More of the music of Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)
More of the music of Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)
A good sounding audiophile record? Yes, it is possible, we would never deny it.
In fact, we actually sell some of the best ones ourselves.
The sound on the record is excellent. It was engineered by Mark Levinson, on special equipment designed to create virtually noiseless ultra-low-distortion master tapes, without noise-reduction systems. It’s mastered by Robert Ludwig.
Audiophile Records with Honest-to-Goodness Top Quality Sound
Hot Stamper Pressings of Live Jazz Recordings Available Now
This is a very old review, probably from 2010 or thereabouts.
Hard to say what we would think of this pressing today, what with our unwavering antipathy to Half Speed Mastering, in this case being added to the consistently poor track record of the so-called UHQR.
You are no doubt aware that the Ultra High Quality Record was recently brought back from the dead by Analogue Productions on a pressing whose packaging is quite a bit more impressive than its sound.
Our Old Review
This is a BRAND NEW UNPLAYED Reference 45 RPM Half-Speed Mastered UHQR LP. They only made 1,000 of these, so sealed or unplayed copies are virtually non-existent.
This is actually one of the best sounding Reference Records. It was recorded in the ’50s on location and has very natural sound. Half-Speed Mastered by Jack Hunt even!
I think the exceptionally natural sound found on this record is the result of two factors:
His records are as phony and weird as practically every other audiophile label of the day (M&K, Telarc, Chesky), no doubt the result of these audiophile types thinking they knew a lot more about recording music than turned out to be the case.
Play any vintage pressing from the ’50s to see exactly what they failed to accomplish.
We know of at least two releases on Reference Records with “astoundingly” bad sound.
Both figure prominently on our list of the worst kind of Audiophile Bullshit Records.
Further Reading
Hot Stamper Pressings of TAS List Super Disc Albums
More Records that Do Not Belong on a Super Disc List
Sonic Grade: F
An Audiophile Hall of Shame pressing and a Half-Speed Mastered Disaster if there ever was one. If this Reference LP isn’t the perfect example of a Pass/Not-Yet record, I can’t imagine what would be. It is just awful.
Mastered by none other than Stan Ricker. RR-7 also appears to still be on Harry Pearson’s TAS List.
My recent notes can be seen below. (The 1 in the upper left hand corner is my abbreviation for side one, which seems to be the worst side of the two here.)
Track two, the Red Norvo selection, is a real mess, highlighting the problems typically caused by Half Speed Mastering, especially at the hands of one of the most notorious “Audiophile” Mastering Engineers of All Time, the late Stan Ricker. Who cut as many bad sounding records as SR/2 himself? No one I can think of comes close.
His records, with few exceptions, suffer from bad bass (probably bloated and poorly defined in this case, my notes don’t say but after playing these records for thirty years I doubt I’m very off with this guess) and phony, boosted highs, which cause the striking of the mallets to be emphasized in an especially unnatural and unpleasant way.
Arthur Lyman had dramatically better sound in the ’50s. How come none of the audiophiles at Reference Records bothered to figure out how he did it?
Can anybody take sound like this seriously?
There is only one group that buys into this kind of ridiculous, shockingly unnatural sound, and they go by the name of Audiophiles. They are the True Believers who can be found expressing their opinions on every audiophile forum on the internet. They will tell you all the reasons why this record should sound good — most of which can be found on the back of the jacket — without ever noticing that the sound is actually quite awful, regardless of the good intentions of Professor Johnson, Stan Ricker and everybody else involved with this disastrous piece of audiophile trash.
Can you imagine using a record this wrong to test and tune your stereo with? One thing you can be sure of: You would end up with one lousy sounding system.
But Mobile Fidelity has been making Half Speed Mastered Records that sound every bit as wrong as this one, and they are still at it, to the tune of millions of dollars in sales a year.
Dire Straits’ first album comes to mind immediately. I’m just waiting to find the time to review it.
Self-described audiophiles seem to be eating their records up, never noticing how phony they sound. For the life of me I cannot understand it.
The bad records Mobile Fidelity was making in the ’70s and 80s tended to have sloppy bass, sucked out mids and a boosted top end.
The ones they make now tend to be overly smooth up top (the sound of analog!), with sloppy bass and sucked out mids.
Apparently there is a market for records with that kind of sound.
More of the music of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)
Reviews and Commentaries for the 1812 Overture
Sonic Grade: D
You can find this one in our Audiophile Hall of Shame, along with more than 250 others that — in our opinion — qualify as some of the worst sounding records ever made. (On some Hall of Shame records, the sound is passable but the music is bad. These are also records you can safely avoid.)
This is what we had to say about the UHQR back in 2005 or so:
Having played this record all the way through, I have to comment on some of its sonic qualities. It’s about the most dynamic recording I’ve ever heard. This was the promise of digital, which was never really delivered. On this record, that promise has been fulfilled. The performance is also one of the best on record. It’s certainly the most energetic I can remember.
DATELINE 2015
Now that we’ve heard the best pressings of the Alwyn recording on Decca, I would have to say that Alwyn’s is certainly every bit as energetic if not more so and dramatically better sounding as well.
In other words, in 2005 we had a lot to learn.
They only made 1000 of these, which makes it 5 times more rare than any MOFI UHQR. I had a sealed copy of this record on the site fifteen or twenty years ago. I couldn’t remember the last time I had seen a sealed copy, as open ones are hard enough to come by.
Stone Age Audio Sound
Telarc makes clean, modern sounding records.
To these ears they sound pretty much like CDs.
If that’s your sound, you can save yourself a lot of money simply by avoiding vintage Golden Age recordings, especially the ones we sell. They’re much more expensive and rarely as quiet, but — again, to these ears — the colors and textures of real instruments seems to come to life in their grooves, and in practically no others. We discussed the subject, as well as a few others, in the commentary you see below:
We include in this modern group analog labels such as Classic Records, Analogue Productions, Speakers Corner, Reference, Sheffield, Chesky, Athena and the like. Having heard hundreds of amazing vintage pressings, at this stage of the game I find it hard to take any of these labels seriously.
Twenty years ago, maybe. But twenty years is a long time, especially in the world of audio.
We started a list of records that suffer from a lack of Tubey Magic like this one, and it can be found here.
Further Reading
Reviews and Commentaries for Albums Mastered by Robert Ludwig
A lovely solo piano recording from Athena, which is certainly not a label we have ever associated with good sound. Just the opposite in fact.
But they did a great job on this album (or at least I thought so many years ago when I last played it. For purposes of this commentary, let’s assume the sound still holds up).
This is how to make a good audiophile record.
Yes, there is such a thing. They may be rare but they do exist. We have quite a few of them for sale as a matter of fact.
Take a good tape, hire someone who knows his way around a normal-speed cutting lathe (with 5800+ credits on Discogs, I would hope he knows what he’s doing) as well as classical music (he cut a huge number of records for Nonesuch back in the day), press it on good vinyl and let the audiophiles of the world enjoy it.
The Connoisseur Society original may in fact be better, but where are you going to find one?
Robert, Bernie and Doug – An Honest Comparison
In another listing for an audiophile record that Robert Ludwig cut, we noted:
I suspect that if Ludwig hadn’t stopped cutting records years ago, we would not be complaining nearly as much about the questionable sound of the modern Heavy Vinyl pressings currently inundating the market.
Bernie and Doug really started letting the record lovers of the world down, beginning as far back as the ’90s. See here and here.
The muddy messes Doug Sax cut for Analogue Productions and the awful Living Stereo records Bernie cut for Classic Records were sad chapters in both men’s body of work. Here are two of the All Time Greats. Their fall was precipitous and painful for those of us who never gave up on analog.
In those dark days, they were mastering one bad record after another, all of them so unlike the amazing sounding records they had been making by the score in the ’70s and well into the ’80s.
We have nothing personal against either one of them, of course. We just haven’t liked the sound of very many of the records they’ve mastered for the last thirty years, and we have never been shy about saying so.
Exceptional Classical and Orchestral Pressings Available Now
Sonic Grade: F
An Audiophile Hall of Shame pressing and another Reference Record reviewed and found wanting.
In all the years I was selling audiophile records, one of the labels whose appeal escaped me almost entirely was Reference Records.
Back then, when I would hear one of their orchestral or classical recordings, I was always left thinking, “Why do audiophiles like these records?”
I was confused, because at that time, back in the ’80s, I had simply not developed the listening skills that today make it so easy to recognize the faults of their recordings.
I thought other audiophiles must be hearing something I wasn’t.
I could not put my finger on what I didn’t like about them, but now, having worked full time (and then some!) for more than twenty years to develop better critical listening skills, the shortcomings of their records, or, to be more accurate, the shortcomings of this particular copy of this particular title, took no time at all to work out.
My transcribed notes for RR-22:
Does this sound like what you are looking for in an audiophile record?
Shouldn’t you be looking for audiophile quality sound?
Well, you sure won’t find it here.
This link will take you to some other exceptionally bad records that, like this one, were marketed to audiophiles for their putatively superior sound. On today’s modern systems [1], it should be obvious that they have nothing of the kind and that, in fact, the opposite is true.
[1] Regarding modern stereo systems:
When I first got started in audio in the early- to mid-’70s, the following important elements of the modern stereo system did not exist:
On our current playback system, this Reference Record is nothing but a joke, a joke played on a much-too-credulous audiophile public by the ridiculously inept and misguided engineers and producers who worked for Reference Records.
This is a reference for something? For what? As I wrote about another one of their awful releases, If This Is Your Idea of a Reference Record, You Are in Real Trouble.
It would be hard to imagine that anyone who has ever heard a good vintage classical recording — here are some of our favorites — could ever confuse this piece of audiophile trash with actual hi-fidelity orchestral sound.
Click Here to See Our Favorite Pictures at an Exhibition
More Reviews and Commentaries for Pictures at an Exhibition
Sonic Grade: F
Lifeless, compressed and thin sounding, here you will find practically none of the weight and whomp that turn the best Living Stereo pressings into the powerful listening experiences we know them to be.
We know that because we’ve played them by the hundreds on big speakers at loud levels.
It’s clean and transparent, I’ll give it that, which is no doubt why so many audiophiles have been fooled into thinking it actually sounds better than the original.
But of course there is no original. There are thousands of them, and they all sound different.
The Hot Stamper commentary below discusses a pair of records that proves our case in the clearest possible way.
We sold a two pack of Hot Stamper pressings, one with a good side one and one with a good side two. Why? Because the other sides were terrible! If you have a bad original, perhaps the Chesky will be better.
Our advice is not to own a bad original, or this poorly-mastered Chesky reissue, but instead we advise that you make the effort to find a good original, or two or three, as many as it takes to get two good sides.
This Reference LP, mastered by Stan Ricker might just be the best sounding record this sorry excuse for an audiophile label ever made.
Any label that would release Audiophile BS records such as this one and this one has a lot of explaining to do.
I hadn’t played this Kōtèkan title in probably twenty years, but I remembered it sure sounded good to me back in the day, so we decided to get some in and do a shootout for them. This copy was an impressive reminder of just how good the recording can be.
More of the music of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)
Reviews and Commentaries for Recordings of the 1812 Overture
Sonic Grade: D
If you want an amazingly dynamic 1812 with huge amounts of deep bass for the firing of the cannon, you can’t do much better than this (or its UHQR brother).
But if you want rich, sweet and tonally correct brass and strings, you had best look elsewhere. I’ve never liked the sound of this record and I’m guessing if I heard a copy today I would like it even less.
Who in his right mind thinks live classical music actually sounds like this?
Telarc makes clean, modern sounding records. To these ears they sound pretty much like a CD.
If that’s your sound you can save yourself a lot of money avoiding vintage Golden Age recordings, especially the ones we sell. They’re much more expensive and rarely as quiet, but — again, to these ears — the colors and textures of real instruments seems to come to life in their grooves, and in practically no others.
We include in this modern group analog labels such as Reference, Sheffield, Chesky, Athena and the like. Having heard hundreds of amazing vintage pressings, at this stage of the game I find it hard to take any of them seriously.
Twenty years ago, maybe. But twenty years is a long time, especially in the world of audio.
We started a list of records that suffer from a lack of Tubey Magic like this one, and it can be found here.
More of the music of Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908)
Our Favorite Performance of Scheherazade – Ansermet with the Suisse Romande
Sonic Grade: F
Chesky is one of the WORST AUDIOPHILE LABELS in the history of the world. Their recordings are so artificial and “wrong” that they defy understanding. That some audiophiles actually buy into this junk sound is equal parts astonishing and depressing.
Their own records are a joke, and their remasterings of the RCA Living Stereo catalog are an abomination.
The best RCA Living Stereo pressings are full of Tubey Magic. The Chesky pressings I have played have none.
What else would you need to know about their awful records than that?
If there is a more CLUELESS audiophile label on the planet, I don’t know what it could be, and I don’t want to find out.
(Turns out there is someone producing the worst kind of remastered junk vinyl who may be even more clueless than Chesky, imagine that!)
