Testing Dynamics

Belafonte at Carnegie Hall – Key Tracks for Side One

Hot Stamper Pressings of Pop and Jazz Vocal Albums Available Now

Harry Pearson brought this record to the attention of audiophiles with his TAS list a long time ago, and rightfully so: it’s an amazing recording.

We happen to love the music too, which makes it one of the most recommendable records we have ever offered. If you can find a better combination of demo disc sound, with music worth the hassle and expense of reproducing it properly, more power to you. We sure can’t.

Because this is a live recording, because it has lots of natural instruments as well as a vocal, because it was recorded in the Golden Age by one of the greatest labels of all time, RCA, by Bob Simpson no less — for this and many other reasons, it has to be considered one of the most amazing recordings in the history of the world.

That said, it is our contention (and the basis of our business model) that the brilliant quality of the recording can only be appreciated if you have the pressing that captured the sound that the engineers recorded. In other words, a Hot Stamper.

From an audiophile point of view, you get to hear live musicians and all the energy they bring to this music, all on the stage at the same time: strings, brass, percussionists, and Harry Belafonte front and center. Tube mics (and not too many of them), a tube tape recorder, RCA’s superb engineering and all-tube mastering chain ensure that the “breath of life” is captured intact.

I know of no better live popular vocal recording on the planet.

Side One

Introduction
Darlin’ Cora
Sylvie 

This is a wonderful song, sung by Belafonte with virtually no accompaniment. His voice should be rich and full-bodied with plenty of presence. In other words, he should sound like a living, breathing person.

Cotton Fields 

The liner notes say this song was introduced in the previous year in Las Vegas. Before I read that I noted that the uptempo arrangement had a jazzy feel to it. The walking bass is well up in the mix and the piano and a few of the other instruments in the song are well behind — it’s pretty much Belafonte and bass. The bass is deep and very note-like.

This is of course a big system record. Do not expect good results from small speakers.

But what makes this one of the best Demo Quality tracks on the album is Belafonte’s amazingly energetic performance. He really sells this song.

As I was listening to the dynamics on the best pressings, it made me think about all the compressed-to-death vocals that are so much a part of the recording style of the modern era. Nobody gets loud anymore.

Belafonte did back in 1959, and not too many followed him.

(more…)

Why Do So Few Living Stereo Pressings Sound as Good as This One?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Orchestral Spectaculars Available Now

We introduced our most recent shootout winning copy of The Reiner Sound from 1958 this way:

The Reiner Sound returns to the site for the first time in years, here with big, bold, dynamic Triple Plus (A+++) Living Stereo sound throughout this original Shaded Dog pressing.

These are just a few of the things we had to say about this amazing copy in our notes: “fully extended up top”…”sweet and rich”…”supremely dynamic and spacious!!!” (side one)…”massive and tubey and 3D”…”like no other” (side two)…”explosive finish.”

These sides are doing everything right – they’re rich, clear, undistorted, open, spacious, and have depth and transparency to rival the best recordings you may have heard.

This record will have you asking why so few Living Stereo pressings actually do what this one does.

The more critical listeners among you will recognize that this is a very special copy indeed.

Everyone else will just enjoy the hell out of it.

And here are the notes to prove it!

Side one was at least 3+.

  • Lots of tape hiss
  • The top end really extends
  • Sweet and spacious dynamic peaks, and rich
  • Supremely dynamic and spacious

Side two was right up there with it:

  • Massive and tubey and three-dimensional
  • Very full and dynamic
  • The explosive finish is like no other

(more…)

The Best Import Pressings of Picture Book Have Explosive Dynamics

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Simply Red Available Now

This commentary was written about 15 years ago.

I actually used to demo my stereo with “Sad Old Red.”

At one point the sound really explodes, an effect which has always held a great deal of appeal for me.

That’s what live music can do, so that’s what I want my stereo to do.

For thirty [now 45+] years I’ve avoided little boxes and screens and gone straight for the big dynamic speaker systems that can really show you the life that’s hiding in your recordings.

That’s what the revolutionary changes in audio commentary is about — unlocking all the energy and excitement that a good LP has to offer.

“Holding Back the Years” also boasts superb sound. It may be the best track the band ever recorded, and it’s probably the one most everyone knows, but there are many here that are nearly as good. The cover of The Talking Heads’ “Heaven” (from Fear of Music) is out of this world.

I still remember standing in a record store — I think it was Tower; I lived in San Diego at the time and went there often — when I heard a song I knew but could not quite place.

Eventually I realized it was “Heaven” from Fear of Music, an album I knew well, being a big Talking Heads fan at this time. This is the mid-80s, long after I had been knocked out by More Songs About Buildings and Food in 1979. But it wasn’t The Talking Heads singing it.

I bought the album, one I knew next to nothing about, on the spot. Any band that wants to cover The Talking Heads is a band with taste, and once I got the album home I knew this band had plenty of talent too.

Of course it would be many years until I managed to find a clean, early import pressing of the album — back then you had to luck into such things in used record stores, there was no Ebay or Discogs to make it possible.

The domestic pressings can be good, but the best imports will always be better. (I’m not even sure we buy the domestics anymore.)

Big Speakers Wanted

This is a big speaker record. It requires a pair of speakers that can move air with authority below 250 cycles and play at loud levels. If you don’t own speakers that can do that, this record will never really sound the way it should.

It demands to be played LOUD. It simply cannot come to life the way the producers, engineers and artists involved intended for it to if you play it at moderate levels.

For the longest time our motto has been “Records for Audiophiles, Not Audiophile Records,” and we see no reason to change it.  If anything, the current spate of manufacturers of Heavy Vinyl pressings are making records that get worse sounding by the day. Many of the most egregious offenders can be found here.

Want to find your own killer copy?

Consider taking our moderately helpful advice concerning the pressings that tend to win our shootouts.

As of 2024, shootouts for this album should be carried out:

How else can you expect to hear this record at its best?

Based on our experience, Picture Book sounds better:

(more…)

The First Two Roxy Music Albums Are the Band’s Best Sounding

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Roxy Music Available Now

For Your Pleasure is a Masterpiece of Art Rock, Glam Rock and Bent Rock all rolled into one. AMG calls Roxy Music the “most adventurous rock band of the early ’70s” and I’m inclined to agree with them.

Spacious, dynamic, present, with HUGE MEATY BASS and tons of energy, the sound is every bit as good as the music. (At least on the best copies it is. That’s precisely what Hot Stampers are all about.)

Strictly in terms of recording quality, For Your Pleasure is on the same plane as the other best sounding record the band ever made, their first.

Siren, Avalon and Country Life are all musically sublime, but the first album and Pleasure are the only two with the kind of dynamic, energetic, POWERFUL sound that Roxy’s other records simply cannot show us (with the exception of Country Life, was is powerful but a bit too aggressive).

The super-tubey keyboards that anchor practically every song on the first two albums are only found there. If you want to know what Tubey Magic sounds like in 1972-73, play one of our better Hot Stamper Roxy albums. Roxy and their engineers and producers manage to capture a keyboard sound on their first two albums that few bands in the history of the world can lay claim to.

I love the band’s later albums, but none of them sound like these two. The closest one can get is Stranded, their third, but it’s still a bit of a step down.

Chris Thomas and John Punter

With all the latest technological advances in playback, I can tell you that these records sound a whole lot better than I ever thought they could.

For Your Pleasure is an amazing recording. Chris Thomas produced side one; he produced the rest of their albums (and engineered The Beatles and Badfinger and mixed Dark Side of the Moon and on and on).

The album has many of his trademark qualities: an enormous, 3-dimensional soundstage; tons of bass; tremendous dynamics; and energy to rival anything around.

John Punter‘s engineering is superb in all respects — virtually faultless.

Big Rock Records with Big Rock Sound

Both of these albums are the very definition of big speaker albums. The better pressings have the kind of ENERGY in their grooves that are sure to have most audiophile systems begging for mercy.

This is The Audio Challenge that awaits you. If you don’t have a system designed to play records with this kind of SONIC POWER, don’t expect to hear them the way the band and those involved in their productions wanted you to.

This album wants to rock your world, and that’s exactly what our Hot Stamper pressings are especially good at doing.

Roxy Music is one of the most influential and important artists/bands in my growth as a music lover and audiophile, joining the ranks of Steely Dan, 10cc, Ambrosia, Yes, Bowie, Supertramp, Eno, Talking Heads, Jethro Tull, Elton John, The Beatles, Crosby, Stills and Nash, The Cars, Led Zeppelin, Cat Stevens and countless others, musicians and bands who dedicated themselves to making the highest quality recordings they could, recordings that could only come alive in the homes of those with the most advanced audio equipment.

My system was forced to evolve in order to reproduce the scores of challenging recordings issued by these groups in the 70s.

It’s clear that these albums informed not only my taste in music, but the actual stereo I play that music on. It’s what progress in audio is all about. I created the system I have in order to play demanding recordings such as these, the music I fell in love with all those years ago.

Want to find your own killer copies?

Consider taking our moderately helpful advice concerning the pressings that have been winning our Hot Stamper shootouts for years. For Your Pleasure and the first album only really come alive:

Of course it needs to be played loud. What Roxy Music album doesn’t?

Furthermore, the better copies sound their best:

(more…)

Listening in Depth to Fingers

Hot Stamper Pressings of Recordings by Rudy Van Gelder Available Now

At times this record really sounds like what it is: a bunch of guys in a big room beating the hell out of their drums and singing at the the top of their lungs. You gotta give RVG credit for capturing so much of that energy on tape and transferring that energy onto a slab of vinyl. 

Of course this assumes that the record in question actually does have the energy of the best copies. It’s also hard to know who or what is to blame when it doesn’t, since even the good stampers sound mediocre most of the time. Bad vinyl, worn out stampers, poor pressing cycle, it could be practically anything.

Side One

Fingers

This is the most problematical track on the entire album — please DO NOT JUDGE the album by this song! The sound is much better on the tracks that follow. This may have been an attempt to get that hot hit single sound for track one, the kind that would jump out of your radio speaker, but the effect can be a bit much, depending on how low distortion and high resolution your equipment is. The better your system, the less of a problem you will have getting this track to play well. If this track sounds decent, everything after it will really shine.

The biggest problem one typically runs into is a lack of bass and lower midrange. On the better copies the bass will be fine on the next track and those that follow.

Romance of Death

The guitar work on this track is stellar, some of the best musicianship on the album. Credit must go to Rudy Van Gelder for making the guitar jump out of the mix. One of the things he can do, practically better than anyone, is make a lead instrument sound as big and as bold as you’ve ever heard it.

Merry-Go-Round

This track has a tendency to be overly compressed. Some stampers have so much added compression that the guitar and the percussion in the middle of the soundfield turn into undifferentiated muck. Those copies are what we refer to as “Not-So-Hot Stampers.”

Wind Chant

Side Two

Note that the sound on side two tends to be more open, rich and clear as a rule.

(more…)

Listening in Depth to Katy Lied

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Steely Dan Available Now

As a huge Steely Dan fan starting with their second album, Countdown to Ecstasy, in 1975 I went right down to my local Tower Records and bought Katy Lied as soon as it came out. It has been a personal favorite since the day I first played it.

Much like our longstanding customer Roger, when the album didn’t sound all that good to me, I just assumed it was a bad recording. 35 years of hard work and perseverance later, I was finally able to hear the album in all its glory.

It’s only fitting that it’s a member of our extensive listening in depth series.

Any record we get obsessed with tends to get played hundreds and hundreds of times. Knowing the record as well as we do makes it easy to recognize what to listen for in order to separate the best copies from the merely good ones.

And of course, as a card carrying audiophile, I had to buy the MoFi pressing when it came out a few years later. A company that would release a record with sound that bad should have gone out of business a long time ago. For some reason they are still in business, a fact that does not reflect well on the audiophile community.

The Key

The trick with Katy Lied Is to find the right balance between richness, sweetness and clarity.

Take three or four Katy Lied pressings, clean them up and play just one or two of the tracks we discuss below. On a highly resolving system, you shouldn’t be able to find any two copies that get those tracks to sound the same. We used to do our shootouts with up to a dozen copies at a time — now more like 6-8 since we can’t find that many clean copies anymore — and no two sound the same to us.

Side One

Black Friday

Arguably the most musically aggressive track on the album, “Black Friday” is without question the most sonically aggressive and a quick indicator of what you can expect from the rest of the side. The typical copy is an overly-compressed sonic assault on the ears. The glaring upper midrange and tizzy grit that passes for highs will have you jumping out of your easy chair to turn down the volume. Even my younger employees who grew up playing in loud punk rock bands were cringing at the sound.

However, the good copies take this aggressive energy and turn it into pure excitement. The boys are ready to rock, and they’ve got the pulsing bass, hammering drums, and screaming guitars to do it.

(more…)

Farmers Market Barbecue – First Among Equals, or The Best Pablo Ever?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Count Basie Available Now

Musically FMB is a Top Basie Big Band title in every way. This should not be surprising: many of his recordings for Pablo in the ’70s and early ’80s display the talents of The Count and his band of veterans at their best.

Sonically it’s another story. Based on our recent shootout for this title, in comparison to the other Basie titles we’ve done lately, we would have to say that FMB is the best Basie big band title we’ve ever played. Since so many Basie big band recordings are so good, we don’t want to get ahead of ourselves; after all, we haven’t done shootouts for all of his Pablo large group recordings. To be safe we’ll just call this one First Among Equals.

The following are some general guidelines as to What to Listen For while you critically evaluate any of the Basie Big Band Pablo recordings (or any other big band recordings for that matter).

Simply put, we offer here a short list of qualities that we’ve come to appreciate on the best of the Basie Big Band pressings, qualities that we find are often in short supply on lesser LPs (and, as a rule, those that have been remastered onto Heavy Vinyl). (more…)

What to Listen For on The Best of Friends

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Loggins and Messina Available Now

The best news we have to report concerning this compilation is that it does not sound at all like a compilation, and by that we mean that the best copies don’t sound “dubby”, flat, small or compressed. The best copies, in fact, ROCK, with all the energy that the band is capable of.

You may have noticed that we do very few Greatest Hits albums here at Better Records, for the simple reason that most greatest hits albums don’t sound very good. This is one of the few exceptions to that rule that we’ve come across in our record playing travels over the years.

The best originals may be better, but the difference between our Hot Stampers of this album and whatever original pressing you own should be pronounced, in our favor of course.

What to listen for on side one.

Angry Eyes

If you have good weight on your side one, the place you can hear it most clearly is in the toms on Angry Eyes, the first track. They are big and solid and really punch through the mix, staying in the lower part of the soundfield below the vocals.

The lightweight pressings make the toms sound anemic. The copies with poorly defined bass will make the toms sound fat and blobby.

No two copies of the record should have the toms sounding the same; they don’t on our system and they shouldn’t on yours.

What to listen for on side two.

Danny’s Song

You want Kenny Loggins to be front and center. Ideally his voice will be both sweet and breathy (and heartfelt of course). If your copy has its high end intact, and is cut clean, the sibilance from the master tape will be much less gritty on your side two than it is on other copies.

This is where you can hear how present, tonally correct and distortion-free your copy is.

(more…)

Yes, We’re Getting Awfully Close To The Edge…

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Yes Available Now

On the difficulty of reproduction scale, this record ranks well above most of the albums we play, in the top few percent without a doubt.

You need lots of Tubey Magic and freedom from distortion, the kind of distortion-free sound I rarely hear on any but the most heavily tweaked systems — the kind of systems that guys like me have been slaving over for more than forty years.

If you’re a weekend warrior when it comes to working on your stereo, this is not the record for you.

It took a long time to get to the point where we could clean the record properly, twenty years or so, and about the same amount of time to get the stereo to the level it needed to be, involving, you guessed it, many of the revolutionary changes in audio we tout so obsessively.

It’s also not easy to find a pressing with the low end whomp factor, midrange energy and overall dynamic power that this music needs, and it takes one helluva stereo to play one too.

If you have the kind of big system that a record like this demands, when you drop the needle on the best of our Hot Stamper pressings, you are going to hear some astonishingly good sound.

Unless your system is firing on all cylinders, even our Hottest Stamper copies can be difficult. Your electricity has got to be cooking, you’ve got to be using the right room treatments, and ideally you should be using a demagnetizer such as the Talisman on the record itself, your cables (power, interconnect and speaker) as well as the individual drivers of your speakers.

This is a record that’s going to demand a lot from the listener, and we want to make sure that you’re up to the challenge. If you don’t mind putting in the hard work, here’s a record that will reward you many times over, and probably teach you a thing or two about tweaking your gear in the process.

We’d started and abandoned this shootout multiple times before breaking through in 2008. The typical copy was just too painful to listen to, and the better pressings weren’t sounding the way we’d hoped they would.

Where was the Tubey Magical analog sound with the HUGE whomp factor that we’d been hearing on the best copies of Fragile and The Yes Album?

We just could not find that sound on Close to the Edge.

As futile as our previous attempts were, we decided in 2008 that we would take another stab at it. After all, there had been quite a few changes around here that had the stereo working really well —  the addition of the Odyssey Record Cleaning Machine and Prelude Record Cleaning System to our cleaning process, the Talisman Magnetic Optimizer, the third pair of Hallographs we added years back, tons of smaller tweaks, and a few other tricks that we’re going to leave hidden up our sleeves for now.

The Planets Align

Think about it: This is a highly COMPLEX recording, with HUGE organs, light-speed changes, lots of multi-tracking, and what amounts to an OVERLOAD of musical information. Can you imagine how irritating that would sound on a third-rate copy? We didn’t have to imagine it — we lived through it!

But that’s exactly what made the shootout so rewarding. We had finally gotten the sound we were searching for from Close To The Edge, although it was anything but easy. The toughest peaks to climb are the ones you feel the best standing at the top of, and I have no doubt that many of you will be able to get there, just as we did, as long as you’re willing to work for it. (We humbly suggest you follow our lead.)

We put a lot of time and energy into getting everything just right for our shootouts, and to hear the album sound amazing you’re going to have to do the same. If it doesn’t all come together and our Hot Stamper Close to the Edge leaves you cold, feel free to send it back for a full refund. That’s always our policy, but we wanted to stress it in regards to this album, because it is VERY difficult to reproduce. (Big speakers are pretty much a must on this one as well.)

And it should be noted that there is distortion on the tape. It’s on every LP copy and it’s on the CD too. There are cacophonous passages that have what sounds like board overload, mic preamp overload, tape saturation or some combination of all three.

(more…)

801 Live – None Rocks Harder

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Brian Eno Available Now

I listened to this album from start to finish just yesterday (5/31/2024), so I thought it only fitting that I share my enthusiasm for this absolutely amazing record with those who read this blog.

The best Island copies of this album rock harder than practically any record we’ve ever played. If you have the system for it, this amazing Rhett Davies recording will bring a live art rock concert right into your living room.

This is a big speaker record. It requires a pair of speakers that can move air with authority below 250 cycles and play at fairly loud levels. If you don’t own speakers that can do that, this record will never really sound the way it should.

It’s right at the top of the list of my favorite rock albums — a desert island disc if ever there was one. I stumbled across it more forty years ago and I’ve loved it ever since. It all started when a college buddy played me the wildly original Tomorrow Never Knows from the album and asked me to name the tune before the vocals kicked in. Eno’s take is so different from The Beatles version that I confess it took me an embarrassingly long while to catch on.

Demo Disc Quality Sound

This is a true Demo Disc in the areas of sound reproduction listed below. Other records with these important qualities can be seen by clicking on any of these links.

Adventures in Music and Sound

Phil Manzanera and Brian Eno were founding members of Roxy Music. AMG calls Roxy Music the “most adventurous rock band of the early ’70s” and I’m inclined to agree with them.

Those who played in Roxy Music are certainly some of the most influential and important artists in my growth as a music lover and audiophile, joining the ranks of 10cc, Steely Dan, Yes, James Taylor, Peter Gabriel, David Bowie, America, Fleetwood Mac, Supertramp, Eno, Talking Heads, The Doors, Jethro Tull, Elton John, The Beatles, Santana, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Little Feat, Traffic, Nilsson, Elvis Costello, Sergio Mendes, Neil Young, The Eagles, Frank Zappa, Pink Floyd, Joni Mitchell, The Cars, Peter Frampton, Led Zeppelin, Cat Stevens and countless others.

These musicians and bands were clearly dedicated to making high quality recordings, recordings that could only come to life in the homes of those with the most advanced audio equipment.

My system was forced to evolve in order to reproduce the scores of challenging recordings issued by these groups in the 60s and 70s.

The love you have for your favorite music has to be the strongest driving force if you actually want to be successful in this hobby.

Some of the records that did the most to help me advance in audio can be found here.

Want to find your own top quality copy?

Consider taking our moderately helpful advice concerning the pressings that tend to win our shootouts.

(more…)