Pursuing Perfect Sound with ab_ba

One of our best customers has lots to say about his Hot Stampers, both the ones he likes and the ones he doesn’t. Which is fine by us. To each his own.

Letter of the Week – “I can’t see myself ever getting bored of the way my music sounds.”

Record Collecting for Audiophiles from A to Z

ab_ba has some comments about the audiophile record collectors he has been watching lately on youtube:

Sometimes I wonder why people are even into records.

I get it that it’s fun to collect them and compare them and brag about them and have a tangible thing you can hold in your hands and put on your shelves.

But for me, those aspects of vinyl listening are a distraction at best, and unhealthy at worst, and I really try to resist their allure.

If somebody’s not doing it for the sound, it’s a dangerous hobby, since it can waste a lot of time and money. If you ARE doing it for the sound, you have to be an empiricist. You have to wonder. You’ve got to be curious! [ab_ba wrote a very nice piece about the importance of curiosity, which you can read here.]

ab_ba

He added this in another email to us:

Part of me envies the dudes who can just buy what they’re told to buy, and believe they have it as good as it can possibly be. Sometimes I think it must be nice to just be complacent like that. But, I’ll bet they eventually stop listening to their records. It’s not all that rewarding a hobby if you stop at pretty good sound. I can’t see myself ever getting bored of the way my music sounds.

ab_ba

I’m sure I will have plenty more to say on this blog regarding record collecting, but for now I would just point out that audiophiles collect records for lots of reasons, and if they enjoy having a collection of audiophile pressings, and find that they derive satisfaction from owning and discussing them with other similarly-interested individuals, then more power to them. Who am I to tell them what they should be doing with their spare time?

For me, and obviously for ab_ba and other letter writers, Robert Brook among them, the appeal to this aspect of record collecting borders on nonexistent, a subject I have written a fair amount about here on the blog, to wit:

For us here at Better Records, collecting for the sake of collecting has never held much appeal.

We like to play records, not just collect them, and we like to play records with the best sound we can find, using the shootout process we developed over the last two decades. We call those kinds of records Hot Stamper pressings, and finding them, and making them available to other like-minded audiophiles, has been the focus of our work for close to twenty years.

All the collecting we leave to other people who enjoy that sort of thing.

The only kinds of records I like to play are the ones that give me a thrill, the way live music (sometimes) does.

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Letter of the Week – “…so much more engaging and rich than I was used to.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Charles Mingus Available Now

This posting on an audiophile forum was made by our good customer ab_ba who authorized me to print it here. (It started out on Hoffman’s forum but was quickly taken down as the subject of Hot Stampers is verboten. I have added some bolding and italics.)

The title is the author’s.

Better Records Hot Stampers: Or, how I learned to stop collecting and love listening

We are witnessing an absolute explosion in vinyl. It’s thrilling, but it has also become frankly overwhelming.

What matters? The experience of listening, of course. But, how do we know, I mean, how do we really know, what listening experiences are going to be sublime?

Too often, collectability becomes our proxy for listening. We’ve all done it – chasing a near mint early pressing, a Japanese or German pressing, a re-press from a label we trust. We all end up with multiple copies of our favorite records, but only listen to one or two of them. And whether we sell them or not, it brings us some comfort to see their going rates on Discogs continue to climb. For me at least, FOMO was a strange driver of my buying habits. I regretted records I didn’t purchase, far more often than I regretted purchases I did make, even as I have about a year’s worth of listening in records still sealed on the shelf. I’m even afraid to open some of them because I can see their value is rising. Isn’t that silly?

My Philosophy Was Off-Base

I love records. Listening to them, curating a collection, is a joyful hobby. It gets at some need I can’t quite name. But, of course, records shouldn’t be only for collecting. They are for the pleasure of listening. My philosophy was pretty off-base. I didn’t even perceive it that way, and here’s what got me to realize it, and get out of it.

Last summer, I came across an original mono pressing of Mingus Ah Um in one of my local shops. It was labelled as a “top copy” and the surface looked pretty good. The price was a little absurd, and considering I had the [MoFi] OneStep and the Classic Records pressings, I wasn’t sure I needed it. But, this is an album I loved, even as a kid, even on digital, and a first pressing held a lot of allure. I took some time to think about it, do some online comparison shopping, and by the time I got back to the shop, it was gone.

In a fit of pique, I bought the copy Better Records was selling.

It was listed as a Super Hot Stamper, and it was slightly cheaper than the copy the shop was selling. With a 30-day no-questions-asked return policy, it seemed a safe bet.

An Initially Disappointing Hot Stamper Reissue Pressing

Well, you can imagine my disappointment when it arrived a few days later. Nicely boxed for shipping, I unsleeved what was clearly a later pressing. My disappointment magnified when the needle dropped and the first thing I heard was surface noise. I’ve been conditioned by the heavy vinyl renaissance to equate surface noise with a bad-sounding record.

But then, the instruments kicked in, and from the first notes I could tell I was listening to something really different.

It was clear, forward, and dynamic. Nothing harsh, even in the horns, but so much more engaging and rich than I was used to. It was the drum solo partway through the first track that convinced me I was hearing something special in this pressing. I sat and listened to the entire record without doing anything else, and for me, something that holds my attention to where I don’t want to grab my phone or a book is part of what defines a peak listening experience.

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Magical Mystery Tour – “I agree with you about Baby You’re a Rich Man – when you turn it up it really comes alive.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Beatles Available Now

This is Part Two of Aaron’s letter about the White Hot Stamper German pressing of Magical Mystery Tour he acquired from us recently.

Part One can be found here.

Dear Tom,

Strawberry Fields was the standout for me on side 2.

I agree with you about Baby You’re a Rich Man. As with I Am the Walrus, when you turn it up it really comes alive. The bass is dazzling. The warbly texture it has is unlike anything else. In my room it’s sounding really balanced. Distinct bass, not boomy. Balanced with the top.

Tom, as you know, my room is small. I am sure it’s holding me back in some ways, but I really don’t mind. Someday I dream of a proper listening room, but if I never get there, I can still enjoy the crap out of my records. Citizen Kane also sounds huge in here, so I think I’m not really suffering.

Last thought listening to this record brought up – surface noise, and how totally irrelevant it usually is.

The biggest, most breathtaking records I have (balance of sound and music) are If Only I Could Remember My Name and Zep II. Both WHS copies have surface noise.

The way it just melts away once the music really gets going is just such a cool auditory illusion. Surface noise really has minimal impact on my listening experience, if any at all.

It is a nicety to have a copy as clean and quiet as this one. To think, this thing sat around for nearly 60 years, probably nearly ever played. Who owns a record that sounds this good and never listens to it??

Aaron

Aaron,

Glad to hear you found side two to be every bit as powerful as side one. The copy you now have really knocked us out over here too.

As for surface noise, you hit the nail right on the head. The biggest, most powerful and exciting records, played at good loud levels, will always have some surface noise if you’re listening for it.

But it disappears almost completely when you focus your listening on the music and the sound of the recording.

On a big speakes system like mine, in a big room with a high ceiling, the surface noise seems to occupy a different space relative to the space of the recording. Smaller systems often seem to jam the noise and the sound together. Big systems do a better job of separating them out.

That has been my experience anyway. Glad you are hearing MMT the way we did. What a thrill.

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Magical Mystery Tour – “When John sings, ‘I’m crying,’ I’m right there with him.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Beatles Available Now

Seems like our friend ab_ba heard some truly amazing sound on his latest Hot Stamper acquisition, a White Hot Stamper German pressing (the German true stereo pressing being the only version of the album we offer) of Magical Mystery Tour.

Dear Tom,

My WHS of MMT just arrived. This record is a true treasure.

I’ve wanted to hear a copy ever since I read your commentary on how the cellos dig deeper on the best copies of “I Am the Walrus.”

I played the various copies I already had, listening to see if I could hear the string section really sweat on any of them. Nope.

But on this copy, the whole sound of that song is simply stunning. When John sings, “I’m crying”, I’m right there with him.

After I Am the Walrus ended, I turned up the volume and played it again. It only got better. The room was filled with sound, everything present, nothing harsh, nothing lacking.

It’s funny, the experience of listening to it actually reminded me of Welcome to the Machine, which similarly caps side 1 of another of my absolute favorite White Hot stampers. There are a lot of similarities in mood, soundscape, and theme to those two songs.

Anyway, I am glad you turned me on to this one. I would have put it on my want list if I had known just how stupendous it would turn out to be. I’m back in to my afternoon’s meetings now, but what a thrill it is to know that side 2 awaits me once the work day is over.

Aaron

Aaron,

As usual, thanks for writing.

It just occurred to me that the commentary about the cellists digging in on I Am the Walrus is very similar to the comments I made more than fifteen years ago about Norwegian Wood.

Those close-miked guitars can be a bit much unless you have a super-low-distortion copy.

John strums the hell out of his acoustic in the right channel, and on the best copies the sound of the guitar is very dynamic and energetic. No two copies will get that guitar to sound the same, and the more dynamic and lively it sounds, the better in my book.

Did The Beatles ever write a better song?

On the right pressings, those two songs, on two different Beatles albums, serve to make a very strong case for Hot Stampers.

Think about it: on both albums the tonality of the higher quality pressings will be the same. The bass the same, the vocals the same, the space the same, almost everything you can think of to listen for on a recording will be the same.

And yet the energy and drive you hear when playing those two songs on any two pressings is more often than not going to be different, and sometimes that difference is dramatic. When the energy and drive are especially pronounced on the side we’re playing, assuming all other things are equal, we call it a White Hot Stamper and grade that side Three Pluses.

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Letter of the Week – “I still find the WHS to Hoffman 45 comparison a particularly insightful one.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Fleetwood Mac Available Now

Our good customer Aaron is somewhat obsessed with the White Hot Stamper Rumours he bought from us a while back. He finds testing it against the Hoffman 45 RPM version of the album his audiophile friends own instructive, about their systems, what they listen for, and lots more.

I’ve added some comments which I hope are helpful as well. We’ll let him take it from here.

Dear Tom,

I still find the WHS to Hoffman 45 comparison a particularly insightful one. I remember the bass being bloated and wonky on the Hoffman, and tight and impactful on the WHS on my system. I found it that way on [my friend’s] system too, but sometimes live rock music has unpleasant, over-emphasized bass. The kids like it that way I guess.

Aaron,

The proper comparison is not live rock music because a studio album is not really trying to recreate the sound of the band in concert.

On the best pressings the sound should be tonally balanced and correct, with no faults of any kind to draw your attention.

A Super Hot could sound that way. The White Hot would be 25% bigger and clearer and more punchy and resolving while still being balanced and tonally neutral.

Having auditioned and tested them by the hundreds, it has been our experience that Heavy Vinyl records never come to life the way the best vintage pressings do.

You need the right system to hear the difference, and the more right the system, the more you will hear how big the difference is.

I didn’t make any particular note of the position of the vocals, but one thing [my friend’s] system does really well is imaging, so I’m inclined to trust his impression from where he was sitting. It might be that what he was experiencing as accurate, breathtaking sound was described as “forward.” Seems like a reasonable term for that experience.

That could be a bad wire, bad electricity, glare from hi-fi-ish electronics, bad room treatments or no room treatments at all, bad speaker positioning — lots of things make vocals more forward in either a good way or a bad way. This story might be helpful in understanding some aspects of midrange presentation we wrestled with when setting up our new studio.

From where I sat, I could agree with [my friend] that the Hoffman put the snare more forward than the WHS does, but whether you like that or find it a distraction is a matter of taste.

Which is why this is not a good test record.

Where is the snare supposed to be? Who can say?

Good test records are the ones where the sound is clearly more wrong or more right as something in the playback changes, whether it’s a new piece of equipment, a tweak, or a different pressing of the same music.

If the snare is forward on a system, you play an orchestral record and point to the fact that the violins are hard and the brass is honky, or the piano sounds clanky or vague, and then you know you need to fix something because none of those instruments are supposed to sound that way.

But a snare on a rock record?

You didn’t mix the album. You don’t know! Worse, you can’t know.

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Thinking Inside the Box

Hot Stamper Pressings of Jethro Tull Albums Available Now

The concepts we discuss below were hashed over in a 2023 letter written to us about a video interview with Michael Fremer, a video, I confess, I’ve never watched.

For background purposes, you should know that Steve Westman and Michael Fremer really like Heavy Vinyl records. Because of this shared interest, they naturally get along well.

I was invited on Steve’s show for a couple of episodes myself, as was Robert Brook, but because neither I nor Robert care much for Heavy Vinyl pressings, we had little in common with Steve or his roundtable. There was no reason for either one of us to be there, and it is unlikely we will be invited back. What would we talk about? How bad the sound quality is on the new records you guys talk about endlessly to the exclusion of everything else? You can imagine what they thought of my views, and vice-versa.

Back to the letter. As I explained to my customer, making generalizations about records is rarely of much use. The devil is in the details. Let’s take a look at what Michael Fremer has written recently about originals.

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Forum Advice: “Now I know it’s for real, but I don’t think I’ll be buying any more…”

Basic Audio Advice — These Are the Fundamentals of Good Sound

Our good customer Aaron wrote to tell us about a posting he saw on the Steve Hoffman forum. (Numerous edits have been made since I first wrote a reply.)

On the forums, I read a post by a guy who took my advice. He bought a hot stamper for $100, then bought the same deadwax on Discogs for $40. He mixed them up so he wouldn’t know which was which. He found your copy superior. His conclusion? “Now I know it’s for real, but I don’t think I’ll be buying any more…”

Unfortunately, the whole thread got deleted, so it’s not like you can go read it for yourself.

Regards, Aaron

Dear Aaron,

A hundred dollars? For an old record? Of course he’s not buying another one. He was crazy to buy the first one! No record is worth that.

Or at least that’s what I would expect to read in the follow-up comments.

On a more serious note, our Hot Stamper pressing could’ve been a lot better than the one this person bought off Discogs, a little better, or possibly even no better.

Stereo Bashing

That’s because nothing you read on the Hoffman forum can be taken seriously. The stereos these folks have – I’m assuming, since all the evidence points in that direction and no evidence points in any other direction — are not capable of reproducing music at a high level.

You’ll notice very few of them ever talk about their stereos, about the improvements they’ve made to them, or even the idea of challenging themselves to make any improvements to the quality of their playback.

Too Much Trouble

Why would they? It’s simply not what the forum is for. It is not for Hi-Fi types. It is for the mid-level audiophile who needs someone to tell him what he wants to hear in order to save him the trouble of working it all out for himself. (Of course he will never be able to do that, and at least part of the reason is that, out of the thousands of folks on this forum, there may not be a single one of them who understands audio and records at anything other than the most superficial level. If there is a person with deep knowledge of these subjects, outside of a select few of my customers who wasted their time posting there, I have yet to read him.)

A Cult of Personality

It is, furthermore, rather obviously and nakedly a personality cult, one built around the pretense that there exists someone in the professional world of audio who knows all the answers and, miracle of miracles, can be coaxed into emerging from his sacred cave to share some wisdom with the reverent masses who hang on his every word. His way must be the only way. Any hint of apostasy is swiftly punished by those who monitor the forum, along with the piling on by true believers itching to denounce anyone who fails to toe the line.

If none of that works, exile from the cult community must follow. No poisonous discussion of pressing variations is to be allowed (see below).

Software and Hardware

Clearly the forum is set up to allow music lovers to exchange opinions and information about software. The hardware side of it is none of your damn business.

The fact that the software is being placed into the equivalent of a long-out-of-date, poorly-functioning old computer doesn’t seem to be of concern to anyone.

And why should it?

All that stereo stuff costs a lot of money and takes a lot of time. It requires a dedicated room that I suspect few of the people on the forum have access to. Room treatments? You have to be kidding. What the hell for? Good software solves all your audio problems. You just need to know which version of it to buy and your troubles are over.

God forbid they would pull their speakers out from the wall and find another place to put the TV. That is just never going to happen.

For that and many other reasons –reasons that nobody really wants to talk about, or, worse, hear about — they are in no position to make judgments about the sound of any recording, on any format.

You won’t have to read many postings to get a painfully clear picture of how much work these folks have put into their setup, system and room in the pursuit of audio excellence. And that, more than anything written above, explains why they will continue to embrace one bad audiophile pressing after another, no matter how bad their sound.

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Letter of the Week – “Tom likes forward-sounding records, mastered for FM broadcasts. Steve masters for home stereos.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Fleetwood Mac Available Now

One of our good customers played some Hot Stamper pressings for a friend of his and wrote to tell us about  the experience.

Dear Tom,

There’s some fascinating sociology here with how contentious your business model is. It really tweaks people.

I recently made a friend who’s always been a vinyl enthusiast. He’s got a fantastic collection. My friend has worked with Steve Hoffman on a few projects in the past, and holds him in very high regard, both professionally and personally.

We got together over Thanksgiving and I brought along my hot stampers. We listened to them on his gorgeous Linn stereo. One by one, he could appreciate the differences in them, and confirm what I was hearing.

I put my Rumours hot stamper and then his Steve Hoffman remaster. I put my Mahavishnu alongside his first UK pressing. I played my Abraxas Hot Stamper against the MoFi OneStep, which he had heard of, but never actually heard.

We debated the sonic merits of each, noting the different decisions that different mastering engineers had made. In all cases, he heard what there was to like about the hot stampers. Despite the evident sonic differences, which we could both hear and agree to, we disagreed over whether that meant Better Records was really on to something.

My friend’s reasons to resist becoming a customer really had nothing to do with the listening experience we had just shared. “Tom likes forward-sounding records, mastered for FM broadcasts. Steve masters for home stereos.”

Or, “a 1A-1A pressing that’s been well cared for will sound the best by definition because that’s closest to what the artists intended.”

Or, “Tom says there’s variance from one biscuit to the next. That’s clearly absurd.”

All this, despite having heard the records! Now, to my friend’s credit, he did allow that he might have a look at the site and try one out, if a record he really loves pops up at a reasonable price. (As far as I know, he hasn’t done it yet…)

Anyway, I had to agree with him – your business model makes no sense in light of all our preconceptions about how to find great sounding records.

And, even when you hear hot stampers for yourself, the defensive walls still stay up. It’s possible to deny what you’re hearing.

Aaron

Aaron,

A quick note about 1A/1A. There was a time when we might have had 6-8 original pressings of a title, some 1A’s, some 1B’s etc. I would have loved to have let you borrow them and have your friend spot the 1A pressing, since it’s “the best.”

It is of course impossible to do that, but then you just lose friends when you embarrass them that way, and who cares what somebody else likes or doesn’t like, thinks or doesn’t think about records? I sure never did. The records sound the way they sound. Opinions, as you found out for yourself, have been known to vary.

Hoffman’s fans are true believers. Try blindfolding the guys on his forum and playing them a variety of pressings, of his stuff and others. They would not do a good job of knowing which is which by ear, which are the ones you’re supposed to like and which are the ones that shouldn’t sound good, your friend included.

But most audiophiles will never submit to this test because the rug might be pulled out from under them. That is a risk they cannot take. The only tests they are willing to submit to are the ones where they know what the answers are in advance, and, to make matters worse, the only answers they will accept are the ones guaranteed to corroborate their biases and prejudgments.

When Geoff Edgers of The Washington Post wanted to test me with a batch of mystery pressings, I said “Bring it on. I do this for a living, and I’ve been at it for twenty years. I know good sound when I hear it.” He went on to play me two of the best sounding Heavy Vinyl pressings I have ever heard (here’s one of them), as well as some of the worst. (Reviews for those are  coming, but there are only so many hours in a day and finding the motivation to critique mediocre Heavy Vinyl pressings is not easy when there are so many great records to write about.)

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Letter of the Week – “I thought I had done pretty good finding a copy on my own, but this copy is next-level”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of David Crosby Available Now

One of our good customers wrote to tell us how much he liked his latest Hot Stamper pressing:

Hi Tom,

My White Hot Stamper of “if only I could remember my name” just arrived. It’s fantastic. I thought I had done pretty good finding a copy on my own, but this copy is next-level. As you said it would be, Laughing is a journey all its own.

Thanks, as always, for what you and the crew do.

Aaron

Aaron,

If I may be immodest for a moment, next-level is what we do best!

David Crosby’s debut is indeed a trip, and Laughing is the track to hear it at its best. Here is how we describe the experience:

When you drop the needle on this record, all barriers between you and the musicians are removed. You’ll feel as though you’re sitting at the studio console while Crosby and his no-doubt-stoned-out-of-their-minds Bay Area pals (mostly Jefferson Airplaners and Grateful Deads, see list below) are laying down this emotionally powerful, heartfelt music.

The overall sound is warm, sweet, rich, and full-bodied… that’s some real ANALOG Tubey Magic, baby! And the best part is, you don’t have to be high to hear it. You just need a good stereo and the right pressing.

Thanks for your letter,

Best, TP

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Letter of the Week – “Some records absolutely JUMP out of my speakers. Including all of yours. It’s a thrill.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Georges Bizet Available Now

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

Hey Tom, 

I’m the one who purchased Ricci’s Carmen yesterday. I can’t wait to receive it! I was surprised and delighted to read on your blog about the copy that sold on ebay for *even more* than I paid for mine. (I never even look at records on ebay anymore – after getting caught up in a couple of bidding wars, I just don’t feel good buying that way anymore.)

This is my fifth purchase from you. It’s my first white hot stamper, it’s the most I’ve paid so far, and it’s the first time I am purchasing a record that I don’t already have multiple copies of. I’ve been dying to see if my system is up to the task of reproducing violin well, and this beautiful music seems the ideal test case. I’ve been on a spree, but I’m going to have to cool it for a while after this. I’ll keep an eye out for a good copy of Avalon, or Leonard Cohen’s Songs, or maybe if a DSOTM comes back up, I won’t chicken out this time…

Aaron

Aaron,

I hope you like the record as much as we did. It is indeed a very special album, and I hope it sounds like six hundred dollars worth of music and sound to you. The Heifetz recordings have especially good violin reproduction if you want to keep going in that direction.

Take your time on picking up Hot Stampers, most of them come around again eventually, no since going broke!

Thanks for your letter.

TP

Thanks Tom! I’m having a lot of fun with my records from you, but yes, now it’s time to delight in what I’ve got for a while. I’ll probably go back to being a lurker/drooler on your site, the way I was for several years until recently.

I upgraded to a Soundsmith Sussurro cartridge during the pandemic, and now, some records absolutely JUMP out of my speakers. Including all of yours. It’s a thrill. You’re letting me see what my system is capable of, and instead of that new amp I thought I needed, I’m buying some records from you instead.

Plus, when a cartridge/system gets the *tone* of instruments right, there’s no mistaking it, and you didn’t even realize you were missing anything. It’s easy to think a recording and system are accurate, but then you hear accurate reproduction and you just say “oh.”

Aaron

Aaron,
You make a good point. If I could get more audiophiles to try a Hot Stamper pressing, and simply take the time to compare it to whatever Heavy Vinyl LP they might have been listening to, I think there would be a lot of them saying “Oh.”

How will they ever know what they are missing if they won’t try a different approach?

I think you know the answer as well as anyone. You were a lurker, and now, having actually heard some Hot Stamper pressings, you are a believer.

The records speak for themselves.

As I wrote to a customer not long ago, “explaining doesn’t work. Only hearing works.

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