Mistaken Ideas

We used to refer to them as myths but we’ve come to the conclusion that mistaken ideas is more correct.

It’s also a less pejorative way of saying that some things audiophiles believe are lacking in the kind of hard evidence that one would think should be required to defend them.

The fact that good evidence is not required for audiophiles to believe practically anything they think they know about records and audio is one reason we write so much about these subjects on this blog.

Buy Promos, Don’t Buy Promos — Honestly, Just Make Up Your Mind

Hot Stamper Pressings of Vintage Columbia Albums Available Now

Recently we conducted a shootout for a Columbia recording of jazz fusion music, one that we had auditioned a couple of times before and one for which we knew the music and the general quality of the sound well.

It’s not the record you see pictured. For now we’re keeping the title a mystery, consistent with the idea that we give out lots of bad stampers on this blog, sometimes really bad stampers, but almost never do we give out the good ones.

All the copies we had in our shootout were pressed domestically, and all were mastered by the legendary Robert Ludwig. No Nice Price junk, no imports, none of that crap. We might have made those mistakes in previous shootouts, but having done this shootout a number of times now, we know what works and what doesn’t.

When we do give out the best stampers, as in the case here, we tend to keep the title a mystery. We are not the least bit interested in putting ourselves out of business.

The discussion for today revolves around the idea held by a great many audiophiles that the promo pressings are going to be the best sounding pressings of almost any album they might happen to run across.

And, to be fair, in the case of this mysterious album, they’re potentially right.

Our best sounding copy was a promo pressing.

What interests me in these findings is that the other promo copy, the one you see at the bottom of the shootout sheet, earned 1.5+ on both sides. It came in last in the shootout, earning good, not great Hot Stamper grades.

If an audiophile collector were to go to Discogs, find the promo pressings, write down their stampers, and then check them against the copies he owned or might want to buy, he could either find himself with a top quality copy, or a far-from-as-good copy, depending on his luck.

Why one set of stampers sounds so much better than another set, or the same or similar set on a different pressing, is a mystery.

Does anyone have a practical way to get around the unfortunate reality that allows one set of stampers to sound great and the same or a similar set of stampers to sound not much better than decent?

Well, we can’t say there is a practical way, but we do know of an impractical one. We’ve been practicing and refining that one for more than twenty years.

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Letter of the Week – “I just figured this was just a bad recording…”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Steely Dan Available Now

This week’s letter is from our good friend Roger, who, like us, is a GIANT Steely Dan fan. Apparently he had tried every copy of Katy Lied he could get his hands on and practically had given up on the album — until he decided to shell out the princely sum of Three Hundred Clams ($300, probably not the last piaster he could borrow, but a pretty hefty chunk of dough for a fairly common used LP from 1975) to Better Records, with the hope that we might actually find a way to put him in touch with the real Dr. Wu.

Let’s just say it seems that Roger got his money’s worth — and maybe a little more.

The title of his letter is: 

Katy Lied? Are you sure?

I tried your Hot Stamper Steely Dan Katy Lied. You gotta be kidding me. Are you sure this is the same recording? I remember your saying that this one is your favorite SD record and I could never understand why, at least until I heard this secret recording. Other than the HS copy you basically had a choice between the dull and lifeless bland US pressing, or the Mobile Fidelity version, which has those indescribable phasey, disembodied instruments and voices that sound unmusical to me.

I even tried British and Japanese pressings with no luck. I just figured this was just a bad recording, which made sense in light of all the press about the problems during the recording and mixing sessions, and I don’t think I bothered to listen to it again for at least the past 5 years.

But wow, this is clearly in another league. The voices and instruments are in three dimensions, the bass and dynamics are far far better, the saxes are up-front and breathy. I couldn’t believe how good Daddy Don’t Live in that New York City No More and Chain Lightning sounded. Even my subwoofer that I roll off at 30Hz got a good workout. It sounds like live music. So how did you sneak your tape recorder into the studio sessions, anyway?

Roger, we’re so happy to know that your love for Katy Lied has finally been requited after all these years. The reason we go on for days about the sound of practically every track on the album is that we love it just as much as you do.

We struggled ourselves from one bad pressing to another. Eventually, with better cleaning fluids, better equipment and tons of pressings at our disposal, we broke through the Bad ABC Pressing Barrier and discovered the copies that had the real Katy Lied Magic.

We Are Heartened

Everything you said was true. We are especially heartened by the fact that you cited Chain Lightning as a high point of the album we sent you. Your copy, earning a grade of A+ for side two, was a couple of steps down from the best — but it still sounds great! You don’t have to buy the Ultimate Copy to get sound that beats the pants off any “audiophile” pressing, any import, any anything, man.

It’s Not About The Money

You and I both know it’s not about the three hundred bucks. It’s about some of the best music these guys ever made. It’s about their ambitious yet problem-plagued recording surviving the record label’s mass-production-on-the-cheap, opting to stamp the sound on a slice of not-particularly-good vinyl. It’s about the search for that rare pressing with the kind of sound that conveys the richness and sophistication of Becker and Fagen’s music, music that I’ve been listening to since 1975 and do not expect to tire of any time soon (so far so good: as of 2013 this is still my favorite Dan album). [Still true as of 2022.]

So what if it took thirty years to finally get hold of a good one? With a little luck we’ll both be listening to this album for another thirty years, and that works out to the very un-princely sum of ten bucks a year.

I wish I could have sneaked a tape recorder into the studio. I sure wouldn’t have gone in for that crazy DBX Noise Reduction system they used. That alone would have saved us all a decade or two of suffering (unless you like the sound of two trash can lids crashing into each other).

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Who Can Explain Why This Cheap Reissue Sounds So Good?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Claude Debussy Available Now

This Decca reissue is spacious, open, transparent, rich and sweet.

Roy Wallace was the engineer for these sessions from 1955 to 1962 in Geneva’s glorious sounding Victoria Hall. His work here is superb in all respects.

It’s yet another remarkable disc from the Golden Age of Vacuum Tube Recording, with the added benefit of mastering using more modern, but apparently still good, cutting equipment from the ’70s, 1972 to be exact.

We are of course here referring to the often amazing modern mastering of 40+ years ago, not the mediocre-at-best modern mastering of today.

The combination of old and new works wonders on this title as you will surely hear for yourself on both of these superb sides.

We were impressed with the fact that it excelled in so many areas of reproduction. The illusion of disappearing speakers is one of the more attractive aspects of the sound here, pulling the listener into the space of the concert hall in an especially engrossing way.

Thread It Up and Just Hit Play Already

What might be seen as odd — odd to some audiophiles but not to us — was how rich and Tubey Magical the reissue can be on the best copies.

This leads me to think that most of the natural, full-bodied, smooth, sweet sound of the album is on the tape, and that all one has to do to get that vintage sound on to a record is simply to thread up the master on a good machine and hit play.

The fact that nobody seems to be able to make an especially good sounding record these days makes clear that in fact I’m wrong to think that this approach would work. It seems to me that somebody should be able to figure out how to do it. In our experience that is simply not the case today, and has not been for many years.

Old Tapes, New Tapes

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.

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Mobile Fidelity’s Approach to Mastering – I Have a Theory

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Little Feat Available Now

I have a theory about why MoFi’s mastering approach tended to work for the Waiting for Columbus album when it failed so miserably for so many others. It goes a little something like this. 

Back in their early days, MoFi tended to add bass and treble to practically every record they mastered, regardless of whether or not the master tape they were using needed a boost.

A little extra sparkle up top and a little extra kick down low was what the audiophile public seemed to want.  We call this the smile curve and lots of audiophile records have a case of it.

Truth be told, I was a member of that group and I know I did.

Fortunately for them, Waiting for Columbus is an album that can ofteny use a little at both ends. Rarely did The Mastering Lab supply it, making the original domestic pressings somewhat bass-shy and dull on the extreme top. The MoFi clearly corrected the poor EQ choices The Mastering Lab had often made. 

UPDATE 2024: Poor EQ Choices?

Or perhaps it could have been one or more of the following:

  • Perhaps the band liked it better that way.
  • Perhaps The Mastering Lab found it easier to cut that way.
  • Perhaps the cause of the records lacking extension on both ends comes from some other factors that cannot be known.

Or, if you don’t like those three, just make up some other reasons that sound plausible, or ones that fit in with other ideas you may have, even though there is probably not an iota of evidence to support any of it.

This is the way of the audiophile record collector — theories galore, but not much experimental evidence to back them up (or falsify them as the case may be). We are more inclined to the No Theory approach to finding good records, which you can read about here. We believe it has served us well and can do the same for you.

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Talk About Getting the Sound Wrong – What Was Decca Thinking?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Rolling Stones Available Now

Even though we know that the UK Decca pressings have not done well in our shootouts for more years than I care to remember, if we see one for cheap locally you know we’re going to buy it and get it another chance at the brass ring no matter how many times it’s failed in the past.

As you can see from our shootout notes, the Decca import has once again let us down.

It’s bright, with no warmth or weight. It’s not musical like the London pressings with the right stampers are.

If a certain kind of audiophile were to play this record, the kind of audiophile who might be given to simplistic conclusions based on insufficiently small sets of data — which, in our experience, pretty much covers the entire audiophile record collector community, including, if not especially, the so-called expert reviewers — the conclusion such a person might reach is that Beggars Banquet is just not very well recorded.

If Decca pressings don’t sound good, what on earth would?

Or, to put it another way, if Decca, the label that the Stones recorded this album for, can’t figure out how to make Beggars sound its best, why would we assume that any other company could?

We would, naturally, assume that Decca did the best they could with the tape and the mediocre quality of the sound you hear — 1+/1.5+ is pretty much our definition of mediocre — is all there is.

The Option that Is Almost Always Wrong

Worse — if a new Heavy Vinyl pressing of the album came out with even halfway-decent sound, then it would prove beyond a doubt that some modern mastering engineer had finally figured out how to get Beggars to sound right.

But of course it would prove no such thing.

If all you have to guide you is conventional collector wisdom, then the one thing you can be sure of is that the Decca pressing from the UK should have better sound than any other, especially any record made in the states.

But it doesn’t. It’s possible I suppose – we haven’t played every pressing ever made – but it sure is unlikely based on the evidence presented to our ears over the course of the last twenty to thirty years or so.

If you would like to hear Beggars Banquet sound right, and have the hundreds of dollars we charge for a copy that is guaranteed to sound right or your money back, click on the link. It’s rare that we have one in stock, but you never know.

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Labels, Patterns and Reasoning in a Circle

Hot Stamper Pressings of Orchestral Music Available Now

This commentary was written more than ten years ago. It seems to be holding up just fine though, especially considering just how bad some of the Heavy Vinyl pressings we’ve played recently sounded.

RFR1/ 2.  This pressing has DEMONSTRATION QUALITY SOUND.

Here is the sound that Mercury is famous for: immediate, dynamic and spacious. This record lives up to the Mercury claim: You immediately feel as though you are in the Living Presence of the orchestra.

This is precisely the kind of record that Speakers Corner would not have a clue how to master. I’d stake my reputation on it, for what that’s worth.

As you may know, I am a critic of the new [now long in the tooth] Speakers Corner Mercury series, and I can tell you without ever hearing their version of this recording that there is NO CHANCE IN THE WORLD they will ever cut a record that sounds like this.

It’s alive in a way that none of their pressings would even begin to suggest.

If you don’t believe me, please buy this record and play it for yourself. If you don’t agree, I will refund your money and pay the domestic shipping back.

This record also gives the lie to those who think that Vendor pressings are inferior. This is a Vendor and I would be surprised if there’s a better sounding copy than this one. I’ve certainly never heard one.

People who like to read labels and find some sort of pattern or connection between the label and the sound of the record are living in a world of their own making.

A world that exists solely in their heads.

The stamper numbers are the only thing that can possibly mean anything on a record, and even those are subject to so much variation from pressing to pressing that they become little more than a vague, general guide.

This LP is a good example of a record that a certain kind of record collector might pass up, hoping to find a better sounding non-Vendor pressing.

Of course, the circular reasoning that would result is that such a collector would buy the non-Vendor pressing, possibly with the exact same stamper numbers, hear how good it sounded, and congratulate himself on the fact that the non-Vendor pressings always sound so much better.

All without ever having done a comparison. A good way to never be wrong.

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Hot Stampers Helped Some Audiophiles Hear What They’d Been Missing

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he played at a stereo show recently. You can read all about it here.

We carried on the conversation:

Tom,

Thank you and for sure I’d be more than happy to spread the word more and help out! Send me cards for sure. I’m def a Better Records disciple.

You should consider teaming up with a room at the show next time. I think worth your while. Time to break the grip of the MoFi Mafia at these shows.

All the best, Mike

Mike,

We went to some shows years ago and nothing came of it.

It may turn out that none of these people will ever want to pay good money — let’s be honest, a lot of good money — for Hot Stampers. I wrote about it here.

Experience over many years has borne out this view, disappointing as it may be.

The audiophiles who go to shows for some reason don’t seem to be able to wrap their heads around the concept of Hot Stampers.

Hard to imagine that none of them can afford our records. The money someone might pay for three wacky MoFis or three Analogue Productions disasters would probably get you one very good sounding Hot Stamper pressing. In my book, one good record that you might actually listen to and enjoy often is a whole lot better than any number of modern records that you will seldom play and more than likely simply file away on the shelf where their sole purpose will be to collect dust.

I’m guessing. I don’t really know what people do with all these mediocre sounding reissues. I wrote about what I suspect happens to them here.

I Beg the Question

But this is purely an exercise in “begging the question.”

I’m assuming things I do not know to be true, in order to make the very point I have the burden of proving.

To make my case, I would need to provide evidence to back up the claim that these records don’t get played and enjoyed. To be honest, I have no evidence whatsoever that the owners of these records don’t enjoy the hell out of them.

It’s a naked expression of prejudice on my part. I’m assuming that what’s obviously true for me must be true for others. I don’t enjoy playing these Heavy Vinyl records, and I think that other audiophiles must be as disappointed by them as I am.

But Heavy Vinyl records are selling very well these days. Somebody is buying them.

And they buy them even though, as our writer points out, they cannot begin to compete with good vintage pressings.

More question begging? Not really. This happens to be something I can provide plenty of evidence for and can prove with ease.

Practically every record on our site is a rebuttal to audiophile pressings from every era, made by every company in the remastering business.

To find out how wrong these modern records are, all you need do is buy one of our Hot Stampers and play them head to head.

Oh well. All we can do is keep trying to get the word out. And we thank you for your help showing audiophiles what they are missing.

Because explaining doesn’t work. Only hearing works.

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Six-Eye, Black Print, White Print, Red Label – Which Is the Best Sounding Kind of Blue?

Hot Stampers Pressings of the Music of Miles Davis Available Now

Is the 50s original always better, is the 70s reissue always better, is the 60s 360 pressing always better?

The answer is “no” to all three.

Why? Because no pressing is always better. All pressings are unique and should only be judged on their merits, and you do that by playing them, not by looking at their labels. For us this truth is practically axiomatic. It is in fact the premise of our entire business. Over the course of the 28 years we have been selling records we have never found any compelling evidence to invalidate it.

The day that someone can accurately predict the sound quality of a specific record by looking at the label or cover is a day I do not expect to come, ever.

UPDATE 2024

Our Latest Thinking on KOB

The 6 Eye label domestic stereo pressings win our shootouts, in the case of Kind of Blue without exception.

The 360 label pressings, black print (1962-63) or white print (1963-70), as well as the rare 70s red label (1970-?), can sound very good, but they never win shootouts.

We’ve identified a select group of reissues with the potential to do well in shootouts, typically earning a grade of Super Hot (A++) when up against the best originals which earn our top grade, White Hot (A+++). Kind of Blue is one of those recordings.

A Larger Point

But there is a larger point to be made. Let’s assume that the best original Six Eye Columbia pressings can be the best — the most Tubey Magical, the most involving, the most real. You just happen to have a clean pressing, and you absolutely love it.

But is it the best? How could you possibly know that?

Unless you have done a comparison with many copies under controlled conditions, you simply cannot know where on the sonic curve your copy should be placed.

Perhaps you have a mediocre original. Or a mediocre 360 Label copy. Since you haven’t done a massive shootout you simply have no way of knowing just how good sounding the album can be.

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Years Ago We Badly Misjudged the Recording Quality of Tull’s Debut

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Jethro Tull Available Now

A clear case of live and learn.

We listed a White Hot copy of This Was in 2008 on the Island pink label and noted at the time:

Be forewarned: this ain’t Stand Up or Aqualung. I don’t think you’ll be using any copy of This Was to demo your stereo, because the recording has its share of problems. That said, this record sounds wonderful from start to finish and will make any fan of this music a VERY happy person. We guarantee you’ve never heard this album sound better, or your money back.

Now we know a couple of things that we didn’t back in 2008.

1). This album is a lot better sounding than we gave it credit for years ago. It’s not perfect by any means but it is much better than the above comments might lead you to believe.

We chanced upon an exceptional sounding copy of the album in 2017 or so, and that taught us something new about the record:

2). The Pink Label pressings are not the best way to go on this album.

Once we heard the exceptional copy alluded to above, we played it against our best Pink Label copies and it was simply no contest.

In 2008 we still had a lot to learn. We needed to do more research and development, which of course we are doing regularly with Classic Rock records, our bread and butter and the heart of our business.

We do them as often as is practical, considering how difficult it is to find copies with audiophile quality playing surfaces.

Nine years later, we felt we finally had a proper understanding on the various pressings of This Was. It goes like this:

The Pink Label original British pressings can be good, but they will never win a shootout up against copies with these stampers (assuming you have more than one copy — any record can have the right stampers and the wrong sound, we hear it all the time. Beware of small sample sizes).

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Are White Label Promos the Way to Go on this Mystery Columbia Jazz Album?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Vintage Columbia Albums Available Now

Recently we conducted a shootout for a Columbia recording, one that we had auditioned a couple of times before and one for which we knew the music and the general quality of the sound well.

It’s not the record you see pictured. For now we’re keeping the title a mystery, consistent with the idea that we give out lots of bad stampers on this blog, but almost never do we give out the good ones. (When we do give out the best stampers, we keep the title a mystery. We are not the least bit interested in putting ourselves out of business.)

The discussion for today revolves around the idea held by a great many audiophiles that the White Label Promo copies are going to be the best sounding pressings of almost any album they might happen to run across.

And, to be fair, in the case of this mysterious double album, they’re right.

Our two best sounding copies were White Label Promos.

What interests me in these findings is that the stampers for a White Label Promo copy, the second one, the one with mostly Super Hot grades, are almost identical to the one that came in last in the shootout, with barely passable grades.

If an audiophile collector were to go to Discogs, find the WLP pressings, write down their stampers, and then check them against the copies he owned or might want to buy, he could either find himself with a top quality copy, or a not-nearly-as-good copy, depending on his luck. (And side four of the worst pressing earned a sub-Hot Stamper grade of 1+.)

Why one set of stampers sounds so much better than another set, or the same or similar set on a different pressing, is a mystery.

Does anyone have a practical way to get around the unfortunate reality that allows one set of stampers to sound great and the same or a similar set of stampers to sound not much better than decent?

Well, we can’t say there is a practical way, but we do know of an impractical one. We’ve been practicing and refining that one for more than twenty years.

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