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 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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Advice for Testing So-Called “Hot Stampers”

What Are Hot Stamper Pressings and How Can I Find My Own?

UPDATE 2025

You might find the comments at the end of this one interesting.

Contemplating trying a money-back-guaranteed Hot Stamper pressing? Our good customer ab_ba has some advice on one of the best ways to go about it. He writes:

Pick out a Hot Stamper on the better-records site. (Choose something you know well, that you already have a few copies of. Pick a Super Hot Stamper, so it’s not absurdly expensive.)

First, see how it compares to your other copies. If it’s not as good, send it back, full refund, no questions asked.

Next, look at the matrix number on the Hot Stamper, and buy three copies on discogs in NM or VG+ condition with the same matrix. Or, go hunt around your local shop for same.

Then, once you get them, clean them to the best of your ability and then do another shootout. Just do it quick – you’ve got 29 days.

If you prefer one to your Hot Stamper, send back the Hot Stamper. No questions asked, and thank Tom for the matrix number.

I’ve done this a couple of times, and every time, I’ve kept the Hot Stamper. Wasted my time and money is all I did. That, and convinced myself Tom’s records are worth what he charges, in that I can’t get records that sound that good for less money.

Dear ab_ba,

Good advice, let’s hope some audiophiles take it. They might just find the world of better sound that’s waiting for them the way you did.

And if not, then they get their money back, no harm, no foul.

Thanks for writing,

TP

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Cartridges Part Two: “Why don’t you talk about other cartridges more often on your blog?”

Advice to Help You Make More Audio Progress

Part one of this discussion can be found here.

Ab_ba continues:

Tom, this got me thinking.

I think of a mountain range. From one peak, you see others, and wonder, “gee maybe the view is even more magnificent from that peak!” But, for most of the peaks, it’s about the same, certainly no better, and could be a lot worse. Maybe just behind that other hill that looks so enticing from here there’s a parking lot! And also, climbing each peak takes time and energy, and for most of the journey between the peaks, you are down in a valley. And, is the view really actually better over there? Just because it is higher, doesn’t mean it will be more rewarding. Just because it is dazzling at first, maybe you grow sick of it after a while.

You have created a system that sounds demonstrably fantastic. And, it is a system that is not too finicky – other people can copy it and get amazing sound, even without any tweaking and fine-tuning. Are there other great-sounding systems? For sure. But, who, or what, on earth could be my guide to finding those other peaks? Certainly not the magazines. Certainly not other audiophiles. Certainly not the guys at my local hi-fi store. Certainly not the price tag.

As I’ve spent more time with the [redacted] cartridge my friend loaned me, its sonic character is becoming more evident. It is quite lovely on jazz. I threw on a $5 copy of Art Pepper’s Straight Life (Galaxy label, fwiw) and it sounded just fantastic. Sparkly highs, and the lack of bass that cartridge has was not noticably absent. I wondered, “has it settled in a little? Are my ears getting used to it?” I put on a few different records and said, “nope. It’s just got a sound signature that’s favorable to Art Pepper.”

So there’s a perfect example of a mountain peak I would not want to build my house on. Does the Dyna have no character? Probably not, but different records sound different, and different genres all reproduce well on it, and no part of the spectrum calls attention to itself. If there is a signature to it, it’s one I can live with.

Last question – why is it that audiophiles are so uncomfortable with the idea that they might be wrong? I mean, you can’t improve if you think you are already right. I think most of them are loners with disposable income, and most people who make some money in life get it by being supremely confident, perhaps overconfident. You look at guys like [redacted] and me, scientists where humility and knowledge of our own ignorance is in the very fiber of practicing our professions well, and even if we don’t have the disposable income of some audiophiles and some of your customers, we value quality, we value expertise, and we are happy to spend our available funds on things of enduring value.

Ab_ba

Dear Ab_ba,

I was no different back when I started. For about my first ten years in high-end audio, roughly 1975-85, I bought the most expensive equipment that I could afford, as long as it was well-liked by those whose ears I trusted and sounded good to me.

Is the audiophile of today doing anything different?

What would you be doing if you hadn’t stumbled on a guy with some credibility — he sold you some records that sounded amazing, so he must know something — who turned you on to some audio stuff that sounds great and, better yet, didn’t cost that much?

And how did this guy — me — come to find out about all this stuff in the first place? Well, I’ll tell you.

He had a good audio friend who turned him on to Dynavector cartridges twenty years ago (but oddly enough not the really good one they sell. I had to make that leap for myself).

And this audio friend had learned through extensive trial and error that there were certain receivers one could pick up for cheap at thrift stores that offered excellent, audiophile-quality sound. (Trial and error were his forte. This is the same guy that clued me into the concept of Hot Stampers, a life-changing concept if ever there was one.)

As it turned out, even my friend did not know how good the sound of the receiver he sold me could be when fed by a top quality outboard phono stage, something he did not have access to. (The receiver’s phono stage is decent but hopelessly outclassed by the EAR 324p we use.)

I ended up buying four or five different models with mediocre-at-best sound before I realized the one I owned must be a fluke. Then I bought three more of the model I liked and they all sounded different too, although they ranged in sound at most from excellent to crazy good. So I put the best sounding one in my system and kept the other three for backup. Like I said, they were cheap.

When I met my friend George Louis in San Diego back in the 80s, he had a much better system than I did. He was using non-audiophile-approved equipment that drove custom speakers. He showed me that my audiophile electronics and my Fulton so-called state-of-the-art speakers were not nearly as good as I thought they were. What did I know back then? Not as much as I thought I did, that’s for damn sure.

When I moved to Los Angeles in 1987, I met a fellow audiophile named Robert Pincus and we quickly became friends. Along with lots of other records, I was selling vintage classical records to audiophiles and he was supplying me with whatever he could dig up that sounded good.

He showed me that no two records sound the same, and even that no two sides of the same record sound the same. Once I had a chance to listen to some of the Hot Stamper pressings he brought me, I was sold.

Operating as the equivalent of a one-man band* in the 90s, I was only able to offer a small number of Hot Stamper pressings on an ad-hoc basis to customers who trusted me enough to believe in the concept. In 2004,  a mere 17 years later, we had worked out the bugs in the process and began selling them officially on our site, starting with Teaser and the Firecat. During those 17 years I was doing audio and records for 60-80 hours a week. Needless to say, I learned a lot in that time.

Anybody else want to put in 60-80 hours a week for 17 years to find out just how much they don’t know?

Isn’t it easier to go to a forum or site and have somebody tell you what you want to hear? It would save you a lot of work, but what would you learn? It’s our hope that every person buying a record from us has a Heavy Vinyl or audiophile-approved pressing to play against the one we sell them. Comparing the two, on their own time, on their own system, allows them to hear the kind of sound they’ve been missing and were told could not possibly exist.

But it does! And we have the records to prove it does.

Easy-to-carry-out comparisons of this kind have taught a select group of audiophiles and music lovers — customers like ab_ba, along with hundreds of others — not to put their trust in those who claim to know what they are talking about when they opine on what are the best sounding pressings. We have opinions, sure, but we also have the records that back up our opinions.

We’ve spent a lifetime discovering these very special vinyl pressings, and we make them available to discriminating audiophiles who prize superior sound as well as “enduring value.” All it takes is one click.

Best, TP

*More on the subject of being a one man band.

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Letter of the Week – “Better Records has completely transformed my relationship with music listening…”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Charles Mingus Available Now

Our good customer ab_ba decided to write us a letter, this being his third anniversary of being sold on the reality of Hot Stampers. (I have taken the liberty of editing some of it.)

Dear Tom and Fred,

Today marks my third anniversary of being your customer. It’s quite a milestone! Frankly, when I realized it’s only been three years, I was surprised. It has felt longer. I really want to thank you both, and I thought I’d take a moment to look back on it all.

    • Better Records has completely transformed my relationship with music listening, in so many ways it’s hard to enumerate them all. Great sounding records, of course, but so much more.
    • A fantastic stereo that’s so good that for the first time ever leaves me with zero desire to change anything about it.
    • A better understanding of how to attain music worth listening to.
    • Specific albums and musicians I would not have known about, that I now really treasure.
    • And, most surprising of all, some exceptionally good friends who I cherish as people, and not just as fellow travelers along this esoteric path.

For me personally, getting great sound at home was always a somewhat-angsty quest: “there must be something better.”

I sense that others feel that way about it too. But now, for me, my music listening is pure satisfaction. And that is thanks entirely to you.

Looking back on it with some nostalgia, I thought I’d note some of the milestones so far:

My first purchase was a Super Hot Stamper of Mingus Ah Um, for $300. I still viscerally remember the feeling when I made that purchase. I remember putting it on for the first time, and having the sound just explode out of my tiny B&W speakers, like nothing I had heard before.

It was so different from my MoFi One-Step of Ah Um, I instantly had all of my preconceptions shattered.
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Letter of the Week – “Why don’t you talk about other cartridges on your blog?”

More Letters from Customers and Critics Alike

Hi Tom:

With my 17dx out of commission, [a friend] loaned me his [redacted], a cartridge that retails for a little more than the Dynavector. It only served to show me how truly special the 17dx is. The [redacted] is giving me some very nice sound, but there’s a sense of exaggerated detail, a lack of bass drive, a flatter soundfield, and for whatever reason, overall the music is simply less engaging. This mimics [my friend’s] experience with the [redacted] vs Dynavector comparison. He’d use different words, but we both agree that the Dyna is the considerably more satisfying cartridge.

Why is this? Why’s it so hard to make a great-sounding cartridge? And, how does price not serve as a reliable guide to sound performance? I’ve now had a chance to hear several high-priced and well-regarded cartridges: Clearaudio, Sound-Smith, Ortofon, etc. Since I’ve made further improvements to my system since I had any of those other cartridges installed, it was easy for me to believe that I had gotten things to where the cartridge would be less important in the overall sound I was getting. Instead, I think all I’ve done is to create a system that lets me hear very directly what the cartridge is saying.

My question for you is this: Why don’t you talk about other cartridges more often on your blog? Yes, you talk about the 17dx a lot, but I see only a passing mention to other carts. Over the years, what other cartridges have you tried? What impressions did you have of them? I mean, if you want to keep readers on the straight and narrow, then warning them against certain popular cartridges seems like it’d be an even more valuable service than warning them away from bad heavy vinyl pressings. Without the right cart, other changes to your system, and other choices of records to play, almost don’t matter. I guess there’s two ways to put this message to your readers: DO buy a 17dx. (You’ve said that plenty of times.) But also: DON’T bother with those other cartridges. (I think you should say that too!)

ab_ba

ab_ba,

The simplest answer to these questions is that I have very little experience with other cartridges.

Until maybe twenty years ago, I was not in a position to borrow expensive carts and try them out. I had a more forgiving Dynavector, then went to the 17d3 and that was that. It had the sound I was looking for.

Most equipment of any kind is nothing special. It’s mediocre by definition, since it is most likely average. Why would it not be average? Because the owners of said equipment spent so many years trying to find the best? As far as I know, that never happens.

As you say, money buys very little in audio, with the exception of big speakers, but then big speakers are mostly not very good because they often require lots of power, and high power amps never sound good to me.

If you want good sound, you will have to do a lot of work and spend a lot of money to find it.

Or you can buy what I own and save yourself all that time and trouble! As long as you are willing to live with some compromises, it’s hard to imagine you could find something better unless you devoted a huge amount of time and money to the search, and had the listening skills to choose wisely.

These are skills that audiophiles rarely have. They are much harder to come by than good equipment. I talk at length about how wrong I was about so many things for so long during my formative years for the simple reason that recognizing errors is how you learn to make fewer of them.

Who can say they know what they are talking about in audio and get anyone to believe them?

It is a hard road and few want to travel it.

Best, TP

Tom, this got me thinking.

I think of a mountain range. From one peak, you see others, and wonder, “gee maybe the view is even more magnificent from that peak!” But, for most of the peaks, it’s about the same, certainly no better, and could be a lot worse. Maybe just behind that other hill that looks so enticing from here there’s a parking lot! And also, climbing each peak takes time and energy, and for most of the journey between the peaks, you are down in a valley. And, is the view really actually better over there? Just because it is higher, doesn’t mean it will be more rewarding. Just because it is dazzling at first, maybe you grow sick of it after a while.

You have created a system that sounds demonstrably fantastic. And, it is a system that is not too finicky – other people can copy it and get amazing sound, even without any tweaking and fine-tuning. Are there other great-sounding systems? For sure. But, who, or what, on earth could be my guide to finding those other peaks? Certainly not the magazines. Certainly not other audiophiles. Certainly not the guys at my local hi-fi store. Certainly not the price tag.

As I’ve spent more time with the [cartridge] my friend loaned me, its sonic character is becoming more evident. It is quite lovely on jazz. I threw on a $5 copy of Art Pepper’s Straight Life (Galaxy label, fwiw) and it sounded just fantastic. Sparkly highs, and the lack of bass that cartridge has was not noticably absent. I wondered, “has it settled in a little? Are my ears getting used to it?” I put on a few different records and said, “nope. It’s just got a sound signature that’s favorable to Art Pepper.” So there’s a perfect example of a mountain peak I would not want to build my house on. Does the Dyna have no character? Probably not, but different records sound different, and different genres all reproduce well on it, and no part of the spectrum calls attention to itself. If there is a signature to it, it’s one I can live with.

Last question – why is it that audiophiles are so uncomfortable with the idea that they might be wrong? I mean, you can’t improve if you think you are already right. I think most of them are loners with disposable income, and most people who make some money in life get it by being supremely confident, perhaps overconfident. You look at guys like [redacted] and me, scientists where humility and knowledge of our own ignorance is in the very fiber of practicing our professions well, and even if we don’t have the disposable income of some audiophiles and some of your customers, we value quality, we value expertise, and we are happy to spend our available funds on things of enduring value.

Ab_ba

Ab_ba,

I was no different back when I started. For about my first ten years in high-end audio, roughly 1975-85, I bought the most expensive equipment that I could afford, as long as it was well-liked by those whose ears I trusted and sounded good to me.

Is the audiophile of today doing something different?

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