*Reviewing the Reviewers

The usual suspects and then some.

We Were So Sure We Had The Pink Floyd’s Ticket, But We Were Wrong

Pink Floyd Hot Stamper Pressings Available Now

In a reply to some questions Robert Brook asked about Revolver and Sticky Fingers — see here and here — I made mention of the advice, found on Hoffman’s forum and other sites, that is commonly offered regarding the superiority of specific pressings of albums these posters purport to know well.

This often-arcane advice includes labels, pressing plants, stamper numbers, specific mastering credits, etc. The practice is so common that audiophiles “in the know” are now expected to share their findings with other members for the benefit of all.

That’s the background for my comment below. I was explaining where I stood with respect to the recommendations I often read, in my typically undiplomatic language:

We do not respect the opinions of those who have little understanding of records and their pressing variations. The faulty conclusions they invariably arrrive at lack evidentiary support because they don’t know how to do what we do and can’t be bothered to learn.

Regardless of what these folks believe, by now we’ve heard dozens and dozens of amazing originals [referring to Sticky Fingers]. This made us extremely skeptical that any other mastering house could compete with the right original’s sound. It was just too good.

Yes, we were skeptical, and it has turned out, at least so far, that we were right to be skeptical. Nothing has come close to the best early domestic pressings of Sticky Fingers, the ones that win shootouts and that we have long known to be the best pressings of the album.

But sometimes we are skeptical and we turn out to be wrong.

Specifically we were wrong about some albums by Pink Floyd (but not the title you see pictured). I wrote:

We’re not always correct about these things. We were dead wrong about a couple of famous Pink Floyd albums from the “wrong” country that we’d heard good things about.

They have been winning shootouts for many years now.

Our judgments concerning the best sounding pressings for any given title must be seen in the light of any information arrived at scientifically: it’s considered provisionally true. (We may not be the smartest guys in the room, but we’re sure as hell smart enough to know that much.)

I felt it was important to point all this out. The impression I did not want to leave in the reader’s mind is that we know all the answers.

We don’t, and we would never pretend to.

If somehow we did know it all, there would not be a hundred entries in our live and learn section.

We regularly learn from our mistakes and we hope you do too.

Best Parts, One and Two

The best part of this job is discovering even better pressings of favorite albums than the ones we thought were the best. Yes, we love it when we are proven wrong.

The other best part of the job is discovering great recordings of wonderful music that most people have never heard of, some of which can be found here.

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“Tom, what about the argument that the engineers had to make the records sound good on the equipment of the day?”

More Letters from Customers and Critics Alike

OK, what about it?

Let’s dig in.

One of our good customers had some questions about a commentary we wrote entitled a kinder, gentler approach to record reviewing.

Tom, what about the argument that the engineers had to make the records sound good on the equipment of the day? Now that we have better gear, these guys can make the record sound the way it was originally intended. I think Chad said this about Rudy Van Gelder at some point in the video.

For the benefit of the reader, the video in question can be found on youtube under the title “Michael Fremer, Chad Kassem, Geoff Edgers: A Journey Back to Vinyl.”

Edgers was invited, apparently under pretext as it turns out, to talk about his article, but instead he was pressed into defending me most of the time. Kassem and Fremer — two individuals whose talents, such as they are, could not be more ill-suited to the work they have chosen for themselves — beat up on Edgers for about two hours.

As an aside, Geoff is a good guy and he certainly didn’t deserve this kind of mistreatment. Fremer and Kassem won’t apologize to him — that’s not something they are known to do — so please allow me to apologize to Geoff on their behalf.

I’m sure he has trouble understanding to this day why he was forced into acting as a spokesman for Better Records. Regardless of how he feels about it, we thank him for his service to the cause. (To be clear, he didn’t exactly take my side, which is the right thing for a reporter to do. He wanted to know why our disagreements upset them so much.)

For those of you who like to watch bickering and sniping from a couple of thin-skinned egomaniacs who can’t stand the fact that someone doesn’t think the records they like — or in the case of Chad, produce and sell — are any good, have I got a video for you. If you want to undertand how seriously you should take these two guys, both at the top of their respective mountains, watch the video and make your own judgments.

Our letter writer continues:

Suppose, that the RL cut of Zeppelin 2 had never existed, because Ludwig knew better than to cut it that way, knowing that most stereos couldn’t play it? And then Chad released something that sounded like that. Or, the argument that albums were engineered for listening to on the AM radio.

I think these guys believe they are improving on the mastering, and giving it the sound it should have had all along.

Dear ab_ba,

Yes, you are correct, this is indeed their position. They think these newly remastered pressings are a big improvement over earlier editions, and on quieter vinyl to boot!

Allow me to quote Michael Fremer, a man who apparently cannot get enough of the new records, even though his shelves are stuffed.

With all of the reissues coming from questionable sources or proudly proclaiming their ‘digital-ness’ ala The Beatles Box, we’re fortunate to have labels like Analogue Productions, Mobile Fidelity, ORG, IMPEX, Rhino and the others cutting lacquers from analog tapes…

So, we are lucky to have these companies that are doing things correctly lavishing vinyl goodies on us all year long. Sometimes we wish they’d stop long enough for us to catch up, but then we come to our senses and say “more please!” even when the shelves are stuffed.

Fremer was discussing a Stevie Ray Vaughan box set that Analogue Productions had recently put out.

One of my customers made the mistake of believing all the rave reviews he read from Fremer and his ilk and ordered the set. He quickly learned that his $400 had bought him some of the worst sounding Heavy Vinyl he’d ever heard in his life.

Did Chad manage to improve upon the sound of the originals, like the ones we sell? According to this customer, he did not.

“So the results are in … after comparing to the White Hot Stamper versions of the same albums I can say… as a musical experience it’s incomprehensible. It just doesn’t rock, doesn’t uplift, and it’s veiled, so you lose the whole meaning of this music, the energy, soul, life.”

If these companies are “doing things correctly,” then perhaps you can explain to me why their records sound so bad.

Let’s get down to brass tacks. Which of these records do you think is an improvement over the best earlier pressings?

And that’s just a small sampling of the rock and pop. There are plenty of awful jazz and classical titles I could mention.

I would expect that even fans of modern mastering would be at pains to defend these mediocre-at-best and mostly-abominable releases on the merits. Outside of Mr. Fremer, who in his right mind thinks these are good records? And if they do, have they had their hearing checked lately?

I could go on about the sound of these pseudo-audiophile pressings — our Heavy Vinyl disasters section currently boasts 181 entries — but why beat a horse that’s been dead for more than two decades?

For those keeping score at home, the winners number 69 and the mediocrities number 62, for a grand total of 312.

Now, listen up all of you out there in audio land: if you personally have critically auditioned more than 300 Heavy Vinyl pressings, please raise your hand. (Not you, Mikey, you get paid to play these records in order to make sure everybody knows just how much better they are than the other copies you have randomly at hand.)

I’m talking about rank and file audiophiles. Who has played more Heavy Vinyl titles head to head with the best originals and vintage reissues than we have?

There can be no one, for the simple reason that the best originals and vintage reissues can only be found using these two methods: in small numbers by luck, and in large numbers by doing shootouts.

300 is a large number, and we seriously doubt there is anyone who has managed to 300 comprehensive shootouts for records in their own collection. The cost, in time and money, would be prohibitive unless you’re getting paid to do it.

We don’t get paid to review these modern pressings. We do it as a public service.

Our job is to find the records that beat the pants off them.

Cui Bono?

If you want to know how good the quality of modern records is, you don’t ask someone who gets paid to make them and you don’t ask someone who gets paid to review them.

You buy some and you play them. That’s how you go about determining if they are any good.

The “null hypothesis” is our friend here. If someone were to ask “Why are new records better than old ones?,” we would simply say that since there is no evidence to support the proposition that they actually are any better, the question does not need to be answered.

To take just one example, not one of them can hold a candle to this Mercury produced in 1958.

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Letter of the Week – “Oh my gosh, so much money wasted on magic buttons, secret sauce and dilithium crystals…”

Hot Stamper Pressings of Miles’s Albums Available Now

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Miles Davis

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased a long time ago (bolding added by me):

Hey Tom,

I imagine you get a little bored with audiophile negativity around the concept of Hot Stampers. I have to admit, they are expensive and I sometimes just can’t push myself to buy (even though I want to). As an alternative I have purchased some of the “new” remastered all analogue classics like Kind of Blue hoping to get great sound.

I listen for enjoyment, but like many folks I get caught up in the hype of technology hoping for better sound. Oh my gosh, so much money wasted on magic buttons, secret sauce and dilithium crystals for a different but really not better sound.

So, to the point, I purchased a copy of Kind of Blue from you about 2 years ago. It was graded by you as A++ – A+++ on both sides. I tell myself this story when I need an incentive and want to buy another Hot Stamper.

I played the newly remastered UHQR KOB. It was quiet, wonderful, excellent.

And so just for fun I decided to listen to the copy of KOB I bought from you.

My Hot Stamper is a re-press from Columbia probably from the ’70’s. The difference between both copies was startling.

My Hot Stamper copy of KOB had bigger dynamics, air, tonal awareness, spatial sense.

Bass, sax, piano and Miles – alive and vibrant. It sounded better. The only negative difference was the vinyl was not as quiet.

My experience with the albums I buy from you has always been satisfying because they sound so good. So thanks and screw all the naysayers .

Anyways, just felt like saying thanks and trying to push myself forward on my next purchase.

Best, Art

Art,

Thanks for your letter. You are our letter of the week!

This caught my eye:

“…so much money wasted on magic buttons, secrete sauce and dilithium crystals for a different but really not better sound.”

Ain’t it the truth. Lots of smoke and mirrors and fancy packaging, but when the record in question is at best mediocre, as you discovered for yourself, we describe such a record as putting lipstick on a pig.

Michael Fremer says it’s the best KOB ever, and will be for all time.

Why can’t you hear what he can?

Seriously, could there be a more absurd and ridiculous statement? When discusssing pressings, this kind of certainty is the unmistakable mark of shallow and banal thinking.  Audiophiles as a group evince far too much credulity and not nearly enough skepticism about both records and audio, which is why they are always looking for easy answers and quick fixes.

They don’t want to do the work. They want someone to tell them they don’t have to do the work.

To presume that there is a clear answer to the question, “What is the best sounding pressing of Kind of Blue?” is a sign that such a person is a True Believer. He is no doubt someone not at all interested in entertaining disconfirming evidence, no matter the source or the strength.

To take it to an even more absurd level, the reviewer in question says it will be the best ever forever. Well, that’s certainly good to know!

Mistakes Were Made

We ourselves used to make mistakes along these lines. We also make no effort to deny the fact that we didn’t know what we were talking about. We made a quite foolish claim in a review from 2006 for Rock of Ages.

The audiophile press may do things differently, but here at Better Records the practice of making “definitive sonic assessments” goes against everything we believe to be true about records: that any judgment we’ve made about any record, good or bad, as well as any knowledge we may think we possess, will always be incomplete, imperfect, and provisional.

However, there is one thing that will never change: our deep appreciation of the fundamentally mysterious nature of records, based on the thousands of experiments we’ve carried out since making that silly statement about Rock of Ages in 2006.

And sometimes, after hundreds and hundreds of observations has led us to believe that all swans are white, we find a black one and have to admit, and not for the first time, that we were wrong. (Well, we don’t have to, but we do, mostly because it mocks the risible certainty of the audiophile reviewing class and their low-rent hucksterism.)

Doing the Work

The “believers” have chosen to buy into this particular reviewer’s nonsense rather than staying focussed and doing the work. What work you ask? Why, the work it takes to find a better sounding vintage copy. (For those of you who are up for the challenge, we advise sticking with the 6-Eye and 360 pressings rather than digging for the 70s reissue like the one we sold Art. The right 70s pressings have especially hard-fo-find stampers, which explains why you rarely see them on the site.)

Art, perhaps you see now that buying remastered records — even those that get raves in the audiophile press — is a fool’s game and more often than not a waste of money, money that would have been much better spent on records that have the potential to sound amazingly good.

And by that we mean records put out by major labels for the general record buying public and pressed on regular weight vinyl.

Those are the ones that can have real analog magic, as your most recent head to head comparison — with a 70s reissue no less — proved once again.

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It Ain’t Easy Being a One-Man Band

Improving Your Critical Listening Skills

I should know. I was a one-man band working 60 to 80 hours a week with very little help until about 2000. I had someone cleaning records and packing and shipping, but everything else was on me. It was a lot.

In order to evaluate the qualities of the titles I was selling back then, whether on Heavy Vinyl or thin, imported or domestic, original or reissue, the process was the same.

I would play the record, and I would listen for the qualities that were most important to me, qualities you might say were of a “make it or break it” nature.

I mostly wanted to know if the record in question was:

  • Tonally correct.
  • Big enough.
  • Clear enough.
  • Balanced from top to bottom.
  • Energetic.
  • Present in the midrange.
  • Not bass shy.
  • Not rolled off up top.
  • Not compressed.
  • And, finally, whether it would appeal to a wide audience

If I had other pressings of the same title to audition, which sometimes I did not, I would play those to see how they compared.

For some records this was not easy. Just to cite one example, for many of the Speakers Corners Decca classical pressings, I simply had no especially good pressings to play against them. I might have some Londons and some Stereo Treasurys I could throw on, but good sounding, brand new Heavy Vinyl pressings on quiet German vinyl for $35 each did not warrant a big shootout back in those days.

And of course the stereo I had back then (all tube, richer, darker and less revealing) set a low bar, one that was a great deal easier to get over than the ruthlessly revealing stereo we use now. (More on that subject here.)

I had someone cleaning records for me, sure, but to take the time to clean and play a pile of classical pressings was simply not a good use of my time. I would approve of the sound, something along the lines of “good” to “great,” and then write a short review for the next catalog I would put out.

Many of the records that passed our tests don’t sound all that good to me now. We clearly had a lot to learn.

And we had no other option but to understand records and audio at a higher level because the success of the business depended on it. There was just too much money on the line at the prices we needed to charge. We were forced to deliver a clearly superior product or the discipline of the market would come down on our heads and put an end to our crazy experiment in “Hot Stampers.”

Lack of Resources

When you operate as a one-man band, you simply do not have the resources to clean and play enough copies of a given album to make accurate judgments about their sound.

Everybody makes mistakes, but small sample sizes increase the frequency of mistakes by orders of magnitude, especially a sample size as small as one. More on that here.

No Resources Needed

The current crop of audiophile reviewers appears to be speaking to those who are already by and large satisfied with the Heavy Vinyl pressings being made today.

The reviews they do are easily carried out by those with an obvious  aversion to the serious, disciplined, intense work it would take to do them properly.

They get one of these new records in, they give it a spin and they tell everybody how great it is. The advertisers like it, their readers like it, the labels like it, and everybody is happy as a clam.

When troublemakers like us come along, we upset that one-hand-washes-the-other arrangement, and before long everybody gets real upset real fast. Nobody wants that. They want to keep selling Heavy Vinyl because that is what can be produced, in volume, at a reasonable cost, then advertised and distributed easily and, most importantly, priced affordably.

Win win win win win. So much winning!

If you want something better sounding, from us, it will most likely cost you a pretty penny. It will be every bit as good as we say it is , but it will not be cheap and it will rarely be collectible.

Collecting for the Sake of Collecting

It appears as though the vast majority of record loving audiophiles really like collecting records. If I had to guess, I would venture it’s at least 95% and probably more. The five per cent that do not fall into that category are unlikely to want to spend their life savings on our pricey, not-especially-collectible pressings. Our records have no resale value. All their value is tied up in their sound.

That leaves our potential pool of customers at less than one per cent of all the record-loving audiophiles who want better sound and can afford it. Subtract the number of them who don’t like me personally — seems like a lot! — and you have a fairly small cohort of customers from which to draw.

Thankfully, it is big enough to keep our business going and food on the table for the ten dedicated. music-loving men and women who supply the world with Hot Stamper pressings. Nobody is getting rich, even at these prices, but we’re making a living and providing a service which people really appreciate, or at least that’s what they tell us.

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Sonny Rollins Helped Us See the Light Many Years Ago

The following commentary comes from our catalog from the mid-90s, back in the days when I could still find great jazz records like Alternate Takes, often still sealed.

The Analogue Productions Heavy Vinyl recuts done by Doug Sax had come out a few years earlier, starting in 1992. Those remastered records were in print at the time I wrote this, and I was pretty pissed off at how bad they sounded.

Here is our listing from long ago:

Acoustic Sounds had just remastered and ruined a big batch of famous jazz records, and shortly thereafter a certain writer in TAS had said nice things about them.

Said writer and I got into a war of words over these records, long, long ago. You’ll notice that no one ever mentions these awful records anymore, and for good reason: they suck. If you own any of them, do yourself a favor and get either the CD or a good LP for comparison purposes. I expect you will hear what I’m talking about.

In my essay on reviewers I attack him for giving a big “Thumbs Up” in TAS to the botched remastering of Sonny’s Way Out West. The OJC reissue, though superior, is still only a pale shadow of the original.

Now we have the real thing! This LP has three alternate takes from that session, all mastered by George Horn, and surprise, surprise, surprise, they sound just like my original, much better than (but not so different from) the OJC, and worlds away from the muted flab of the Analogue Productions LP!

Anyone who owns a representative sample of records engineered by Roy Dunann knows that the overly sweet, delicate sound of the cymbals on the Analogue Productions Way Out West is unusual — if not positively unheard of — for him. His cymbal sound is lively, aggressive, with much more “splash” — more impact, more presence.

These “live music” qualities have been equalized out on the remastering and other patently euphonic qualities equalized in.

Anyway, the important thing is not the sound I or some reviewer or anybody else likes. It’s what you like that counts.

With that in mind, I’m so sure you’ll prefer the sound of Alternate Takes, that you won’t have any problem recognizing and appreciating the differences I’m talking about, that I’m willing to make you this very special offer:

If Alternate Takes isn’t about the best sounding jazz record you ever heard, send it back to me and I’ll give you $30 toward anything else in the catalog! If you own any Analogue Productions LP, mail or fax me a copy of your receipt (along with your order) and I will give you a better sounding jazz record free as a bonus!

If you don’t own the AP Way Out West, call Chad up and order it. You really owe it to yourself to hear this mess! What have you got to lose? Acoustic Sounds offers a money-back guarantee. They say “guaranteed better than the original.”

What they don’t say is “guaranteed better than a plain old everyday standard-issue domestic copy which is still available from that pain-in-the-ass Tom Port over at Better Records” — because it’s not (better, although it may be still available).

The Players

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Who on Earth Could Possibly Take the Sound of this Awful Remaster Seriously?

More Orchestral Music Conducted by Georg Solti

Hot Stamper Decca and London Pressings Available Now

There actually is such a person who does exactly that, can you imagine?

Only an Audiophile True Believer could be fooled by sound so ridiculously unnatural.

But the world is full of such people. They bought into the audiophile BS of Mobile Fidelity in the 80s and apparently haven’t learned much since.

Now they think Heavy Vinyl is the answer to the world’s problems. The more things change…

If your stereo is any good at all, you should have no trouble hearing the sonic qualities of this album we describe below. If you are on this blog, and you have tried some of our Hot Stamper pressings, there is a good chance you’re hearing pretty much what we’re hearing. Why else why would you pay our prices?

One thing I can tell you: we would never charge money for a record that sounds as weird and wrong as this MoFi.

A well-known reviewer has many kind things to say about this pressing, but we think it sounds like a hi-fi-ish version of a ’70s London, which means it’s opaque and the strings are badly lacking in Tubey Magical sheen and richness.

The bass is like jello on the MoFi, unlike the real London, which has fairly decent bass.

If a self-styled Audiophile Reviewer cannot hear the obvious faults of this pressing, I would say there’s a good chance one or both of the following is true:

  1. His equipment is not telling him what the record is really doing, and/or,
  2. His listening skills are not sufficiently developed to notice the shortcomings in the sound.

The result is the worst kind of reviewer malpractice.

But is it really the worst kind? It seems to be the only kind!

MoFi had a bad habit of making bright classical records. I suppose you could say they had a bad habit of making bright records in general. A few are dull, some are just right, but most of them are bright in one way or another. Dull playback equipment? An attempt to confuse detail with resolution? Whatever the reasons, the better and more accurate your equipment becomes, the most obvious this shortcoming will be. My tolerance for their phony EQ is at an all time low. But hey, that’s me.

Describing the real London pressing, we wrote, “Huge scope — depth and width like you will not believe, perfect for this music. The voices in the chorus are clearly separated out and so big and rich! This side is open and sweet in the best Golden Age tradition. Smooth like live music — there’s no phony top here, unlike the MoFi, which is nothing but phony sound from top to bottom. What a joke they played on the audiophiles of the day.”

And now it goes for big money on ebay because some audiophile web pundit put it on his list of great recordings. Can you imagine having a list of great recordings that includes a MoFi pressing? That one entry renders the list risible, and the fact that no one has called this person on it is a sure sign that there are still far too many audiophiles who simply cannot or will not learn to listen for themselves.

It’s the SLAM factor in a recording that let’s you appreciate how much air these large orchestral instruments can really move when the piece calls for it, and of course these pieces do call for it, big time. Night on Bald Mountain especially. The concert hall is supposed to shake with the blasts of brass and tympanic beatings called for by Mussorgsky.

Note that it’s rare for a half speed mastered record to have deep solid bass. What their cutters manage for bass is never as tight, defined or note-like as the better real time cutters. We wrote about the subject in the track commentary for the song Deja Vu.

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Destination Stereo and the State of Reviewing As We See It

Hot Stamper Pressings of Living Stereo Titles Available Now

Hot Stamper Pressings of Orchestral Spectaculars Available Now

Explosive dynamics, HUGE space and size, with unerringly correct tonality, this is a Demo Disc like no other.

When “in-the-know” audiophiles discuss three-dimensionality, soundstaging and depth, they should be talking about a record that sounds like this.

But are they? The so-called “glorious, life-changing” sound of one heavy vinyl reissue after another seems to be the only kind of record audiophiles and the reviewers who write for them want to talk about these days.

Even twenty years ago reviewers noted that tracks on compilations such as this often had better sound than the albums from which they were taken, proof that they were listening critically and comparing pressings.

What happened to reviewers of that caliber?

I can tell you what happened to them: they left audio, driven out according to the principle that underlies Gresham’s Law:

Bad reviewers drive out good ones.

Which leaves you with the type that can’t tell how mediocre-at-best most modern Heavy Vinyl reissues are. A sad state of affairs if you ask me, but one that no longer impacts our business as we simply don’t bother to buy, sell or play most of these records.

A Must Own Living Stereo from 1959

A record as good as Destination Stereo belongs in every serious audiophile’s collection. Allow me to make the case.

The full range of colors of the orchestra are here presented with remarkable clarity, dynamic contrast, spaciousness, sweetness, and timbral accuracy.

If you want to demonstrate to a novice listener why modern recordings are so often lacking in many of the qualities prized by audiophiles, all you have to do is put this record on for them. 

Just play Gnomus to hear The Power of the Orchestra, Living Stereo style.

The fourth and fifth movements of Capriccio Espagnol, the second track on side one, sound superb, CLEARLY better here than on the Shaded Dog pressings we played about a year ago (which were terrible and never made it to the site. Great performance but bad mastering of what obviously was a very good master tape). [We’re not so sure that is true, the record may in fact be a lot better than we give it credit for.]

You can also hear the Living Stereo sound especially well on the excerpt from “The Fourth of July” performed by Morton Gould. It’s one of the best sounding tracks here.

I don’t think the RCA engineers could have cut this record much better — it has all the Living Stereo magic one could ask for, as well as the bass and dynamics that are missing from so many other vintage Golden Age records.

Further Reading

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How Does the Heavy Vinyl Rubber Soul Sound?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Rubber Soul

Reviews and Commentaries for Rubber Soul

[This review was originally written in 2015.]

We are so excited to tell you about the first of the Heavy Vinyl Beatles remasters we’ve played! As we cycle through our regular Hot Stamper shootouts for The Beatles’ albums we will be of course be reviewing more of them*. I specifically chose this one to start with, having spent a great deal of time over the last year testing the best vinyl pressings against three different CD versions of Rubber Soul.

The short version of our review of the new Rubber Soul vinyl would simply point out that it’s awful, and, unsurprisingly, it’s awful in most of the ways that practically all modern Heavy Vinyl records are: it’s opaque, airless, energy-less and just a drag.

I was looking forward to the opportunity to take Michael Fremer, the foremost champion of thick vinyl from sources far and wide, to task in expectation of his rave review, when to my surprise I found the rug had been pulled out from under me — he didn’t like it either. Damn!

MF could hear how bad it was. True to form, he thinks he knows why it doesn’t sound good:

As expected, Rubber Soul, sourced from George Martin’s 1987 16 bit, 44.1k remix sounds like a CD. Why should it sound like anything else? That’s from what it was essentially mastered. The sound is flattened against the speakers, hard, two-dimensional and generally hash on top, yet it does have a few good qualities as CDs often do: there’s good clarity and detail on some instruments. The strings are dreadful and the voices not far behind. The overall sound is dry and decay is unnaturally fast and falls into dead zone.

It strikes me as odd that the new vinyl should sound like a CD. I have listened to the newly remastered 2009 CD of Rubber Soul in stereo extensively and think it sounds quite good, clearly better than the Heavy Vinyl pressing that’s made from the very same 16 bit, 44.1k remixed digital source.

If the source makes the new vinyl sound bad, why doesn’t it make the new CD sound bad? I can tell you that the new CD sounds dramatically better than the 1987 CD I’ve owned for twenty years. They’re not even close. How could that be if, as MF seems to believe, the compromised digital source is the problem?

Fortunately I didn’t know what the source for the new CD was when I was listening to it. I assumed it came from the carefully remastered hi-rez tapes that were being used to make the new series in its entirety, digital sources that are supposed to result in sound with more analog qualities. Well, based on what I’ve heard, they do, and those more analog qualities obviously extend to the new Rubber Soul compact disc. At least to these ears they do.

Possibly my ignorance of the source tape allowed me to avoid the kind of confirmation bias — hearing what you expect to hear — that is surely one of the biggest pitfalls in all of audio.

Doors Progress

He raved about the digitally remastered Doors Box Set when it came out, but now that Acoustic Sounds is doing Doors albums on 45 he is singing a different tune:

Whatever I wrote about that box then [5/1/2010 if you care to look it up], now, by comparison, the best I can say for The Doors on that set is that it sounds like you’re hearing the album played back on the best CD player ever. It’s smoooooth, laid back and pleasant but totally lacks balls, grit, detail, spaciousness and raw emotional power. The entire presentation is flat against a wall set up between the speakers. The double 45 has greater dynamics, detail, spaciousness and appropriate grit—everything the smooooth 192k/24 bit sourced version lacks.

We, on the other hand, had no trouble at all hearing how bad it was right from the start. For our last Hot Stamper shootout winner of The Soft Parade we noted:

Need I even mention how much better this copy sounds than the recent 180g version from the Rhino Box Set, digitally remastered by Bernie Grundman? That thing is just awful, possibly the worst sounding pressing I have ever heard. The Gold CD Hoffman did for Audio Fidelity would be night and day better. So much for the concept of vinyl superiority. Not with Bernie at the helm.

To his credit MF finally recognizes his mistake, but let’s stop and think about how he came by this insight. He did it by playing a pressing that, to his mind, has every reason to sound better, being sourced from analog tapes and mastered at 45. Now he hears that Bernie’s cutting sounds like a CD. To us it sounded worse than a CD when we played it the first time, vinyl or no vinyl. We even recommended the Hoffman-mastered DCC Gold CDs for those who didn’t want to spring for one of our Hot Stamper pressings. As we like to say, good digital beats bad analog any day.

Real Progress

Then again, who are we to talk? Bear in mind that as recently as 2000-something we were still recommending the DCC vinyl pressings, records that I can’t stand to listen to these days. My system couldn’t show me how colored and lifeless they were then, but it sure can now.

It’s amazing how far you can get in 10 years if you’re obsessive enough and driven enough and are willing to devote huge amounts of your time and effort to the pursuit of better audio. This will be especially true if you are perfectly happy to let your ears, not your brain, inform your understanding of the sound of the records you play.

If we thought like most audiophiles, that money buys good sound and original pressings are usually the best, there would be no such thing as Hot Stampers.

That’s Fremer’s world, not ours. He’s making progress in some areas, not so much in others, but man, he sure has a long way to go. At this rate it will take him forever. It just goes to prove that Mistaken Thinking can really slow down your progress.

Take our advice (and stop taking his, which is also our advice) and you will be amazed at the positive changes that are sure to come your way.

So, What’s The Grade?

MF’s grade for the new Rubber Soul pressing was a 5 on a scale of 1 to 11. If we were to follow the more standard scale of 1 to 10, we would probably give Rubber Soul a 2, at most 2.5 (and that’s only if we were in an expecially generous mood). The new record is a drag, and even the remastered CD is better. Under those circumstances how can the 180 gram pressing be a 5? Maybe in Fremer’s world you automatically get three points for being made out of vinyl. He seems to really like the stuff, even when it doesn’t sound good. Never could figure that one out.

More Beatles Heavy Vinyl?

Due to the heavy volume of mail on the subject (2 emails flooded in!) we finally broke down and bought the set. As we pursue our Hot Stamper shootouts of The Beatles’ catalog we will be commenting on how the new pressings sound from time to time and in no particular order. We’re also in no particular hurry; practically nothing on Heavy Vinyl impresses us these days and we expect The Beatles records to be no different, rave reviews (for most of them) from audiophile reviewers notwithstanding.

UPDATE 2021

After playing two titles and hearing the same mediocre sound, this survey is on indefinite hiatus.

Who has the time to play crappy records, especially when there are so many good ones, or potentially good ones, that we don’t find the time to get to as it is?

How Can Anybody Not Hear What’s Wrong with Old Records Like These?

beatlrubbeoriginalRecord Collecting – A Guide to the Fundamentals

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of the Beatles Available Now

It is our strongly held belief that if your equipment (regardless of cost) or your critical listening skills do not allow you to hear the kinds of sonic differences among pressings we describe, then whether you are just getting started in audio or are a self-identified Audio Expert writing for the most prestigious magazines and websites, you still have a very long way to go in this hobby.

Purveyors of the old paradigms — original is better, money buys good sound — may eventually find their approach to records and equipment unsatisfactory (when it isn’t just plain wrong), but they will only do so if they start to rely more on empirical findings and less on convenient theories and received wisdom.

A reviewer most of us know well is clearly stuck in the Old Paradigm, illustrated perfectly by this comment:

It’s not my pleasure to be so negative but since I have a clean UK original (signed for me by George Martin!) I’ll not be playing this one again. Yes, there are some panning mistakes and whatever else Martin “cleaned up” but really, sometimes it’s best to leave well-enough (and this album was well-enough!) alone.

We can’t imagine how anyone can have a system in this day and age that can obscure the flaws of the original Parlophone pressings of Rubber Soul (or any other Yellow and Black label Parlophone pressing for that matter, other than Yellow Submarine and Oldies but Goldies).

[Here is another exception to that “rule.”]

This reviewer apparently does (as do some of our customers, truth be told), but we have something very different indeed. One might even consider it the opposite of such a system.

Our system is designed to relentlessly and ruthlessly expose the flaws of every record we play.

Only the best of the best can survive that level of scrutiny. Our system (comprising equipment, setup, tweaks, room treatments, electricity) operates at the highest level of fidelity we have been able to achieve to date. We are constantly making improvements to our playback system in search of even better sound.

Real Progress

But wait a minute, who are we to talk about being fooled? Bear in mind that as recently as 2000 or so we were still recommending DCC and other Heavy Vinyl pressings. These are records that, with few exceptions, I would have a hard time sitting through nowadays.

My system couldn’t show me how colored and lifeless they were then, but it sure can now.

It’s amazing how far you can get in 10 years [now 20] if you’re obsessive enough and driven enough, and are also willing to devote huge amounts of your time and effort to the pursuit of better audio. This will be especially true if you are perfectly happy to let your ears, not your brain, inform your understanding of the sound of the records you play.

If we thought like most audiophiles, that money buys good sound and original pressings are usually the best, there would be no such thing as Hot Stampers. Old thinking and wrong thinking can really slow down your progress.

Follow our advice and you will be amazed at the positive changes that are bound to come your way.

Training Your Ears

Of course, we should note that it helps to have a dedicated full time staff doing shootouts, including a full-time record cleaning person. All of the members of the listening panel were musicians with already well-trained ears when we hired them. From the start they had no trouble appreciating the differences between pressings.

I, on the other hand, am not a musician. Since the 70s, I’ve simply worked at trying to get my stereo to sound more like live music. Over many years, as it slowly improved, it allowed me to hear more and more of what was really on my records. I slowly gained the skills I needed to do the kind of critical listening comparisons that are currently the heart of our business. Let me be the first to admit it was rough going for about the first twenty five years. (Getting rid of my old tube system in the 2000s was a great leap forward.)

It has been my experience that most audiophiles are in that same non-musician boat. The problem seems to be that stereos are not nearly as good at teaching these skills as musical instruments are. Unless you are of an experimental mind and are willing to devote a great deal of your time and money to the audio game, you are unlikely to develop the skills necessary to critically evaluate recordings at the highest levels.

Unfortunately, playing into this vicious cycle, those same critical listening skills are the very ones you need to make your stereo revealing enough so that even subtle differences between pressings become not just clear, but obvious. Better ears lead to better stereos, but bad stereos make it hard to develop better ears. That’s why I made so many mistakes and learned so little in my first twenty years as an audiophile.

Further Reading

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Is The Heavy Vinyl from 2012 the Best Sounding Sgt. Pepper?

beatlessgtMore of the Music of The Beatles

Letters and Commentaries for Sgt. Peppers

You might agree with some reviewers that EMI’s engineers did a pretty good job with the new stereo pressing of Sgt. Pepper mastered by Sean Magee from the 2009 digitally remastered tapes.

In the March 2013 issue of Stereophile Art Dudley weighed in, finding little to fault on this title but being less impressed with most of the others in the new box set. His reference disc? The MoFi UHQR! Oh, and he also has some old mono pressings and a domestic Let It Be.

Now there’s a man who knows his Beatles. Fanatical? Of course he is! We’re talkin’ The Beatles for Chrissakes.

When I read the reviews by writers such as these, I often get the sense that I must’ve fallen through some sort of Audio Time Warp and landed back in 1982. How is it that our so-called experts evince so little understanding of how records are made, how variable the pressings can be, and, more importantly, how absolutely crucial it is to understand and implement rigorous protocols when attempting to carry out comparisons among pressings.

Critically comparing LPs is difficult and time-consuming. It requires highly developed listening skills. I didn’t know how to do it in 1982. I see no evidence that the audiophile reviewers of today are much better at it now than I was in 1982.

Just to take one example: They all seem to be operating under the same evidence-free conceit: that the original is the benchmark against which other pressings must be compared.

To those of us who have played Beatles pressings by the hundreds, this is patent nonsense. To cite just one instance, a recent Hot Stamper listing notes [inaccurately as it turns out, see below]:

We defy any original to step into the ring with it. One thing we can tell you, it would not be a fair fight. The cutting equipment to make a record of this quality did not exist in 1967, not at EMI anyway.

We had the opportunity not long ago to audition a very clean original early pressing of the album and were frankly taken aback by how AWFUL it was in virtually every respect. No top end above 8k or so, flabby bass, murky mids — this was as far from Hot Stamper sound as one could imagine. If it were a Heavy Vinyl or Audiophile pressing we would surely have graded it F and put it in our Hall of Shame.

To be fair we have played exactly one early copy of the record on our current system. (Played a copy or two long ago but on much different equipment, so any judgments we might have made must be considered highly suspect.) Perhaps there are good ones. We have no way of knowing whether there are, and we are certainly not motivated to find out given the price that original Sgt. Pepper’s are fetching these days.

We can tell you this much: no original British pressing of any Beatles album up through Pepper has ever impressed us sonically. We’ve played plenty and have yet to hear one that’s not congested, crude, distorted, bandwidth-limited and full of tube smear. (The monos suffer from all of these problems and more of course, which is only natural; they too are made with the Old School cutting equipment of the day.)

If that’s your sound more power to you. It’s definitely not ours. The hotter the stamper, the less congested, crude, distorted, bandwidth-limited and smeary it will be. (Or your money back.)

NEWSFLASH 2023

[Update: there is a copy of a Beatles album on the original label that was competitive with our best 70s pressings, this one. We explained why it’s not a problem to admit we were wrong about For Sale this way:

This finding about For Sale is precisely why Live and Learn is our motto.

We don’t know it all, and we’ve never claimed that we did. We constantly learn things about pressings in our daily shootouts. That should not be too surprising, as record shootouts are the only way to learn anything about the sound of records that’s actually worth knowing.

Start doing your own experiments and your record knowledge might just take off the way ours has. 99% of what we think we know about the sound of records we’ve learned in shootouts over the course of the last twenty years.

Here is our advice on getting started.

Before this, the only Beatles record we would sell on the Yellow and Black Parlophone label was A Collection of Oldies… But Goldies. That title does have the best sound on the early label. In numerous shootouts, no Black and Silver label pressing from the ’70s was competitive with the best stereo copies made in the ’60s.

Until now, it was clearly the exception to our rule. From With the Beatles up through Yellow Submarine, the best sounding Beatles pressings would always be found on the best reissue pressings.

The Best Pepper Pressings

How did we come to find the best Sgt. Peppers pressings? Our recent commentary about a wonderful Benny Carter record on the original Contemporary Black Label may serve to shed some light on the process.

We noted how Tubey Magical Benny’s trumpet sounded on the original, adding that it unfortunately comes at the expense of all the other instruments — drums, bass and piano — which are simply harder to hear — less immediate, less real, less “live in your listening room.” We went on to say:

Yet this is precisely the sound that many, even most, audiophiles would find perfectly acceptable. There are many reasons for this, but one of the main ones has to be that they have never heard a truly amazing reissue, the kind we sell all day long. Had they heard such a pressing they would be in a much better position to weigh the pros and cons of both. This is why we do shootouts. Every pressing has the potential to show you some quality you can’t hear any other way, some aspect of the sound you would not even know was possible. Super Hot and especially White Hot pressings — on the right equipment — can put you in the presence of a recording you had no idea existed. It would be no exaggeration to say that it happens to us every week.

Not to put too fine a point on it, comparing an original pressing of Sgt. Pepper with the new Heavy Vinyl reissue is simply comparing one badly flawed pressing with another badly flawed pressing. Pace Mr Dudley and his confreres, we’re not exactly sure how their efforts in this regard are of much benefit to audiophiles who take their record collecting seriously, at least to that subset of collectors in search of the best sounding pressings.

If you want to find an LP of Sgt. Pepper that sounds better than the original, that’s one thing. If, on the other hand, you want to find the best sounding pressing there is, that’s quite another.

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