than Yesterday in August of 2024, we now see that in 2019, at the time of our last shootout, we had a lot to learn about the album.

Our top copy received rave reviews on side one:

  • Here are just a few of of the things we had to say about this amazing Triple Plus side one in our notes: “big and tubey vox & bass”…”great size and energy”…”jumping out [of the speakers]”…”crazy good”
  • The sound is Tubey Magical, lively and dynamic, with exceptional transparency and immediacy
  • We’re always blown away at just how much further the better copies are able to take the music – what a difference the right pressing makes

But in 2019 we were much less enthusiastic:

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