*Be More Skeptical!

We encourage audiophiles to be skeptical in their search for better sounding records pressings.

“The Skeptical Audiophiles” on YouTube

Co-Hosted by Robert Brook

Robert and I have now started a YouTube channel. Its purpose is to help audiophiles gain a better understanding of analog records and the many difficulties one encounters when playing them. Here I speak from experience, as does Robert. Hence the maiden voyage of our new channel!

We felt that it would be worthwhile to briefly talk about our backstories, so that viewers could appreciate why we choose to call ourselves “Skeptical Audiophiles” in the first place.

Speaking for myself, I hope to encourage our audiophile viewers to be more skeptical of the claims made by the many experts who have popped up on youtube seemingly out of nowhere, as if there had been a big bang in the record universe. Vast numbers of these channels have exploded onto the scene, all positively overflowing with record and audio advice. Where on earth have so many accomplished, knowledgeable experts been hiding all these years?

When I see the claims made by these individuals, rarely do they comport with my fifty years of experience in the world of audio. With these videos I hope to be able to explain what I mean by that in greater detail. (The blog you are now on has a great many commentaries discussing every aspect of records and audio that I could manage to come up with, all of it informed by actually playing lots of records and working at improving my stereo, starting all the way back in the early 70s.)

Robert, having gone on a very similar journey to my own, no doubt has plenty to say on the subject as well.

I began selling audiophile records in 1987 under the name Better Records. In 2004 my staff and I started doing Hot Stamper Shootouts, which involved testing the sound quality of piles of cleaned records under blinded, rigorously-controlled experimental conditions.

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Speakers Corner Ruins a Classic Mercury, Part One

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Rachmaninoff Available Now

UPDATE 2026

This commentary was written in 2004.  We carried Heavy Vinyl back then, and for that, knowing what I know now, I can only apologize.

Back then, I thought I knew a great deal more about records and  how to reproduce them than I actually did.  Yes, I have to admit it: I suffered from the Dunning-Kruger effect.

On the bright side, there is one very powerful benefit that I gained from being so mistaken. Having failed to recognize my own shortcomings, the signs that someone thinks they know more than they do are easy for me to spot. Here is one of my favorite examples. I link to it a lot.

If you want to see the effect played out in the cyber world, go to any audiophile forum and start reading any thread about records you find there. The D-K effect is hard to miss. Some of the experts on these forums have even convinced themselves that they know things that cannot be known, which is always a sure sign they know a great deal less than they think they do.  

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Which Pressing Most Closely Matches the Color of the Real Master Tape?

Thinking Critically About Records Is Key to Understanding Them

Finally, with the help of Gemini AI I have been able to find and format some of the dialogue from a famous scene from the British sitcom Blackadder (“The Queen of Spain’s Beard” (Series 1, Episode 4).

A young lady named Infanta is expected to visit shortly. No one has seen her, so naturally the discussion turns to how exceptionally beautiful she is rumored to be. Especially her eyes.

I believe this colloquy will have an obvious bearing on a subject that seems to obsess the very-online audiophile community, to wit: whether a particular pressing has more of the sound of the master tape from which it was sourced, or less of that sound. (For some reason it never seems to have the same amount.)

Perhaps another way to think about it would be this: If one had a number of pressings to choose from for a particular title, and had heard that the master tapes were a special shade of blue, would the pressing that was closest to that shade of blue be the ideal pressing to own, regardless of sound quality or one’s personal preferences?

Let’s see what Percy and Edmund Blackadder have to say about the subject.

Percy: My Lord…

Edmund: Yes, what is it?

Percy: You know, they do say that the Infanta’s eyes are more beautiful than the famous Stone of Galveston.

Edmund: Mm! … What?

Percy: The famous Stone of Galveston, My Lord.

Edmund: And what’s that, exactly?

Percy: Well, it’s a famous blue stone, and it comes (points dramatically) from Galveston.

Edmund: I see. And what about it?

Percy: Well, My Lord, the Infanta’s eyes are bluer than it, for a start.

Edmund: I see. And have you ever seen this stone?

Percy: (nods) No, not as such, My Lord, but I know a couple of people who have, and they say it’s very very blue indeed.

Edmund: And have these people seen the Infanta’s eyes?

Percy: No, I shouldn‘t think so, My Lord.

Edmund: And neither have you, presumably.

Percy: No, My Lord.

Edmund: So, what you’re telling me, Percy, is that something you have never seen is slightly less blue than something else you have never seen.

Percy: (finally begins to grasp) Yes, My Lord.

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Old Tapes, New Tapes, You Know We’ve Heard Our Share

Skeptical Thinking Is Key to Finding Better Sounding Records

I ran into a comment I had made more than twenty years ago about a Hot Stamper jazz reissue from the 70s that, at the time, we thought sounded better than any other version. The original pressing of the record would have come out in the fifties. We wrote:

“The master tapes were about fifteen years old when this record was mastered.  Compare that to a current cutting which would be made from approximately fifty year old tapes.”

Perhaps that explains it.

Or maybe it doesn’t. Whether it explains it or not, when you get right down to it, it’s nothing but guesswork.

It has no predictive value.

If, like most people, you enjoy having your biases confirmed, then by all means, whatever reasons work for you are fine by us.

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Is It All About the Music or Is It All About the Sound?

Top Quality Audio Is Key to Finding Good Records

UPDATE 2026

There is a word that better describes the trite phrase I discuss below than “truism” does. You can find it at the end of this commentary.

There is a truism  — a statement that is obviously true and says nothing new or interesting — that frequently pops up in the comments section on audiophile forums.

Working similarly to Godwin’s law, the longer an audiophile thread goes on, the more likely it is to be said. A quick recap of Godwin’s law:

“Godwin’s law, short for Godwin’s law (or rule) of Nazi analogies, is an Internet adage asserting: “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.”

The truism I’m talking about is commonly phrased, “It’s the music, stupid,” an echo of James Carville’s “It’s the economy, stupid,” from Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign of 1992. (I prefer not to use the word “stupid” when discussing my fellow audiophiles’ comments, but the play on words does not work without it, so there it is.)

Who would be foolish enough to take up the other side of such an argument, if we can call it that?

Allow me to have a go at it.

So, if I understand correctly, it’s all about the music, right? Not the sound?

What about other kinds of art? What is it about with respect to them?

Christopher Nolan shoots on IMAX film, which in its current iteration is either 65 or 70mm.

If his movies are about a story and its characters, why not shoot them on 35mm? Or 16mm. Or Super 8? Or, gasp, HD-digital?

Same story, same characters.  But would it be the same movie-going experience?

And nobody has trouble understanding that. Here’s Nolan on 70 mm.

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On Heroes, It Took Us Ages to Break the Sound Barrier

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of David Bowie Available Now

Because the conventional wisdom turned out to be so wrong.

Our intuition that the British originals of Heroes would sound the best was incorrect.

The experiments we carried out falsified that prediction.

In our world, intuitions have a bad track record, but more than a few audiophiles — many of whom are addicted to sharing their “record knowledge” on audiophile forums and youtube channels — seem unaware of the shortcomings of this approach.

Taking a page from one of the greatest minds of the 20th century, we’ve opted to use a more scientific approach in order to discover the record pressings that have by far the best soundi, and we encourage you to do likewise. 

We pioneered the evidence-based approach to finding the best sounding pressings, and, like all good scientists, we shared it with everyone. Some in the audiophile community have taken it to heart, but most have chosen to put their faith in reviewers, forum posters, common sense and logic.

None of these produce consistently good results, but those who use these methods are loathe to question them and only rarely if ever learn the error of their ways.

Once a decision has been made and a specific pressing acquired — you could call it door number three I suppose — cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias immediately kick in to justify the result, and soon enough the game is over. The prize has been won. It’s as good as it gets. Whatever faults it may have must lie in the recording, not the pressing.

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Neil Young and the Limits of Expert Advice

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Neil Young Available Now

Richard Feynman gave a series of lectures concerning the workings of the scientific method. Here is an excerpt from one of them that I would like you to keep in mind as you read the discussion that follows. [Bolding added by me.]

Now I’m going to discuss how we would look for a new law. In general, we look for a new law by the following process. First, we guess it (audience laughter), no, don’t laugh, that’s the truth. Then we compute the consequences of the guess, to see what, if this is right, if this law we guess is right, to see what it would imply and then we compare the computation results to nature or we say compare to experiment or experience, compare it directly with observations to see if it works.

If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science.

It doesn’t make any difference how beautiful your guess is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are who made the guess, or what his name is … If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. That’s all there is to it.

Back in 2015, a mastering engineer by the name of Phil Brown contacted me in reference to a Hot Stamper pressing of Neil Young’s  Zuma he had seen in our mailer. (Apologies in advance for not giving out the stamper numbers; we tend to frown on that sort of thing around here.) He wrote:

  Hey Tom,   

I see it’s a featured disc in the newsletter. I’m curious what the matrix numbers are since I mastered it.

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Caribou Is Usually Noisy and Sounds Bad, But Why?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Elton John Available Now

There’s a good reason you’ve practically never seen this album for sale on our site. In fact there are quite a number of good reasons.

The first one is bad vinyl — most DJM pressings of Caribou are just too noisy to sell. They can look perfectly mint and play noisy as hell; it’s not abuse, it’s bad vinyl.

Empty Sky is the same way; out and out bad vinyl, full of noise, grit and grain.

The second problem is bad sound. Whether it’s bad mastering or bad vinyl incapable of holding onto good mastering, no one can say. Since so many copies were pressed of this monster Number One album (topping the charts on both sides of the Atlantic):

  • Perhaps they pressed a few too many after the stampers were worn out.
  • Or pulled too many stampers off the mother.
  • Or made too many stampers from the father.
  • Or used crap vinyl right from the start.

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Hot Stampers May or May Not Cause Cognitive Dissonance

Acquiring Better Sounding Records – Hot Stampers Versus Collectible Vinyl

Hot Stampers don’t always cause cognitive dissonance because some people never developed much in the way of critical listening skills. There are also other reasons, some of which we discuss below.

Without knowing what to listen for on a record, what are you left with? What aural information can you rely on?  None it seems.

If that is the case, all you can really go by are what your heroes — the mastering engineers who make audiophile recors — tell you. And these days you have so many great ones to choose from!

In the letter below I discuss with my good customer Aaron how to help his friend Jack come to a better understanding of the differences between various pressings of records, vintage LPs like the ones we sell, and the ones that have been remastered on Heavy Vinyl, like the one he already owns.

Head to head comparisons are the best way — practically the only way — to determine what a particular LP sounds like relative to another pressing. Basically, we want to know what the various strengths and weaknesses are for each of the pressings we are playing against each other.

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Symphonie Fantastique – Three Mastering Options

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Berlioz Available Now

UPDATE 2026

Years ago we played a reissue of the title you see pictured which prompted us to make some observations and ask some questions about the approach the mastering engineer might have taken.

And this one comes complete with the bonus 7″ entitled “Berlioz Takes a Trip,” in which Bernstein explores the work “with musical illustrations by the New York Philharmonic.”

Clocking in at around 45 minutes, Symphonie Fantastique is a difficult work to fit onto a single LP,  which means that the mastering engineer has three options when cutting the record:

  1. Compress the dynamics,
  2. Lower the level, or
  3. Filter the deep bass.

On this side two it seems that none of those approaches were taken by the engineer who cut this record in the early 80s — there’s plenty of bass, as well as powerful dynamics, and the levels seem fine.

How he do it? Who knows? Like so much in the world of records, it’s a mystery.

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