*Record Breakthroughs

Our Four Plus Shootout Winner for Dire Straits from 2011

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Dire Straits Available Now

UPDATE 2026

This review for Dire Straits’ first album was written in 2011. We had just discovered that a pressing of the album was clearly superior to every other pressing we had ever played. We were pretty excited about it and wanted to share the news about our breakthrough.

A substantial amount of the time, breakthroughs come about due to the conventional wisdom being wrong — and us not knowing it until an experiment proved it wrong. The needle is the only thing that can give us an answer we can trust, certainly not the pundits or the self-described experts.

What makes them experts? We have no idea and they never say. They just seem to “know” things, but they never tell us how they know them.

We do. We can’t shut up about all the stuff we know!

No concept is more fundamental to collecting the best sounding pressings than to be able to test records to find out if the received wisdom you are using as a guide is right, wrong or somewhere in-between.

At the bottom of the listing for the album you can see a number of links to other records that share the same qualities as the first Dire Straits release does.

Note that it says “Reissue=Best.” This is because the killer copy we discovered in 2007 was indeed a reissue, and in 2011 we found an even better sounding copy, also a reissue, or perhaps we were somehow able to reproduce it better. Probably a bit of both.

The Hot Stamper pressings of this album we offer to the discerning audiophile are posted in the following categories. If you are looking for other records like the first Dire Straits album, click on any of the links below.

Our 2011 Review

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Dexter Gordon Knocked Us Out Back in 2007

Hot Stamper Pressings of Blue Note Albums Available Now

UPDATE 2026

In 2007 we had a low opinion of both the Blue Note label and the work of Rudy Van Gelder, but that changed over the decades as we auditioned more and more of his amazing recordings, many of them reissues of one kind or another.

(Some text has been altered, mostly the overuse of capitalization.) Our latest review for One Flight Up can be found here.

Our 2007 Commentary

This Blue Note LP is without a doubt one of the best sounding jazz records we’ve ever heard. We were auditioning a bunch of jazz records today (4/25/07), and when the needle hit the grooves on this one we were absolutely blown away.

I can’t think of one jazz record we’ve ever played here at Better Records with this kind of whomp. Everything here is so rich and full — nothing like a typical Blue Note album.

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With This UK Copy You’d Better Be Ready to Rock

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now

UPDATE 2026

The shootout for Zep IV discussed below was carried out in 2012.

It seems an early British PORKY/PECKO pressings did very well, winning side one and coming close to the best on side two.

For at least five years now we have been unable to find a British pressing that eaned grades better than 2+, or Super Hot. Since the British pressings tend to be very expensive and hard to find in good shape, we have simply stopped buying them as they do not seem to be capable of winning shootouts anymore.

Other comments may be problematic in this review as well, so best to consult our latest listing for what we think we currently know about the album. Here is a short test to get you started.

Our Review from 2012

We did a massive shootout in 2012 for Zep’s beloved fourth album and this British pressing earned a nearly perfect score with some of the BIGGEST, BOLDEST, HARDEST Rockin’ sound we have ever heard on the album. Without a doubt this is the best sounding IV side two we’ve ever played, with the biggest bottom of them all.

When the Levee Breaks, a problematical track on even the best copies, finally sounds the way you’ve always heard it in your head — relentless and so powerful it’s downright scary.

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Listen to Winwood’s Left Hand on “Glad”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Steve Winwood Available Now

Many years ago, perhaps in 2015, while playing an especially transparent copy of John Barleycorn, we learned something new about the album. Although it was a title I had been playing since it came out all the way back in 1970, apparently things had changed.

This pressing made it clear — really, for the first time — exactly what Winwood was doing with his left hand on the piano during the song Glad.

There are two musical figures that one can focus on: one involving the lower notes, which tend to be blurry, obscured and murky on most pressings, and two, the right-handed higher notes, which are typically much more clear and audible in the mix.

Only the very best copies let us “see” the bass notes of the piano so clearly and correctly. Next time you’re in the mood to compare different pressings of Barleycorn, pay special attention to the lower notes of the piano on Glad. It is our contention, backed by mountains of evidence, that no two copies of the album will get that piano to sound the same. (It will also help if you have large dynamic speakers with which to do the test.)

Lately we have been writing quite a bit about how pianos are good for testing your system, room, tweaks, electricity and all the rest, not to mention turntable setup and adjustment.

  • We like our pianos to sound natural (however one chooses to define the term).
  • We like them to be solidly weighted.
  • We like them to be free of smear, a quality that is rarely mentioned in the audiophile record reviews we read.

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On Heroes, It Took Us Ages to Break the Sound Barrier

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of David Bowie Available Now

Because the conventional wisdom turned out to be so wrong.

Our intuition that the British originals of Heroes would sound the best was incorrect.

The experiments we carried out falsified that prediction.

In our world, intuitions have a bad track record, but more than a few audiophiles — many of whom are addicted to sharing their “record knowledge” on audiophile forums and youtube channels — seem unaware of the shortcomings of this approach.

Taking a page from one of the greatest minds of the 20th century, we’ve opted to use a more scientific approach in order to discover the record pressings that have by far the best soundi, and we encourage you to do likewise. 

We pioneered the evidence-based approach to finding the best sounding pressings, and, like all good scientists, we shared it with everyone. Some in the audiophile community have taken it to heart, but most have chosen to put their faith in reviewers, forum posters, common sense and logic.

None of these produce consistently good results, but those who use these methods are loathe to question them and only rarely if ever learn the error of their ways.

Once a decision has been made and a specific pressing acquired — you could call it door number three I suppose — cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias immediately kick in to justify the result, and soon enough the game is over. The prize has been won. It’s as good as it gets. Whatever faults it may have must lie in the recording, not the pressing.

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On This Rachmaninoff Title, the Right Reissues Clearly Have the Best Sound

More of the music of Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943)

Until we heard the right later pressings, we had always been disappointed with this TAS List recording, wondering what all the fuss was about. The original Shaded Dog pressings we had played left a lot to be desired. Like many of the old records we audition, it badly lacked both highs and lows, our definition of boxy sound.

Well, now we know.

The earliest Shaded Dog pressings have consistently worse sound than the reissues we offer.

We never offered the record in Hot Stamper form because we didn’t think the sound of the originals was all that impressive, TAS List or no TAS List.

Mystery solved, and truly Hot Stampers have now been made available to the discriminating audiophile.

Harry’s list, as was so often the case, did not provide the information needed to find the pressing that captured all the qualities of the recording the way this one does.

Did Harry have a good later pressing?

Did he have an original and simply liked it more than we did?

Who knows? Like so much in the world of records, it’s a mystery.

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Our History with Led Zeppelin’s Rock Classic from 1990 – 2010

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now

UPDATE 2026

In 2010 we wrote the overview below about what we thought we knew about Zep II. We have since amended the text in a few places and added some links. Please to enjoy.

This is undoubtedly one of the best, maybe THE best hard rock recording of all time, but you need a good pressing if you’re going to unleash anything approaching its full potential. We just conducted a shootout and heard MUCH more bad sound than good. You name it — imports, reissues, originals — we’ve played ’em, and most of them were TERRIBLE.

Especially the non-RL originals. That’s some of the worst sound we’ve ever heard.

If you see a “J” stamper, run for your life.

The best copies of Zep II have the kind of rock and roll firepower that’s guaranteed to bring any system to its knees. I can tell you with no sense of shame whatsoever that I do not have a system powerful enough to play this record at the levels I was listening to it at in one of our shootouts a while back. When the big bass comes in, hell yeah it distorts. It would have distorted worse at any concert the band ever played. Did people walk out, or ask the band to turn down the volume? No way. The volume IS the sound.

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On Blood, Sweat and Tears’ Second Album, It’s All About the Brass

Blood, Sweat and Tears’ Second Album Is a Top Test Disc

UPDATE 2026

The commentary you see below was written around 2010.

In it we describe a mind-blowing pair of copies that were each awarded a grade of Four Pluses. There was one Four Plus side one on one copy, and a different copy had a Four Plus side two.

We no longer give Four Pluses out as a matter of policy, but that doesn’t mean we don’t come across records that deserve them from time to time.

This was one of those records, a true outlier. Out of fifty records, this was one of the two copies that took the sound (and music!) of one of the sides to places we had never heard it go before. We call these kinds of records breakthrough pressings. When you get paid to critically audition records for decades, all day, every day, you are bound to run into some from time to time. These are their stories.

Our Commentary from 2010 (Minor changes have been made.)

Our last big shootout was back in early 2008.

What we learned this time around for this album can be summed up in a few short words: it’s all about the brass.

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Rhapsody in Blue – We Finally Broke Through in 2015

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of George Gershwin Available Now

This original Six Eye LP has the rich brass and smooth strings that allow this wonderful music to astound. This is by far our favorite performance of Rhapsody in Blue, and it is unlikely that another recording will come along to take away its crown.

Smooth and solid, not brash or blary, what really impressed about the sound here was how full-bodied it was, yet it was never thick or murky the way so many of the Heavy Vinyl pressings being made today sound.

(Audiophiles often associate these two “qualities” with analog itself, which is why the purveyors of these so-called AAA remastered records insist that they know the sound their customers want and by god they are going to give it to them.)

Instead the best copy we played was transparent in the lower mids and below, and that sound was just glorious after listening to too many thin and brash pressings. The piano is solid, rich, high-rez and very percussive — there is no tubey old school smear to be heard, and that too was a surprise.

I’ve always loved these performances, but the shrill Columbia strings and brass have been hard to get past. Most copies suffer from upper-midrangy, glary, hard sound and blary brass. I’ve come to accept that this is nothing more than the “Columbia Sound,” and as a consequence we rarely put much effort into surveying their recordings, even their more famous ones.

I won’t say all that’s changed; it really hasn’t. The vast majority of Columbia classical pressings are still going to sound as awful as they have in the past.

What has changed is that finally, with this copy (and the stereo/room we have in 2015) we’ve found the sound that we’d been looking for on the legendary MS 6091. (more…)

Basic Miles – Our Four Plus Shootout Winner

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Miles Davis Available Now

In 2018 we awarded this copy’s side two of Basic Miles our very special Four Plus (A++++) grade, which is strictly limited to pressings (really, individual sides of pressings) that take a recording to a level we’ve never experienced before, a level we had no idea could even exist.

We estimate that less than one per cent of the Hot Stamper pressings we come across in our shootouts earn this grade. As I write this there is not a single other record on the site that earned that grade on either side. You can’t get much more rare than that.

UPDATE 2026

  • 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 Four Pluses out 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, out of the blue, revealed to us sound of such high quality that it changes our appreciation of the recording itself.
  • We found ourselves asking “Who knew?” Perhaps a better question might have been “How high is up?”

Kind of Blue

Want to know how good our Hot Stamper Kind of Blue pressings sound? Listen to this very record. If you play the tracks that were recorded in 1958, the year before Kind of Blue, you will hear practically the same lineup of musicians.

That means Stella By Starlight and Little Melonae on side one, and Green Dolphin Street and Fran-Dance (Put Your Little Foot Right Out) on side two. We’re talking Bill Evans, John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley in their prime, 1958, with top 1958 sound to match.

The nine-minute-plus Green Dolphin Street that opens side two is nothing short of amazing, some of the coolest jazz you will ever hear, on any record, at any price.

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