Audiophile Labels

Record Collecting for Audiophiles – Audiophile Label Pressings

Seriously, This is Your Idea of Analog?

Audiophile Quality Pressings of Orchestral Music Available Now

Well Recorded Classical Albums from The Core Collection Available Now

Whether made by Klavier or any other label, starting at some point in the mid-90s, many Heavy Vinyl pressings started to have a shortcoming that nowadays we find insufferable: they are just too damn smooth.

Smeary, thick, dull, opaque, and lacking in ambience, this record has all the hallmarks of the modern Heavy Vinyl reissue.

The sound is smeary, thick and opaque because, among other things, the record was mastered by Doug Sax from a copy tape, and not all that well either.

It is yet another murky audiophile piece of trash from the mastering lathe of the formerly brilliant Doug Sax. He used to cut the best sounding records in the world. Then he started working for Analogue Productions and never cut a good record again as far as I know.

On this record, in Doug’s defense it’s only fair to point out that he had dub tapes to work with, which is neither here nor there as these pressings are not worth the dime’s worth of vinyl used to make them.

Maybe the hearing-challenged Chad Kassem wanted this sound — almost all his remastered titles have the same faults as this Klavier — and simply asked that Doug cut it to sound real good like analog spossed to sound in the mind of this kingpin, which meant smooth, fat, thick and smeary.

Yes, this is exactly what some folks think analog should sound like.

Just ask whoever mastered the Beatles records in 2014. Somebody boosted the bass and smoothed out the upper midrange, and I don’t think they did that by accident. They actually thought it was good idea.

Harry Moss obviously would not have agreed, but he’s not around anymore to do the job right.

Here is the cover for the real EMI. No idea if the sound is any good, but it has to be better than the awful Klavier, doesn’t it?

Below are some thoughts from a recent classical listing that we hope will shed some light on our longstanding aversion to the sound of these modern remastered records.

What is lost in these newly remastered recordings? Lots of things, but the most obvious and bothersome is transparency.

Modern records are just so damn opaque.

We can’s stand that sound. It drives us crazy. Important musical information — the kind we hear on even second-rate regular pressings — is simply nowhere to be found.

That audiophiles as a whole — including those that pass themselves off as the champions of analog in the audio press — do not notice these failings does not speak well for either their equipment or their critical listening skills.

It is our contention that no one alive today makes records that sound as good as the ones we sell. Once you hear our Hot Stamper pressing, those 180 gram records you own may never sound right to you again. They sure don’t sound right to us, but we are in the enviable position of being able to play the best properly cleaned older pressings (reissues included) side by side with the new ones, where the faults of the current reissues become much more recognizable, even obvious. When you can hear them that way, head to head, there really is no comparison.

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An Insult to Aaron Copland on Reference Records

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:

  • Lean tonality
  • No real weight
  • No Tubey Magic
  • Blurry imaging when loud
  • No real depth
  • Bright tonal balance

Is this the sound 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:

  • Stand-alone phono stages.
  • Modern cabling and power cords.
  • Vibration controlling platforms for turntables and equipment.
  • Synchronous Drive Systems for turntable motors.
  • Carbon fiber mats for turntable platters.
  • Highly adjustable tonearms (for VTA, etc.) with extremely delicate adjustments and precision bearings.
  • Modern record cleaning machines and fluids.
  • And there wasn’t much in the way of innovative room treatments like the Hallographs we use.

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.

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Offenbach – More Bad Tube Mastering from the Formerly Brilliant Doug Sax

Audiophile Quality Pressings of Orchestral Music Available Now

Classical Albums from The Core Collection Available Now

Sonic Grade: F

The sound is smeary, thick and opaque because, among other things, the record was mastered by Doug Sax on tube equipment from a copy tape, and not all that well either.

It is yet another murky audiophile piece of trash from the mastering lathe of the formerly brilliant Doug Sax. Back in the day he cut some the best sounding records ever made.

Then he started working for Analogue Productions and never cut a good sounding record again as far as I know. (Obviously I cannot have played everything he worked on from the mid-90s on. Who would want to?)

On this Offenbach record, in Doug’s defense it’s only fair to point out that he had dub tapes to work with, which is neither here nor there as these pressings are not worth the dime’s worth of vinyl used to make them.

Should you buy a record because it was made this way?

According to the back of the jacket:

Mastering by Doug Sax at The Mastering Lab using an all vacuum tube system.

Single Step processing was used for this “Limited Edition” release. The stamper was made from the first generation master and not more than 500 were pressed from each stamper. This process allows all records to be of “test pressing quality.” Klavier records are used by many manufacturers and audio specialty shops for demonstrating their equipment.

Maybe the notoriously hearing-challenged Chad Kassem wanted this sound — almost all his remastered titles have the same faults — and simply asked that Doug cut it to sound real good like analog spossed ta sound in the mind of this kingpin, which meant smooth, fat, thick and smeary. (Back in the 70s, if you had a fairly typical stereo system — Japanese receiver and three-way box speakers with a 12″ woofer — you surely know the sound I am talking about. Record stores are one of the few places one can go to hear that sound these days. If you’re old like me, it can really take you back.)

This Is Analog?

Apparently, even in our modern era this is what some folks think analog should sound like.

Just ask whoever remastered The Beatles on Heavy Vinyl. Somebody boosted the bass and smoothed out the upper midrange, and I don’t think they did that by accident. They actually thought it was good idea.

Harry Moss obviously would not have agreed, but he’s not around anymore to do the job right.

Here is the cover for the real EMI. No idea if the sound is any good, but it has to be better than the awful Klavier, doesn’t it? (We plan on doing a shootout for this title soon.)

Below are some thoughts from a recent classical listing that we hope will shed some light on our longstanding aversion to the sound of these modern remastered records.

What is lost in these newly remastered recordings? Lots of things, but the most obvious and bothersome is transparency. Modern records are just so damn opaque. We can’s stand that sound. It drives us crazy.

Important musical information — the kind we hear on even second-rate regular pressings — is simply nowhere to be found. That audiophiles as a whole — including those that pass themselves off as the champions of analog in the audio press — do not notice these failings does not speak well for either their equipment or their critical listening skills.

It is our contention that no one alive today makes records that sound as good as the ones we sell. Once you hear one of our Hot Stamper pressings, those 180 gram records you own may never sound right to you again. They sure don’t sound right to us, but we are in the enviable position of being able to play the best properly cleaned older pressings (reissues included) side by side with the new ones, where the faults of the current reissues become much more recognizable, even obvious. When you can hear them that way, head to head, there really is no comparison.

Ravel / Haydn / Acoustic Recording Series, Volume 2 – Reviewed in 2008

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. 

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Red Norvo – We Used to Really Like The Forward Look on UHQR

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 the case of this record, you can add the consistently poor track record of the so-called UHQR to our list of reasons for suspecting that the quality would not in fact by Ultra High.

You are no doubt aware that the UHQR 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:

  1. It’s a live recording, meaning not everything can be controlled and the space is real, not engineered. And,
  2. This is early days in the recording history of Keith Johnson. As time went on he thought his engineering skills were improving, but I see little evidence of that in the results of his labors: the records he’s been making since 1957.

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

If This Is Your Idea of a Reference Record, You Are in Real Trouble

Hot Stamper Pressings of TAS List Super Disc Albums

More Records that Do Not Belong on a Super Disc List

An astoundingly bad Sound Show!!

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.

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Tchaikovsky / 1812 Overture on Telarc UHQR

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.

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Piano Works of Debussy & Ravel – This Is How to Make a Good Audiophile Record

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.

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The Power of the Orchestra – Remastered by the Brain Trust at Chesky

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.

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Kōtèkan – Percussion And…

More Kōtèkan

More Percussion Recordings of Interest

  • You’ll find STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them on both sides of this original Reference LP
  • So transparent, dynamic and REAL, this copy raises the bar for the sound of percussive music on vinyl
  • Includes an extraordinary interpretation of Ravel’s La Flute Enchantee that must be heard to be believed
  • “… heady, explosive, weird, bizarre and brilliant playing…” – S.F. Chronicle

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.

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