Direct-to-Disc Recordings – Reviews and Commentaries

Further discussion of various direct-to-disc recordings we’ve played.

Virtuoso Guitar Is Potentially an Awesome Direct to Disc Record

Hot Stamper Pressings of Direct-to-Disc Recordings Available Now

This recording has very little processing or EQ boost, and the studio is somewhat dead sounding (all too common in the late-70s). That combination can mean only one thing: If you don’t play this record loud, it will not sound right. 

The famous Sheffield S9 is exactly the same way. It sounds dead and dull until you turn it up good and loud. When you do, lookout — it really comes alive. The best pressings can sound shockingly like live music, something one just does not hear all that often, even when one plays records all day long as we do.

The snare drum on this copy represents one of the most realistic and dynamic sounding snares I have ever heard. Talk about jumping out of the speakers! If you have plenty of large, fast, powerful dynamic drivers like we do, you are in for a real treat. Track one, side one — lookout!

What to Listen For

What typically separates the killer copies from the merely good ones are two qualities that we often look for in the records we play: transparency and lack of smear. 

Transparency allows you to hear into the recording, reproducing the ambience and subtle musical cues and details that are the hallmark of high-resolution analog.

(Note that most Heavy Vinyl pressings being produced these days seem to be rather seriously Transparency and Ambience Challenged. A substantial amount of important musical information — the kind we hear on even second-rate regular pressings — is simply nowhere to be found. We believe that a properly mastered CD is likely to be more transparent and have higher resolution than the vast majority of  Heavy Vinyl  remastered pressings being produced nowadays.)

Lack of smear is also important, especially on a recording with a plucked instrument. The speed and clarity of the transients, the sense that fingers are pulling on strings, strings that ring with tonally correct harmonics, are what make these kinds of records so much fun to play. The best copies really get that sound right, in the same way that the best recordings of Cat Stevens and the Eagles and Pink Floyd and so many others get the sound of stringed instruments right.

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The Three – Liner Notes and a Rave Review

Hot Stamper Pressings of The Three Available Now

Excerpts from the Liner Notes

On a windy and unusually cold night in Los Angeles, each of the three musicians arrived before the session start time of 10 PM on November 28, 1975. At exactly 10 PM, The Doobie Brothers session that was going on since morning ended. Two assistants immediately started setting up for the session. The Steinway concert grand piano, delivered the previous day, was wheeled in to the center of the room and got tuned. Shelly Manne’s drum kit was assembled in a makeshift “booth.” Microphones were set up, checked and positions adjusted.

Initially, Telefunken microphones were positioned on the piano, but later were replaced by two Neumann U87s. The piano lid was opened to the concert position and microphones were centered relative to the keys and placed a foot (30 centimeters) inward from the hammer and a foot (30 centimeters) away from the strings. One mic was pointed toward the bottom notes and the other pointed toward the top.

To record Ray Brown’s bass, a Shure SM56 and a Sony 38A were pointed at the bridge of the bass, two inches above it. The Shure was used to capture the attack and the Sony mic was used to capture the rich low tones.

Seven microphones were used to capture the sounds of the drum set. Two U87’s were placed overhead, roughly 16-inches above the cymbals facing down. The bottom quarter of the kick drum was dampened with a blanket on the outside and was mic’ed with a Shure SM56. SM56’s were also used for toms and bass toms. Sony 38A was used on the snare and Sennheiser’s Syncrhon on the high-hat.

Each mic was placed 2 inches away from the instruments in a close mic set up. Mr. Itoh got involved with fine tuning mic positioning for tone, stereo placement and balance. Meanwhile, final adjustments were being made on the cutting machine set up.

Within the hour, the set up was done and all preparations were completed. The musicians finished warming up and were ready for Take One. The usual banter subsided and everyone put on their “game face.” Even Ray Brown, who usually cracked jokes in a loud voice, looked serious as he turned his attention to Mr. Itoh, waiting for his cue. As soon as he was notified through the intercom that the cutting needle was put down, Mr. Itoh gave the signal with his hand, and the recording started. In 16 minutes, three tracks were recorded in rapid succession.

Relieved that the initial take was over, the musicians joined the producer and engineer in the control room to listen back from the 2-track tape that was used as back up. With the initial tension gone, all three excitedly made comments and evaluated their own performance and the sounds they got. The thumbs-up was given by the cutting engineer for take one and the musicians went back to the live room for the next take. This process was repeated until 4 AM the following morning, resulting in a total of three takes per track.

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Grossman & Renbourn Direct to Disc – Updated

Hot Stamper Pressings of Direct-to-Disc Recordings Available Now

Many years ago we described the East World Direct-To-Disc Japanese import LP you see pictured this way:

Lovely acoustic music; the best cuts are the first two tracks on side two. They sound like a classic Vanguard recording from the 60s. One of the best East World titles.

UPDATE 2025

In preparation for a possible shootout, we got another copy of the record in and were much less impressed in 2025 than we were in 2010, which was probably the last time we had played the record.

It was somewhat veiled and dry. The sound wasn’t bad, it was actually fairly good, but that’s a long way from amazing. If we’re going to offer you an acoustic guitar recording, it’s going to have to be amazing sounding because there are a lot of amazing sounding vintage acoustic guitar albums from the 50s to the 70s to compete with.

And to compare it to a classic Vanguard recording is just ridiculous.

Vanguard produced some the most natural recordings in the history of the recorded music. East World produced some decent, modern and somewhat artificial-sounding recordings of mostly forgettable music in the 70s. We had no business comparing the two of them.

We obviously had a long way to go in audio before we got straightened out on that point. We’re always banging on about making audio progress so that you can recognize and collect better sounding records, and this East World pressing is the perfect example of us taking our own advice.

Our stereo had improved so much over that span of fifteen years that it was now obvious to us how second-rate this Japanese Direct-to-Disc actually was.

If you have any Direct-to-Disc recordings still sitting on your record shelf, pull some of them down and see how well the sound — and the music — hold up. Chances are good that a number of them might soon be finding a new home in the trade-in pile, in order to clear more space for better records.

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Letter of the Week – “I find myself just wanting to go back to a hot stamper regardless of the artist or genre.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of Jazz Piano Recordings Available Now

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

Gotta tip my cap to you folks. You have been blowing my mind with some amazing sound. Disc after disc. To the point where I am now having a love-hate relationship with my hot stampers due to the fact they’ve practically rendered the bulk of my 200+ record collection considerably less enjoyable to listen to.

Every time I listen to a ‘modern’ reissue now, even the good ones, I don’t necessarily dislike it—many of them are great—but they’re not the same and I find myself just wanting to go back to a hot stamper regardless of the artist or genre.

All I want is that sound. I can’t get enough of it.

I’ve got some incredible reissues too. From music matters jazz to Impex 1-steps. Lucky enough to even have a couple MMJ on their SRX vinyl as well. And boy is that quiet. Almost digital, it’s creepy. And it is great sound by today’s ‘normal’ standards.

But now that I’ve heard what kind of mind-blowing sound is actually possible, well, these are not that.

Close—and better than MANY of the alternatives—but no cigar.

The Zep II is incredible. Easily the best sounding album I now own and the crown jewel of my collection. And so quiet too. Especially compared to my other 2 RL hot mix copies I got while I was in hot pursuit of the holy grail. I love that you guys conservatively grade everything. More often than not I’ve been impressed by how much more quiet the records are than I expect them to be. As I mentioned previously this was a huge splurge for me and not something I’ll be able to do often, but now having heard it many times over it’s unequivocally worth every penny.

It occurred to me while listening to it the other night that you guys aren’t selling records. You’re selling time machines. I now possess a near infinitely-reusable ticket to go to a Led Zeppelin concert literally any time I feel like it. And I wasn’t even born yet when that was actually possible. Still trying to wrap my head around that. Could easily say the same for my Dark Side hot stamper as well.

Almost equally as exiting was to take a flier on the 45 rpm copy of The Three you all put on offer a couple weeks ago. I had never heard of the album or Joe Sample at all for that matter. I’ve since listened to the track Funky Blues easily 20+ times since I got it, to the point where I’m forcing myself to curtail my listening frequency before I cause groove damage.

This might just be my new favorite song. And it’s easily catapulted to one of my top 10 favorite albums.

The first time I heard Shelly Manne whack that snare a few seconds into the song I nearly dropped my drink. Then he did it again a few measures later and I knew I was in for a real treat. The piano is just haunting. Even the bass is unreal. I’ll stop here because I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you, but thank you for this one, this is something special as well.

I love it so much I have an ask. Any chance you guys have a low grade hot stamper copy of the 33 rpm version kicking around after your last shootout? After spending 400 on the 45 I can’t justify a second copy for hundreds of dollars but I’m dying to hear the rest of the album now. I’d pull the trigger on even your lowest grade most affordable copy if you have one, just to hear the last 2 tracks. And possibly take a little wear and tear off the poor grooves of my 45 at the same time!

Anyway I’ve rambled on enough for one evening (no Zep pun intended) but did want to be sure to express my sincere gratitude for your services. You all have well-earned another loyal customer at this point. Appreciate you indulging me and look forward to many more hot stampers to come!

Best,
Carter

Carter,

Thank you very much for taking the time to write about your experiences with three of the very special records we’ve sent you. Those are amazingly good records, no question about it.

And it seems you have discovered through those three pressings what our Hot Stampers have in such abundance, and what modern records are mostly missing to their all-but-fatal detriment.

We don’t go out of our way to use many technical terms here on the blog, but since there is one that perfectly fits the quality you describe, we will look the other way and just break our longstanding rule and put it out there, simply because it has a special something that we feel perfectly describes the aspect of the sound you are hearing but not quite able to put your finger on.

The phrase you are most likely looking for is je ne sais quoi.

As the dictionary has it, there is without a doubt an appealing quality to our records that cannot be adequately described or expressed.

The appealing quality of our Hot Stamper pressings is born of many factors, most of which we do not understand.

But here’s one: our records are cleaned in such a way that the mysterious quality you speak of is brought out to an exceptional — I might go so far as to say unparalleled — degree. No other cleaning regimen of which we are aware can do what The Prelude System can do for maximum JNSQ Factor (if I may take the liberty of abbreviating the term. Easier to type that way, to be honest).

We talk about all the things we are listening for when comparing records — various aspects of the bass reproduction, the amount of midrange presence, spaciousness, etc., etc., and we write down what we are hearing in all those areas on our notes, some of which we share with our readers right here on the blog.

If you’ve ever done one of these multi-record shootouts, you know it helps to focus on the details of the recording as you listen and scribble away at your notes. It gives you something to do while the music is impressing the hell out of your eardrums and sending endorphins surging deep into your brain matter.

But what is the final grade going to be? Do you simply add up all the factors and weigh them appropriately to come up with the overall grade you then award the record? What about the JNSQ factor? How much of that goes into the final grade?

It’s really not that complicated. The best sides do everything right. The next best sides do almost everything right, falling short in one area or another, which means they typically earn grades of 2.5+, and on down the line to the Supers and those with lesser grades.

The JNSQ Factor doesn’t really seem to make that much of a difference because all the particulars are there in the sound and they all add up to a fabulous listening experience, the kind you described in your letter.

But all of the above talk about grading misses the point entirely.

The JNSQ factor is the thing that vintage pressings have in spades and modern pressings are mostly missing. They are the mysterious, unnameable heart and soul of vintage vinyl. They are the main reason your new records don’t feel right even when they mostly sound right.

How it came to be that mass-produced records from 50 to 75 years ago often have all the magic of the music encoded in their grooves and new records rarely do is a mystery no one seems to be able to answer. We certainly can’t.

But we know it when we hear it.

And if we hear it, there must be something to it, and if there is something to it, that thing is going to need a name.

Je ne sais quoi works as well as any other, so we’ll go with that one if it’s all the same to you.

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The Three at 45 RPM Has Energy Like No Recording We’ve Ever Heard

Hot Stamper Pressings Featuring Shelly Manne Available Now

When it comes to blockbuster sound that jumps out of the speakers, the wind is at your back with The Three because this is one seriously well-recorded album. If this record doesn’t wake up your stereo, nothing will.

We call it a “blockbuster” because it does not sound very much like a jazz trio performing in a club or some such venue.

But where is the harm in that? It’s not trying to.

What it’s trying to be is huge and powerful in your home. Everything has been carefully and artificially placed in the soundfield. Shelly Manne’s cymbals are placed as far left and as far right as possible on the “stage,” making him the longest-armed drummer to have ever sat behind a kit.

The drum solo on side two is full of energy and so dynamic. Why aren’t more drum kits recorded this well?

Check out the pictures inside the fold-open cover to see all the mics that were used on the drums. That’s where that wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling sound comes from.

It’s a phenomenal big speaker jazz Demo Disc.

Play this one as loud as you can. The louder you play it, the better it sounds.

Speaking of Energy

The transients found on this recording are uncannily lifelike. Listen for the huge amounts of kinetic energy produced when Shelly whacks the hell out of his cymbals.

This is a quality no one seems to be writing about, other than us of course, but what could possibly be more important? On this record, the more energetic copies took the players’ performances to a level beyond all expectations. It is positively shocking how lively and dynamic the best copies of this record are.

I know of no other jazz recording with this combination of sonic and musical energy.

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On Discovered Again, Does It Sound Like the Snare Is Wrapped in a Towel on Your Copy?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Direct-to-Disc Recordings Available Now

The bulk of this commentary was written in 2008 and is based on the shootout we had just done, our first for the album. It has been amended a number of times since.

I bought my first copy of Discovered Again in 1976 upon its release. I was a big fan of the label at the time. The Missing Linc had been a revelation to me years before in terms of how good music could sound in the home (or apartment as the case may be). I wrote a bit about it here.

I credit that amazing record as well as Discovered Again as fundamentally important in helping me advance in this devilishly difficult hobby of ours. Back in those dark days of the 70s, although I was completely clueless at the time about pretty much everything having to do with vinyl and equipment, I can take some solace in the fact that everybody else was every bit as clueless as I was too.

This blog is dedicated to sharing some of what I’ve learned — with the unflagging help of my staff of course — about records and audio over the last fifty years.

The sound quality of the typical pressing of Discovered Again leaves much to be desired.

Two areas are especially lacking as a rule: the top end tends to be rolled off, and there is a noticeable lack of presence, which can easily be heard in the drum sound.

The snare sounds like it’s covered with a towel on most copies of this album.

How does that even happen?

Who knows? Even though the mastering is fixed at the live event, there are many other variables which no doubt affect the sound. The album is cut on two different lathes — M (Master) and S (Slave), and pressed in two different countries: Japan and Germany. Many mothers were pulled from the acetates and many, many stampers made from those mothers. (I saw one stamper marked number 15!)

Bottom line? You got to play ’em to know how they sound, just like any other pressing. If no two records sound the same, it follows that no two audiophile records sound the same, a fact that became clear early on in the listening.

Of course not many audiophiles are in a position to shootout six copies of Discovered Again, and I’m not sure most people would have the patience to do it. Here at Better Records we have a whole system set up to do that, so we waited until we had a pile of them, got them all cleaned up, and off to the races we went.

What Else to Listen For

Listen to the harmonics around the cymbals and bells on Git Along Little Dogies — on the best copies you can really hear the transients of the cymbals and percussion, so important to the actual sound of those instruments. (More records that are good for testing percussion can be found here.)

The stand-up acoustic bass is amazingly well recorded on this album; it’s so rich and full-bodied. You will have a hard time finding a string bass that sounds better.

Track after track, the sound is surprisingly open and airy. Dave’s keyboards throughout have wonderful presence; on the best copies they really jump out of the speakers. (A good test for midrange presence.)

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Lincoln Mayorga and Distinguished Colleagues – Implore You to Turn Up Your Volume

Hot Stamper Pressings of Direct-to-Disc Recordings Available Now

S9 is hands down one of the best examples of a recording that only really comes to life when you have your volume up good and loud.

One obvious reason that our turn up your volume test makes a good test is that the louder the problem, the harder it is to ignore.

There’s not much ambience to be found in their somewhat dead sounding studio, and very little high frequency boost to any instrument in the mix, which means at moderate levels this record sounds flat and lifeless.

(You could say it has that in common with most Heavy Vinyl pressings these days, assuming you wanted to take a cheap shot at those records, which, to be honest, I don’t mind doing. They suck; why pretend otherwise?)

But turn it up and man, the sound really starts jumpin’ out of the speakers, without becoming phony or hyped-up. In fact, it actually sounds more NATURAL and REAL at louder levels.  

A Quick and Easy Test

Play the record at normal levels and pick out any instrument — snare, toms, sax, bass — anything you like.

Now turn it up a notch and see if the timbre of that instrument isn’t more correct.

Add another click of volume and listen again.

I think you will see that with each increase in volume, the tonality of each instrument you hear becomes more accurate. The insturments are sounding more real than they did at lower levels.

This record would sound right at something very close to, if not actual, LIVE levels, assuming you have the system and the room that can manage it. (more…)

The Four Seasons Direct to Disc at 45 RPM

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Antonio Vivaldi Available Now

This RCA Direct-to-Disc 45 RPM Double LP has awful sound, with exceptionally hard and shrill string tone.

This is precisely why we dislike Japanese pressings as a rule — they sound like this audiophile trash.

If you own this album, it should make a good one for testing string tone and texture. The strings on this record are awful, and they should sound awful on your stereo too.

The Big Picture from a Lifelong Audiophile

You may have seen this text in another listing, but it bears repeating.

There is nothing new under the sun, and that is especially true when it comes to bad sounding audiophile records. The world is full of them.

There has been one big change from the days when I self-identified as a freshly minted audiophile in the ’70s.

Yes, the records being marketed to audiophiles these days may have second- and third-rate sound, but at least now they have good music. That’s progress, right?

The title reviewed above is a good example of the kind of crap we newbie audiophiles used to put up with back in the old days, long before we had anything resembling a clue.

This one clearly belongs on our list of bad audiophile records.

You might be asking: What kind of audio fool was I? to buy a dumbass record like this.

It’s a fair question. Yes, I admit I was foolish enough to buy records like this and expect it to have good music, or at least good sound. Of course it had neither. Practically none of these kinds of records ever did. Sheffield and a few others made some good ones, but most Direct to Disc recordings were crap.

As clueless as I was, even back in the day I could tell that I had just thrown my money away on this lipsticked-pig in a poke.

But I was an audiophile, and like a certain Mr. Mulder, I wanted to believe. These special super-hi-fidelity records were being made for me, for special people like me, because I had expensive equipment and regular records are never going to be good enough to play on my special equipment, right?

To say I was wrong to think about audio that way is obviously an understatement. Over the course of the last forty years, I (and to be fair, my friends and my staff) have been wrong about a lots of things in the worlds of records and audio.

You can read more about many of the things we got wrong under the heading: live and learn.

The good news? Audio progress is real and anyone who goes about doing audio the right way can achieve a great deal.

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Who in His Right Mind Thinks The Sheffield Track Record Is a Super Disc?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Direct-to-Disc Recordings Available Now

Subtitled: Rock Instrumental Tracks For Audio Component Testing and Evaluation.

Harry Pearson calls this absolutely the best sounding rock record ever made.

If you don’t know anything about rock music, this is the kind of rock music you like.

Harry seems to have known very little about rock. Just check out the TAS List while he was still in charge and see how many real rock albums could be found there back in the day. He mistook these lame instrumentals for actual music with good sound, yet they have neither good sound, nor are they good music.

We cannot agree with HP as to the recording quality of the album either. The sound is surprisingly compressed, and the music is every bit as lifeless as the sound.

Some of the audiophile records I’ve played since I started Better Records in 1987 pissed me off so badly, what with their crappy sound and sometimes even crappier music, as is the case here, I felt they deserved to have their very own special audiophile sh*t list.

Now that I have a blog with unlimited amounts of space to review and categorize the awful records some audiophiles like, that is exactly where this hopeless release can be found.

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Lincoln and Doug Produced The Audiophile Sgt. Pepper of Its Day

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Lincoln Mayorga Available Now

When I was selling audio equipment back in the 70s (Audio Research, Fulton speakers), this was a favorite Demo Disc in our store.

With a big speaker like the Fulton J, the bass drum at the end of track two would shake the foundation. At the time I had never heard a record with bass that went anywhere near that deep. (The album came out in 1972. I’m guessing I probably first heard a copy in ’75 or ’76 when I bought my Fultons, which would have been sometime in my early twenties.)

Every bit as amazing to me was the string quartet on side 2. You could actually hear the musicians breathing and turning the pages on their music stands, just as if you were actually in their “living presence.” No recording I had ever owned allowed me to hear that level of natural detail.

This is one of the albums that made me realize how good audio in the home could be.

In a way this was the Audiophile “Sgt. Pepper” of its day, a record that was so much better than anything else you’d ever heard it made you rethink the possibilities.

Our best pressings are probably not very much like others you have heard. Some of those can be aggressive, many of them can be dull and lack the spark of live music, some of them can have wonky bass or be lacking in the lowest octave — they are prey to every fault that befalls other records.

Which shouldn’t be too surprising. Records are records. Pressing variations exist for every album ever made. If you haven’t noticed that yet, start playing multiple copies of the same album while listening carefully and critically.

If your stereo is any good at all, it should not take you long to notice how different one record sounds from another.

Just listen to the reedy texture on the saxophone on “Limehouse Blues” — on the best copies you can really hear the leading edge transients of the brass, so important to the sound of those instruments.

Doug Sax Is The Man

The Mastering Lab was one of the greatest cutting houses to ever master records.

Doug Sax knew how to keep his lathes and amplifiers working at state-of-the-art levels. The sound quality is unsurpassed.

And he did it all with tubes.

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