Stone Age

These records are best suited to the Old School systems of the 60s and 70s.

Any high quality modern stereo will reveal their many shortcomings.

If your system doesn’t, these records are telling you that you have work to do.

Moondance on Heavy Vinyl Is a Disgrace to Audiophiles and Record Lovers All Over the World

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Van Morrison Available Now

The original grade I gave out in 2015 when I last played this remastered version as part of a shootout was “D.” I explained at the time:

Just listen to how strange Van’s voice sounds, so lean, hard and sour. That alone qualifies it for an “F,” but considering how bad most pressings of this album are, let’s be fair, if not downright generous, and call it a “D.”

I just revisited the record in a current shootout, and after giving it some thought I have decided that the right grade is in fact “F.” It cannot be any other, for reasons I discuss below.

In 2014 I had written:

Where is the Tubey Magic of the originals? The sweetness? The richness? And why is there so little ambience or transparency? You just can’t “see” into the studio on this pressing the way you can on the good originals, but that’s fairly consistently been the knock on these remastered Heavy Vinyl records. We noted as much when we debunked Blue all the way back in early 2007, so no surprise there.

Having just played a marvelous shootout-winning early pressing, this time around I found the reproduction of Van’s voice on the reissue to be so leaned-out, artificial and unpleasant that I could hardly stand to listen to it.

We had reset the VTA correctly; the overall tonal balance of the recording from top to bottom was correct. It was only the voice that sounded so off. All the other shortcomings I had mentioned before were still true of course, but none of that mattered. The singer on this record just sounded awful.

As you know, we are constantly making improvements to our playback system. The real Moondance we had just played sounded better than ever. The fake Moondance, however, was sounding worse than ever. That’s what higher quality playback can do for you. It makes your good records sound better than they’ve ever sounded, and shows you just how bad your bad records really are.

Do I have a bad copy of the Heavy Vinyl pressing? Maybe, can’t say I don’t. If any of you out there in the real world have a copy of this pressing that you like, and would be willing to send it to me to hear for myself, I would be more than happy to give it a listen and report my findings on this blog.

Short of that I’m not sure what more I can do. I certainly do not feel the least bit inclined to waste a nickel of my hard-earned money on another copy of this ridiculously badly-mastered crap vinyl.

If you want to read about other records that have these same shortcomings, there are links below to the ones we’ve auditioned and identified to date. Our advice would be to avoid them, and if you own some of these pressings, perhaps now is the time to give them another listen and see if you don’t hear the same faults we did.

And, of course, the Hot Stamper pressings we offer, when played side by side with any of these Heavy Vinyl remasters, can help you to see more clearly just where these new records are going wrong, or, in the case of Moondance, completely off the rails.

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Powerful People on MoFi – What Was I Thinking?

More Entries in the Mobile Fidelity Hall of Shame

UPDATE 2024:

I just found my old review notes from 2014! They can be seen below. Please to enjoy.

At the time of our last shootout in 2014, I still had the MoFi pressing of Powerful People in my personal, very small (at that point) record collection.

Almost all the best sounding records from my collection had been sold off long before, going to good homes that I can only assume would play them more than I had in the last ten years.

If it’s a record you see on our site, chances are good I’d have listened to it until I’d practically turned blue in the face.

But I had kept my Powerful People Half-Speed these 30+ years because the domestic pressings I’d played were just too damn midrangy to enjoy.

At least the MoFi had bass, top end and didn’t sound squawky or hard on the vocals.

Well, let me tell you, played against the best domestic pressings, the MoFi is laughable. (In that respect it shares much with the current crop of audiophile reissues.)

It’s unbelievably compressed, a problem that is easily heard on the biggest, most exciting parts of the tracks. They never get remotely as big or as loud on the MoFi as they do on the lowly A&M originals.

It’s also sucked out in the midrange, like most MoFis, and, like most MoFis and Half-Speeds in general, the bass is not well-defined, punchy, and it never goes very deep.

There is also the issue of the MoFi 10k boost on the top end — it’s clearly audible and as bothersome as ever.

In summation, like most of the better audiophile records — from long ago as well as those being produced today — the most you can hope for from these reissues is that they can fix a few problems you might be saddled with on the particular pressing you own.

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This MoFi Makes My Head Hurt

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Richard Strauss Available Now

Is the painting on the cover that of a man whose head is suffering from the ridiculously shrill string tone of this MoFi?

Doubtful. Impossible actually. But that’s exactly how my head feels when I play one of these awful MoFi classical LPs.

Their rock, pop and jazz remasters were hit and miss in the old days, with some real winners hidden amongst the junk, but their classical releases that I’ve played, without exception, was a dog.

Want a good way to know you’re dealing with bad records and collector mentality?

When you find one of these records in your local used record store, it is almost guaranteed to be pristine.

Good records get played. MoFi’s classical releases, like plenty of other classical records audiophiles found attractive, got collected and spent most of their days sitting on a shelf, out to pasture so to speak.

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We Review the Classic Records Pressing of SR 90212

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Chabrier Available Now

The Classic Records pressing of the famous Mercury is a gritty, shrill piece of crap.

I used to have a less-than-revealing all-tube system back in the 90s, but even that system, limited as it was and not remotely as revealing as the one we have now would have had a hard time hiding the faults of this awful record.

I don’t know how dull and smeary a stereo would have to be in order to play a record this phony and modern sounding in order to make it listenable, but I know that it would have to be very dull and very smeary, with the kind of vintage sound that might work for Classic’s Heavy Vinyl pressings but not much else.

It’s a disgrace, and the fact that it’s on the TAS Super Disc list is even more disgraceful.

Which all adds up to an audiophile hall of shame pressing and a record perfectly suited to the stone age stereos of the past.

Argenta and Ansermet

I much prefer Ansermet’s performances on London to those of Paray on Mercury.

As of 2022 we actually prefer the famous Argenta recording for Decca that’s on the TAS List, CS 6006.

Both are excellent and clearly superior to the Paray, even on the original Mercury pressings we’ve played.

UPDATE 2024:

This recording is no longer on the TAS Super Disc list. Our favorite, the London with Argenta, is however.

We call that progress! Maybe there’s hope for the TAS List yet.

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Led Zeppelin II on Classic Records – Seriously, What Could Be Sadder?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now

An unmitigated disaster — ridiculously bright and ridiculously crude.

In short, a completely unlistenable piece of garbage, and, along with the MoFi pressing from 1982, one of the worst sounding versions of the album ever made.

Over the years we have done many Led Zeppelin shootouts, often including the Classic Heavy Vinyl Pressings as a “reference.” After all, the Classic pressings are considered by many — if not most — audiophiles as superior to other pressings.

What could be sadder?

In fact, you will find very few critics of the Classic Zep LPs outside of those of us (me and the rat in my pocket) who write for this Better Records, and even we used to recommend three of the Zep titles on Classic: Led Zeppelin I, IV and Presence when they first came out.

Wrong on all counts.

Since then we’ve made it a point to review most of the Classic Zeps, a public service of Better Records. We don’t actually like any of them now, although the first album is still by far the best of the bunch.

Below you will find our reviews of the more than 200 Heavy Vinyl pressings we’ve played over the years.

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Point of Know Return – CBS Half-Speed Reviewed

Hot Stamper Pressings of Proggy Rock Albums Available Now

Both this album and Leftoverture are way too bright and thin.

What were the engineers thinking — that brighter equals better?

In the case of these two titles it most definitely does not. It’s the sound that most audiophiles are fooled by to this day.

Brighter and more detailed is rarely better. Most of the time it’s just brighter. Not many half-speed mastered audiophile records are dull. They’re bright because the audiophiles who bought them preferred that sound. I did too, a couple of decades ago [make that four decades ago].

Hopefully we’ve all learned our lessons by now, expensive and embarrassing as such lessons usually turn out to be. 

Waking Up a Dull Stereo

If your system is dull, dull, deadly dull, the way older systems tend to be, this record has the hyped-up sound to bring it to life in no time.

There are scores of commentaries on the site about the huge improvements in audio available to the discerning (and well-healed) audiophile. It’s the reason Hot Stampers can and do sound dramatically better than their Heavy Vinyl or Audiophile counterparts: because your stereo is good enough to show you the difference.

With an old school system you will continue to be fooled by bad records, just as I and all my audio buds were fooled thirty and forty years ago. Audio has improved immensely in that time. If you’re still playing Heavy Vinyl and Audiophile pressings, there’s a world of sound you’re missing. We discussed the issue in this commentary:

My advice is to get better equipment and that will allow you to do a better job of recognizing bad records when you play them.

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

Hot Stamper Pressings of TAS List Super Disc Albums Available Now

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?

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The Pretenders on Nautilus – Dead As a Doornail Sound

More of the Music of The Pretenders

An audiophile hall of shame pressing and another Half-Speed mastered audiophile LP reviewed and found wanting.

This pressing is completely lifeless. The brain trust at Nautilus managed to take all the rock out of this rock and roll band.

It’s yet another ridiculous joke played on a far-too-credulous audiophile public.  If this Nautilus LP isn’t the perfect example of a pass/not-yet record, I can’t imagine what would be.

But look who’s talking? I bought plenty of Nautilus pressings in the ’70s and ’80s, some good ones, some not so good. And some of them I still liked well into the 2000s. What’s my excuse?

Even as recently as, say, fifteen years ago, I still had yet to achieve much of the progress in audio I would need to achieve in order to get past the last of the audiophile pressings I still clung to.

And there’s still one that just cannot be beat, even now.

Keep in mind I had been heavily into audiophile equipment and high quality records for thirty years at that point.

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Thoughts on MoFi’s Midrange Suckout

Our Favorite Roots Rock Albums with Hot Stampers Available Now

I was already a huge Mobile Fidelity fan in 1982 when they released Music from Big Pink, which, for some strange reason, was an album I knew practically nothing about.

I was 15 when the second album came out and I played that album all the time. For some reason the first album had eluded me. How it managed to do that I cannot understand, not at this late date anyway. A major malfunction on my part to be sure.

At some point in the early 90s I got hold of an early British pressing of the album.

Comparing it to my MoFi, I was shocked to hear the singers in the band so present and clear. Having only played MoFi’s remastered LP, I had never heard them sound like that.

The MoFi had them standing ten feet back.

The Brit put them front and center.

There was no question in my mind which presentation was right.

Around that time I was noticing that many Mobile Fidelity pressings seemed to be finding that same distant-midrange sound, and finding it on wildly different recordings. Recordings from different studios, by different engineers, in different eras.

The midrange suckout effect is easily reproducible in your very own listening room. Pull your speakers farther out into the room and farther apart and you can get that MoFi sound on every record you own. I’ve been hearing it in the various audiophile systems I’ve been exposed to for more than 40 years.

Nowadays I would place it under the general heading of My-Fi, not Hi-Fi. Our one goal for every tweak and upgrade we make is to increase the latter and reduce the former.

And note also that when you play your records too quietly, it creates an artificial sense of depth.

That’s one of the main reasons we play them loud; we want to hear the pressings that have real presence and immediacy, because they’re the ones that are most likely to win our shootouts.

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Parallel Lines – MoFi Reviewed

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Blondie Available Now

I became a giant fan of this album the moment I heard it, but I always felt that the sound of my old original left something to be desired. So many copies are thick and lifeless; the music wants to cook but the sound seems to be holding it back.

The record I had in the ’70s was probably not that good anyway. Fortunately, it only took us another 35+ years to figure out how to find the best pressings.

And like an idiot I’m sure I had traded my original domestic pressing in for the MoFi when it came out in the early ’80s, the kind of dumbass audiophile move I discuss in the commentary What Kind of Fool Was I?

As previously noted, the MoFi, one of those Jack Hunt turgid muckfests (check out City to City for the ultimate in murky MoFi sound), is incapable of conveying anything resembling the kind of clean, clear, oh-so-radio-friendly pop rock sound that Mike Chapman and the band were aiming for.

The recording has copious amounts of Analog Richness and Fullness to start with. Adding more is not an improvement; in fact it’s positively ruinous.

Is it the worst version of the album ever made?

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