Advice-WTLF

Records with Advice on What to Listen For

Thoughts on a Direct to Disc Recording – Strengths and Weaknesses

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

Reviews and Commentaries for Direct to Disc Recordings

In a shootout we conducted more than ten years ago, two White Hot Stamper pressings tied for the best side two we had ever heard.

In the final round it simply came down to the fact that the other copy was a little more clear, this one is a little richer.

They were both so amazing we couldn’t decide which we preferred so we gave them both White Hot Stamper grades.

In our experience this rarely happens.

Most of the time one side of one of the records in the shootout will show itself to be the clear winner, doing everything — or almost everything; there is no such thing as a perfect record — right.

When you play enough copies, eventually you run into the one that shows you how the music wants to be heard, what kind of sound seems to work for it the best. The two side twos we liked were variations, and fairly subtle ones at that, on a theme — a little richer here, a little clearer there, but both so good.

To be honest, most copies of this title were quite good. Few didn’t do most things at least well enough to earn a Hot Stamper grade. This has not been the case with many of the Sheffield pressings we’ve done shootouts for in the past. Often the weaker copies have little going for them. They don’t even sound like Direct Discs.

Some copies lack energy, some lack presence, most suffer from some amount of smear on the transients.

But wait a minute. This is a direct disc. How can it be compressed, or lack transients? Aren’t those tape recorder problems that are supposed to be eliminated by the direct to disc process?

“Supposed to be eliminated” is a long way from “were eliminated.” Even though the mastering is fixed at the live event, there are many other variables which affect the sound. The album is pressed in three different countries: the United States, Japan and Germany. Many mothers were pulled from the plated acetates (the “fathers”) and many, many stampers made from those mothers.

Bottom line? You got to play ’em, just like any other record. If no two records sound the same, it follows that no two audiophile records sound the same, a fact that became abundantly clear very early on in the listening. Of course not many audiophiles are in a position to shootout eight or ten copies of I’ve Got The Music In Me, and I’m not sure most audiophiles would even want to. Here at Better Records we have a whole system set up to do exactly that, so we waited until we had a pile of them, got them all cleaned up, and off to the races we went.

Further Reading

The blog you are on now as well as our website are both devoted to very special records such as this.

I’ve Got the Music in Me is the very definition of a record that really comes to life on big speakers at loud levels. The better pressings have the kind of energy in their grooves that are sure to leave most audiophile systems begging for mercy.

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These Stampers Consistently Come in Last in Our Shootouts

More of the Music of The Eagles

Reviews and commentaries for The Long Run

All the original domestic pressings are cut by Ted Jensen at Sterling.

You can find TJ and STERLING on every last one of them (with the notable exception of the SRC pressings, best avoided). What you can’t find is good sound on every last one of them.

The most common stampers can be found from pressing plants using the following label designations: MON, PRC, PRCW, AR and SP.

In our experience, two of the five labels listed above have the potential to win shootouts. Two of the others tend to end up somewhere in the middle of the grading curve. One consistently ends up at the bottom.

It’s important to keep in mind that in our shootouts, the person hearing the copy being played, the one noting its strengths and weaknesses, has no idea what pressing plant actually produced the record, or what its specific stampers numbers might be.

That kind of  information is compiled after the grading has been done. That’s when these patterns emerge.

The domestic pressings with the stampers shown above have not done well in our shootouts for years now. If you own a copy with these stampers, or ones like them, the good news is that we can get you a much better sounding copy of The Long Run than you have ever heard. It won’t be cheap, but we guarantee that it will be very, very good.

Stamper numbers are not the be-all and end-all in the world of records, but after hearing too many copies with these stampers and less than stellar sound, from now on we are going to focus our attention on the stampers that do well and leave copies with these markings sitting in the bins.

Stampers

That the stampers are entirely responsible for the quality of any given record’s sound is a mistaken idea, and a rather convenient one when you stop to think about it. Audiophiles, like most everybody else on this planet, want answers, the simpler the better. Easier to memorize that way.

But in the world of records, answers, simple or otherwise, are fairly hard to come by.

There is only the hard work that it takes to come up with the best answer you can under your present circumstances, and by that we mean: your present equipment, your present tweaks, your present room, your present electrical quality, your present listening skills, your present table setup, etcetera, etcetera.

Not to mention the present condition of your ears.

With every change to your system, the record you used to like the best could turn out to be second-rate compared to the record you used to think was second-rate but has now become first-rate. What changed? Who knows?

This, of course, drives most audiophiles crazy, so they ignore or downplay their own inconvenient findings. Instead they refuse to believe their own two ears!

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Something Phony This Way Comes

More of the Music of Linda Ronstadt

Hot Stamper Pressings on the Asylum Label

Here’s what we learned from a shootout many years ago.

Many copies sounded like they were half-speed mastered.

  • They had a little something phony added to the top of Linda’s voice.
  • They had a little bit of suckout right in the middle of the midrange, the middle of her voice, and
  • They had a somewhat diffuse, vague quality, with sound that lacked the solidity we heard on the best pressings.

These hi-fi-ish qualities that we heard on so many copies reminded us of the kind of audiophile sound we decry at every turn. We’ve played literally hundreds and hundreds of MoFi’s and other Half-Speed mastered records over the course of the last twenty years, and one thing we know well is what they sound like.

But think about it. What if you only had one copy of the album — why would you have more than one anyway? — and it had that Half-Speed sound?

You would simply accept that the recording obviously had those qualities, assuming you could even recognize them in the first place.

Let’s face it, most audiophiles can’t, or all these companies would have gone out of business and stayed out of business, and their out of print records would sell for peanuts, not the collector prices they bring on ebay and audiophile web sites.

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The Pretenders – An Open Soundstage Is Key

More of the Music of The Pretenders

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of The Pretenders

Take it from us, it is the rare pressing that manages to get rid of the harshness and congestion that plague so many copies.

Look for a copy that opens up the soundstage — the wider, deeper and taller the presentation, the better the sound, as long as the tonal balance stays right.

When you hear a copy sound relatively rich and sweet, the minor shortcomings of the recording no longer seem to interfere with your enjoyment of the music. Like a properly tweaked stereo, a good record lets you forget all that audio stuff and just listen to the music as music. Here at Better Records, we — like our customers — think that’s what it’s all about.

And we know that only the top copies will let you do that, something that not everyone in the audiophile community fully appreciates to this day. We’re doing what we can to change that way of thinking, but progress is, as you may well imagine, slow.

What To Listen For

The best copies have superb extension up top, which allows the grit and edge on the vocals to almost entirely disappear.

Some of it is there on the tape for a reason. That’s partly the sound they were going for. This is, after all, a Bob Clearmountain mix and a Jimmy Iovine production.

Heavy handed processing is what you hire them to do. You want a hit album, don’t you?

But bad mastering and pressing add plenty of extra grit to the average copy, enough to ruin it in fact.

You can test for that edgy quality on side one very easily using the jangly guitar harmonics and breathy vocals of “My Baby.”

If the harmonic information is clear and extending naturally, in a big space, you are very likely hearing a high quality copy.

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Led Zeppelin – The Drums and Cymbals Are Key to the Best Pressings

Hot Stamper Pressings of Led Zeppelin’s Albums Available Now

More Demo Discs for Bass

The drum sound on the best copies is punchy and huge, with prodigious amounts of studio space swirling around Bonham’s kit.

There’s real resonance to the toms, not the standard overdamped sound of a studio kit, which gives them a lively, realistic, natural quality that you rarely hear outside of Zep records.

And the cymbals crash and splash just like real cymbals do, which is yet another sound you rarely hear outside of the best Zep pressings. (The best copies of Zep IV have crashing cymbals on Black Dog and Rock and Roll like few records in the history of rock.)

We just finished a massive shootout for this album and were reminded just how hard this album rocks. Achilles Last Stand, For Your Life and Nobody’s Fault But Mine are all KILLER on a Hot Stamper pressing like this one. After cleaning and playing a pile of copies we are pleased to report that the best of them are full of The Real Zep Magic. The average LP may not be much of a thrill but our Hot Stampers sure are, with all the energy, dynamics, whomp, and presence (pun only slightly intended) you could hope for.

That is EXACTLY the kind of sound we love here at Better Records.

Hey Man, Turn It Up!

We’re hoping this copy ends up in the hands of someone who will play it good and loud because that’s the way it was meant to be heard. It’s the only way the mix works, which is a sure sign that that is clearly how the artists intended their records to be played.

Turn up the volume and play the midsection of For Your Life on side one or the entire Nobody’s Fault But Mine on side two to hear Zep rockin’ out in their prime.

Nobody did it better than these four guys. If you have Hot Stampers of their albums, you have some of the best sounding rock and roll records ever made, records that sound the way Zep wanted you to hear them as long as you play them at good loud levels.

What to Listen For 

This copy has the kind of sound we look for in a top quality Led Zeppelin record: immediacy in the vocals (so many copies are veiled and distant); natural tonal balance (most copies are at least slightly brighter or darker than ideal; ones with the right balance are the exception, not the rule); good solid weight (so the bass sounds full and powerful); spaciousness (the best copies have wonderful studio ambience and space); and last but not least, transparency, the quality of being able to see into the studio, where there is plenty of musical information to be revealed in this sophisticated recording.

Here is a more comprehensive breakdown of what we were listening for when evaluating Presence.

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Rod Stewart – A Breakthrough Listening Experience

More of the Music of Rod Stewart

In the listing for our 2010 Shootout Winner, we noted:

Having made a number of serious improvements to our system in the last few months, I can state categorically and without reservation that this copy of Never a Dull Moment achieved the best stereo sound I have ever heard in my life (outside of the live event of course). I’m still recovering from it.

[In 2022, of course this statement strikes me as way over the top. But I must have believed it when I wrote it.]

The credit must go to the engineering of Mike Bobak for the Demo Disc sound. We just finished our most comprehensive shootout ever for the album, culling the best sounding dozen from about twenty-five entrants, and this copy just plain kicked all their butts, earning our highest grade on side one (A+++).

Side one here is OFF THE CHARTS! No other side one could touch it. It’s got all the elements needed to make this music REALLY ROCK — stunning presence; super-punchy drums; deep, tight bass; and tons of life and energy.

The Sound

So many copies tend to be dull, veiled, thick and congested, but on this one you can separate out the various parts with ease and hear right INTO the music.

It’s also surprisingly airy, open, and spacious — not quite what you’d expect from a bluesy British rock album like this, right? But the engineers here managed to pull it off.

One of them was Glyn Johns (mis-spelled in the credits Glynn Johns), who’s only responsible for the first track on side one, True Blue. Naturally that happens to be one of the best sounding tracks on the whole album.

Side Two

We were thrilled when we dropped the needle on side two and heard BIG BASS and TONS of ENERGY just like this amazing side one.

Listen to the room around the drums on Angel — you can really hear the studio as well as the sound of the skins being beaten. On the same track, the meaty guitar in the left channel sounds mind-blowingly good.

With a little more top end, the kind that makes the glockenspiel in the right channel clear and present and harmonically correct, this copy would have been hard to beat on side two as well. 

The story of our old shootout is what progress in audio in all about. As your stereo improves, some records should get better, some should get worse. It’s the nature of the beast for those of us who constantly make improvements to our playback and critically listen to records all day. And it all comes courtesy of the countless revolutions in audio that have been such a boon to audio over the last twenty years or so.

Want to find your own killer copy?

Consider taking our moderately helpful advice concerning the pressings that have been winning our Hot Stamper shootouts for years. Never a Dull Moment can only really come alive:

Of course it needs to be played loud. What classic British blues rock album doesn’t?

Furthermore, the best copies sound their best:

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Bob Dylan – This Side Two Was a Little Dry

More of the Music of Bob Dylan

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Bob Dylan

This commentary was written about ten years ago.

This 360 Label pressing has a SUPERB A+++ SIDE ONE backed with a strong A++ side two. We had a big stack of 360s and Red Labels with good stampers to compare, and this copy had a side one that could not be beat. 

Side two has amazing clarity and transparency as well. Compared to side one it’s just a bit dry.

Those of you with tubey systems — vintage and otherwise — will probably go crazy for this sound. This was the best side two we heard this time around, but since side one was clearly more impressive we topped off the grade for the second side at A++.

The 360 label pressings are a mixed bag, running from mediocre to mindblowing; most of the time they are too trashed to even consider playing on an audiophile turntable.

Most of the later pressings are sterile, congested, and lean. [We no longer buy them or put them in shootouts.]

What separates the best copies from the also-rans is more than just rich, sweet, full-bodied sound. The best copies like this one make Dylan’s voice more palpable — he’s simply more of a solid, three dimensional real presence between the speakers. You can hear the nuances of his delivery more clearly on a copy like this.

Now it should be noted that some songs here definitely sound better than others. Do not expect Tombstone Blues to become a favorite demo track. It’s upper midrangy here because that’s the way they wanted it. One must assume that the songs sound the way Dylan wanted them to, because every other track has a slightly different tonal balance, and that change in tonality seems to have been chosen to be a part of the effect of the song itself.

Or not. Who’s to say?

On a typical pressing of this record, the harmonica can be shrill and aggressive, but on the best copies, like this one, it will sound airy and full-bodied — for the most part. There are times on every copy we’ve ever played where the harmonica solos can be just a bit much.

The sound for the best tracks has rich, meaty drums and bass. The sound is smooth, never thin and shrill. There’s a certain amount of opacity that modern mastering engineers would be tempted to fix by boosting the highs. This is a very bad idea. Brighter in this case is going to destroy what’s good about the recording.

But that has never stopped them before, has it?

Hey, want to find your own top quality copy?

Consider taking our moderately helpful advice concerning the pressings that consistently win our Hot Stamper shootouts.

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Piano and Snare Testing with Dire Straits

More of the Music of Dire Straits

Reviews and Commentaries for Love Over Gold

Telegraph Road does something on this copy that you won’t hear on one out of twenty pressings: It ROCKS. It’s got ENERGY and DRIVE.

Listen to how hard Allan Clark bangs on the piano on side one — he’s pounding that piano with all his might. No other copy managed to get the piano to pop the way it does here, clear and solid.

Wow, who knew? Maybe this is the reason HP put the record on the TAS Super Disc List. (I rather doubt he’s ever heard a copy this good, but who’s to say?)

Best test for side two?

The snare drum on Industrial Disease. Play five copies of the album and listen for how much snap there is to the snare on each of them. It will be obvious which ones get the transient attack right and which ones don’t. (If none of them do, try five more copies!)

One Way To Know

This modern album (1982) can sound surprisingly good on the right pressing. On most copies the highs are grainy and harsh, not exactly the kind of sound that inspires you to turn your system up good and loud and get really involved in the music. I’m happy to report that both sides here have no such problem – they rock and they sound great loud.

We pick up every clean copy we see of this album, domestic or import, because we know from experience just how good the best pressings can sound.

What do the best copies have? REAL dynamics for one. And with those dynamics you need rock solid bass. Otherwise the loud portions simply become irritating.

A lack of grain is always nice — many of the pressings we played were gritty or grainy.

Other copies that were quite good in most ways lacked immediacy and we took serious points off for that.

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Burt Bacharach – What to Listen For

More of the Music of Burt Bacharach

More Records with Advice on What to Listen For

We played a good-sized stack of these recently, but not many of them sounded the way we wanted them to.

The majority of copies had a tendency to be bright, which is MURDER when the horns start blaring at the levels we play our records at.

In addition there are plenty of copies out there that lack energy, while others suffer from transient smearing, clearly audible on the brass.

And while we’re at it, what would a vintage A&M record be without a healthy amount of Tubey Magic? The best copies have loads of it, without ever becoming thick, fat, or overly smooth, or losing bass definition.

What to listen for? This list of problems that plague the average copy:

  • Brightness,
  • Blare,
  • Lifelessness,
  • Smear,
  • Tubey Magic.

It takes a special copy to make these easy listening numbers sound as fresh and invigorating as they no doubt did in the studio, and that’s what the best Hot Stampers are all about.

Above all, this is simply a fun album of pop tunes, cleverly arranged and played with gusto. (I would be very surprised if these West Coast sessions weren’t Wrecking Crew to a man, or woman as the case may be. Bacharach is known to be a stickler so the best of the best session guys and gals are probably the only ones he would consider.)

When it sounds this good the music is positively wonderful. There are tons of Burt Bacharach hits here — The Look Of Love (sounding in some ways even better than it does on Casino Royale!), Message To Michael, Alfie, What The World Needs Now, I Say A Little Prayer and many more.

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Jobim and Ramone – The Strings on this Album Are a Tough Test

jobimthecomposerMore of the Music of Antonio Carlos Jobim

More Records that Are Good for Testing String Tone and Texture

Credit engineer Phil Ramone for correctly capturing the sound of every instrument here: the guitars, piano, flutes, strings, drums, percussion instruments — everything has the natural timbre of the real thing.

I used to think this recording erred on the bright side, but not the Hot Stamper copies. They are tonally right on the money.

When the balance lacks lower midrange, the sound can get lean, which causes the strings to seem brighter than they really are, a not uncommon problem with some of the pressings we heard.

We had quite a batch of these to play, including imports, originals, reissues (all stereo), and one lone mono, which was so ridiculously bad sounding we tossed it right out of the competition and into the trade pile.

For those of you playing along at home, we are not going to be much help to you here in finding your own Hot Stampers. Every version had strengths and weaknesses and all are represented in the three listings we are putting up today.

The sound of this side one blew our minds — no other copy could touch it. So open and airy, yet with real weight to the piano and a clear and strong bass line, this copy did EVERYTHING right.

The strings are very much part of the ensemble on this album, and getting good string tone, with just the right rosiny texture, the least amount of smear, freedom from shrillness or hardness — this is not easy to do. 

Side two was quite good at A+ to A++, but we found other copies that bested it, including one Triple Plus that was in a league of its own. Even so, this copy on side two would be hard to beat without a number of carefully cleaned pressings to choose from. 

Here are some records we’ve discovered that are good for testing string tone and texture.

Here are some records we’ve discovered that are good for testing midrange tonality.

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