Clear Thinking

Practically everything we know about record pressings we learned by playing them, in record shootout after record shootout, starting way back in 2004.

Once you implement a scientific approach to evaluating record pressings, most of the thinking stops and the real learning begins.

Letter of the Week – “Am I really paying for nothing when I buy a Hot Stamper? “

More of the Music of Carole King

One of our good customers had this to say about his recent experience on the Steve Hoffman forum.

We’ve added some headings and such like. Scroll down to read the many comments that have been left, most of which I have replied to at length.

Hi Tom,

When Fred emailed me to say that a copy of Tapestry was about to hit the site, I did not hesitate in buying it. I’m not writing today with one of my usual raves of your records. Suffice it to say, it’s always a joy to be hear an album I thought I knew by heart in a whole new way. Rather I’m writing because I still can’t fully square my enthusiasm for your records with the reaction I got when I talked about it on the Steve Hoffman Forum a couple months ago.

Hoffman’s Parting Words

As I purchased my 32nd (!) record from you without a moment’s hesitation, Steve Hoffman’s parting words to me sprang back into my mind. Could he possibly be right? Am I really paying for nothing when I buy a hot stamper? By posting my appreciation of Better Records on his forum, was I merely inducing other people to throw their money away too? Have I been fooling myself? Are there other ways to get records that sound as good as yours?

I never had a chance to respond to his view there because the whole thread was taken down a few minutes after he posted that, so if you don’t mind, I’d like to ask you to share my views with the readers of your blog, since people can’t find my views on the Steve Hoffman forum.

So here goes.

We’re all aware that there’s misinformation on the internet. We’ve learned by now how to spot the sins of commission – the obvious manipulations and falsehoods. What’s more pernicious are the sins of omission – accurate information that’s been removed because it does not fit a narrative.

Somebody interested in finding great sounding records would be blameless if they ended up with a pile of mediocrities, because they followed the advice and opinions readily available on the internet. It’s a frustration that there are so few voices like yours and Robert Brook’s offering a different view.

The biggest problem with a stack of mediocre records that you mistakenly believe are excellent is that if you ever notice they don’t sound very good, the only fix you can think of is to buy more expensive equipment.

And that’s where the real money gets wasted.

[Hear hear!]

A Roadmap for Finding “Pretty Good Records”?

There are tons of posts on the Steve Hoffman Forum, and tons of people are presumably following the advice there, but what’s on there is really nothing more than a roadmap to finding Pretty Good Records.

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Robert Brook Has a Question for the Audiophile Community

Are Hot Stampers for real, or are they for the birds?

(That’s a question I see asked a lot by audiophiles. You will have no trouble guessing what the answer tends to be.)

Below you will find some of the text from an email exchange I had with Robert, one of hundreds we’ve sent to each other as we found ourselves winding through the thicket of records and audiophile equipment.

It’s one we are constantly struggling to understand, in my case even after 40 years.

In this email he recounts a personal story about a yoga friend, exploring his reaction to an incident that occurred with a fellow yoga practioner and some of the psychological lessons he learned from it. What he learned, he has now come to realize, helped him see more clearly some of the things that are going on in analog audio, especially when it comes to the credibility of yours truly.

He also points out that I am not always as tactful as I should be, and I don’t doubt for a minute that he is right about that. Not my strong suit. I’m more in favor of the “tough love” approach, but after rereading some of my old emails, it’s often shocking — even to me — how blunt I can be. I’ll try to do better.

Please to enjoy Robert’s story.

TOM PORT and Why More Audiophiles Don’t Take His Advice

A GUIDE FOR THE DEDICATED ANALOG AUDIOPHILE

Robert has approached the various problems he’s encountered methodically and carefully along these three fronts:

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Letter of the Week – “Holy smokes, the 3/3 copy transforms the musical experience.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Doors Available Now

A letter from a good customer tells of his experience playing a top copy of the album.

Hi Guys,

Just when I thought you guys could not surprise me, you did it again. Morrison Hotel was not in my collection when I was growing up although I was familiar with some of the tracks on the album. I picked up a SHS 2/1.5 copy; it was good and I added it to my collection. I saw the WHS 3/3 copy come up on the site and thought I would give it a try because of my past experience (Jackson Browne, Beatles – White Album, Crowded House).

Holy smokes, my intuition was correct: the 3/3 copy transforms the musical experience. I don’t know how or why this happens; how a SHS side 2 that sounds good goes exponentially up with a WHS 3 copy; it just does. When one gets a WHS 3/3 in single album as opposed to a 2 pack; it is a musical treat beyond compare. Thanks as usual.

Mike

Mike, I have had that experience quite often, hundreds of times in fact. The 3+ takes the music to a place no other copy can take it, and it takes you with it. This is why we do shootouts, and why you must do them too, if owning the highest quality pressings is important to you.

Shootouts are the only way to answer the most important question in all of audio: “compared to what?”

Without shootouts, how can you begin to know the specific characteristics of the sound of the pressings you own?

We write a lot about that subject, and here is a bit of an overview that we think our readers will find helpful.

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After You’ve Played 100 Copies of the Album, What’s Left to Learn?

bloodchildHot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Blood, Sweat and Tears Available Now

UPDATE 2026

This commentary is at least ten years old. We can’t say that a red label reissue like the one discussed below would do as well under the improved shootout conditions in our new studio, but the possibility exists, which is the point of the story we are telling here.

A common misconception of many of those visiting the site for the first time is that we think we know it all.

Nothing could be further from the truth. We definitely do not know it all. We learn something new about records with practically every shootout.

Not This Title

Case in point: the record you do NOT see pictured above. (The record we recently learned something new about — this, after having played scores and scores of copies over the years — will remain a secret for the time being. At least until we find another one.)

In 2013 we played a red label Columbia reissue of a famous 60s rock record (again, not shown) that had the best side two we had ever heard. Up to that point no copy other than the 360 original had ever won a shootout, and we’ve done plenty. Lo and behold, here was a reissue that put them all to shame.

I’m still in shock from the experience to tell you the truth, but what a blast it was to hear it!

The recording, which I first played more than 40 years ago at the tender age of 16, was now bigger, less murky and more energetic than ever before. Had you asked me, I would have confidently told you not to waste your time with the second pressing, to stick to the 360s on that title, and I would have been wrong wrong wrong.

How Wrong?

But wait a minute. The 360 original will probably beat 49 out of 50 red label reissue copies on side two, and the best 360 original could not be beaten on side one by any other pressing. When you stop to think about it, we weren’t very wrong at all.

Let’s just say our understanding was incomplete.

This is why we prefer to offer actual physical records rather than just advice, although it’s clear for all to see that we happily do both, and, moreover, we certainly feel qualified — as qualified as anyone can be — to offer up our opinions, since our opinions are based on a great deal of experimental data.

Having big piles of cleaned records at one’s disposal is fundamentally important to this kind of operation. In our experience, shootouts using only a small number of pressings have relatively little value. They are best seen as a guide for the next, more comprehensive attempt to find out what might be the truly killer pressings of any given album.

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Cognitive Dissonance, or, I Just Paid $600 for This LP – Was That Too Much?

New to the Blog? Start Here

This letter came to us when we first started selling Hot Stamper pressings on our website way back in 2004-2005. Since that time we have received many other letters like it. Apparently, charging a lot of money for used records upsets people. Who knew?

Don, who wrote us the following letter, applauds us for being able to convince our customers to pay forty times the going rate for some of the records we sell — and like it!

The subject line of Don’s letter is Music.

What a great example of free market capitalism at it’s [sic] finest. Your web site is truly a unique example of marketing. You’ve taken a medium that [sic] completely relative and you can convince someone to pay upwards of 40X the going rate because….well, you said so. That doesn’t mean that the record will sound the same to them or that their experience of music is the same as yours as a reviewer. I guess if someone decides to spend $600 on a record they damn well better find a reason why it’s worth it even if they’re not completely convinced. (I took the time to read some of the other comments on your site.)

Don’t understand why someone would be upset about that or how they could argue that the records aren’t worth the price. They’re worth whatever someone is willing to pay for them as I see it. Maybe because they didn’t think of it first or they have some misplaced sense of ethics….who knows. I know it’s not worth it to me and thankfully there are plenty of other resources available for buying music. Another great example of capitalism…..

Sincerely,

Don L.

Don, honestly, I’m positively blushing at the thought that my “say so” is what gets people to pay the ridiculously high prices we charge for what appear to be fairly common rock records, the kind that might be worth roughly, oh, I don’t know, 1/40th of what we are asking? (Truth be told, probably even less.)

Ah, but here’s the kicker: there’s actually a scientific explanation for it!

It’s called cognitive dissonance, and it works like this. Let’s say someone decides to spend $600 on a record — sound familiar? — yet for some reason they’re not completely convinced it’s worth it — ring any bells? — so they find a way to justify the purchase to themselves by rationalizing one of two things: their actions or their perceptions.

In this case, although the actual record may not sound all that good when they get it home, because it costs so much they must find a way to make it somehow seem better than it really is. Failing to do so, this person, demonstrably $600 poorer, would have to conclude that he, like an idiot, has just let himself get ripped off, in this case by us.

Twisted Logic

The logic at work here is pretty straightforward. The buyer says to himself: I am not an idiot. Only an idiot would pay $600 for a record that doesn’t sound amazingly good, especially one that can easily be had for one-fortieth the amount of money I have paid, therefore the record must sound better than my ears tell me it does.

Which — let’s be honest here — may in fact be happening. I don’t know what these records sound like in my customer’s homes. How could I? They live all over the world. I have certainly taken some of my best sounding pressings with me while visiting customers, and they sure sounded good on their systems. But I can’t vouch for systems I have never heard and people I have never met. That would be silly.

You Are Correct Sir

You are certainly correct in pointing out that musical values are relative. The famous Latin proverb “De gustibus non est disputandum,” roughly translated “There’s no accounting for taste,” is one with which I am very familiar. (When somebody pays $600 for The Hunter on vinyl, you don’t have to tell me there’s no accounting for taste.)

As a skeptic I require evidence for what I believe in order to believe it. Although it’s certainly possible that our customers are willing to pay our admittedly high prices on nothing more than our say so, I see no evidence that this is in fact the case. All things being equal I think they must really like our records. They tell us so all the time, and they keep buying them week after week, so if they really are just fooling themselves, they apparently can’t stop doing it.

Occam’s Razor

The scientist’s and skeptic’s best friend, Occam’s razor, comes into play here. It holds that “the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible.” It’s often paraphrased as “All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best.” In other words, when multiple competing theories are equal in other respects, the principle recommends selecting the theory that introduces the fewest assumptions…”

Why assume people who buy expensive records are crazy? Why assume that the records they buy aren’t every bit as good as advertised, if not better? Why assume that the “other resources available for buying music” are even remotely as good, absent any evidence?

People assumed that the CD was going to be a cheap and easy resource for their music, and look where that got them.

Assumptions? Us?

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What Causes Lifeless and Pointless Sound?

More of the Music of Chuck Mangione

We did a shootout for this album in 2012 and had a hard time finding much energy in the music. That is, until we stumbled upon a few good copies, which showed us just how well recorded the album was and how enjoyable the music could be on the right pressing.

It’s shocking just how lifeless and pointless Feels So Good can sound on some copies.

After only a few minutes the band seems to be having a hard time staying awake.

But the same performance is captured on every pressing, so how can the band sound so inspired here and so uninspired elsewhere?

It’s one of the mysteries of recorded media, one which still takes us by surprise on a regular basis, every week in fact.

This idea that most pressings do a poor job of communicating the music still has not seeped into the consciousness of the audiophile public. Here at Better Records, we’ve been diligently working to change that for close to twenty years, one Hot Stamper at a time.

The copies that are present, clear, open, transparent and energetic, with a solid rhythmic line driving the music, are a hundred times more enjoyable than the typical pressing that can be found practically unplayed (gee, I wonder why?) sitting in most record collections.

By the way, if you know Feels So Good only through the radio, you may be surprised to find that it’s close to ten minutes long, not the three minutes you’re familiar with. The band stretches out quite a bit and the solos are fairly inventive, as AMG noted.

This very side two has that problem to a fair degree; it’s a bit too murky and veiled to be as much fun as side one. But so few copies were any good at all that it still earned an A+ grade. If you turn it up it helps it quite a bit. Still, it lack extension high and low compared to this side one. (more…)

Question – Where Are All Your New Wave and Post Punk Titles?

Extreme Record Collecting: Confessions of an Analog Vinyl Snob

Extreme Record Collecting Part II: There’s Only One Way to Find Better Records

One of our good customers wrote us a letter recently

Hey Tom, 

Just a quick message to let you know that I really enjoyed reading those two recent pieces on the Dangerous Minds blog (“Extreme Record Collecting: Confessions of an Analog Vinyl Snob” and “Extreme Record Collecting Part II: There’s Only One Way to Find Better Records”).  As always, it is a total pleasure to read anything in which you are interviewed at length, as you articulate ideas about sound and music so much better and more eloquently than anybody else.

Very kind of you to say, we try! I did an interview with a colleague which you may enjoy: detail versus weight

Loved some of the nuggets I had never heard you speak about before (the lack of any hot stampers for Then Play On, the difficulty with the first CSN album, and your hilarious take on the live Fleetwood Mac album).  Hearing those kinds of insights from you gives me a total buzz for hours afterward! 

Awesome. We do a lot of that stuff on the blog. Do a search for any record and something will usually come up. Also we have a “never again” tag for some of the records that probably won’t go into shootouts now that I have retired.

The only point you offer in the whole interview with which I would quibble at all is your take on new wave and post-punk titles.  Your sense is that there wouldn’t be a market for $200 pressings of records by Nick Cave, Joy Division, et al., but I suspect the exact opposite is true.  I for one would leap at Hot Stampers by both of those artists, as well as many others from their time (Echo and the Bunnymen, The Cure, The Blue Nile, The Psychedelic Furs, Public Image Ltd., etc.), and I’m certain that there are many others like me.  What’s more, I suspect we would pay a lot more than $200 for each title.  Your point about the sound quality of some of those albums being less distinguished than records from previous eras could certainly be true.  Nonetheless, as we’ve talked about before, people don’t expect every record they buy from you to sound like Aja or Dark Side of the Moon.  Rather, they want the albums they love to sound the best they possibly can.

While not precisely analogous, I might mention your recent success with Hot Stampers of Beck’s Sea Change as indicative of the untapped market that awaits you.  By my count, at least three copies of that title (two White Hot Stampers and a Super Hot Stamper) recently flew off the shelves of Better Records.  I have no doubt that Sea Change is an exceptionally well recorded album and perhaps—as your write-ups indicated—an especially analog-sounding one.  But all of the records on your website have those qualities.  The copies of Sea Change went so fast because that title and that artist had never been available from your store before.

Having said all of that, I completely get your point about the time, money, and hard work that would be involved in introducing new titles to the Better Records inventory.  Given that you and your team are working full time as it is, and given that you are massively successful with the existing pool of titles, there doesn’t seem to be much of an incentive to change course for an unproven commodity.  Nonetheless, if you ever do decide to test the waters with some of these other artists, I would gladly share my two cents as far as artist/album selection goes, and I would gladly share my thousands of dollars for the shootout winners.

All good points. The reason it was easy for me to get Beck going was that I owned both Sea Change and Mutations and knew the sound was excellent. The R and D had already been done.

I have played albums by The Blue Nile, Psychedelic Furs and Public Image and found them all to be unacceptable, along with a host of others. Ultravox is a good sounding band, but who will buy them if we have trouble selling Roxy Music? We can hardly do Roxy Music these days for cryin’ out loud. One of the greatest bands ever.

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Inner Secrets Is One of the Best Sounding Rock Records We’ve Ever Played

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Santana Available Now

In our most recent shootout (11/2023), the first we’ve done in quite a few years, my main listening guy was blown away by the sound of the Shootout Winning copy. This warmed my heart no end, as I have been raving about the sound of this album for fifteen years or more.

We created a section for phenomenally good sounding records like Inner Secrets, and this link will take you to it.

His notes from the session can be seen below.

And he’s not wrong about much of the album being “blah.” There are really only about four top quality songs out of the nine on the album, but three of those four are killer, and, even at our prices, make the album a Must Own for those of you with big speakers that can play good and loud.

Phase One and Phase Two of a Shootout

Like other Hot Stampers you may have read about, sometimes the instruments and voices just jump out of the speakers. When that happens I usually write “It’s Alive!” on the post-it, and I know exactly what to do with it. I put it right in the Contender pile, to be compared with the other top contender copies at some point.

It’s definitely a crazy-good Hot Stamper; just how hot we still need to find out.

Which is what happens in Phase Two of these affairs. We go back through all the best copies to see in what areas they really shine and in what areas they may fall a bit short of the best.

Of course there’s no way to know what accounts for any of the sound we hear. Not for sure anyway. It’s just interesting to ponder what makes one record sound one way and the next record, with stampers as little as one letter off in the alphabet — sometimes with exactly the same stampers! — sound so different from one another.

Doug Sax Is The Man

All the originals (the only ones with the potential for good sound in our experience) are cut by The Mastering Lab, one of the greatest cutting houses to ever master records.

Doug Sax may or may not have had anything to do with the making of this record, but one thing we can be sure of: he knew how to keep his lathes and amplifiers working at state-of-the-art levels. The sound quality is unsurpassed.

And he did it all with tubes.

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Is Kind of Blue a Good Test Record?

Hot Stamper Pressing of Miles’s Albums Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about a Hot Stamper pressing of Kind of Blue he purchased recently:

Hey Tom, 

Listening to Kind Of Blue. Who needs an equipment upgrade with records like these?

Our reply at the time:

So true!

But on further reflection, it became clear to me that there is more to this idea than one might think upon first hearing it.

When records sound as good as Kind of Blue on vintage vinyl (not this piece of trash), it’s easy to think that everything in the system must be working properly, or, and more to the point I would like to discuss, reproducing the sound of the album at a high level.

If only more records were as well recorded as KOB, we could save ourselves a lot of time and money, time and money that we’re currently spending on tweaking, tuning and upgrading the various components of our systems. (Assuming you are in fact doing these things. I certainly hope you are. Achieving higher quality sound is one of the greatest joys to be had in all of audio.)

This is undoubtedly true, as far as it goes. But we must live in the world of records as we find it, not the one we want to exist.

Finding good sound for most of the records you wish to enjoy takes a great deal of effort, assuming you are setting your standards for sound at a fairly high level. Your standards don’t have to be as high as ours — we’re the guys who put their reputations on the line for extravagantly priced Hot Stampers, not you — but the records you are playing have to sound good enough to allow you to forget they are records in the first place. You want to be able to get immersed in the music without having to fight the sound to do it. You shouldn’t have to work at it. It should just happen. In our experience, that takes a good record.

With every improvement you make to your system, you eventually will find yourself banging your head up against the psychological effect of Hedonic Adaptation.* Once you have achieved better sound, it doesn’t take long before you get used to it, and now your much-improved “new normal” isn’t as thrilling as it was when you first experienced it.

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Outliers & Out-of-This-World Sound

More Outlier Pressings We’ve Discovered

This commentary was written about ten twenty years ago and has been updated more than a few times since.

A while back we did a monster-sized shootout for Blood, Sweat and Tears’ second release, an album we consider THE Best Sounding Rock Record of All Time.

In the midst of the discussion of a particular pressing that completely blew our minds — a copy we gave a Hot Stamper grade of A with Four Pluses, the highest honor we can bestow upon it — various issues arose, issues such as: How did this copy get to be so good? and What does it take to find such a copy? and, to paraphrase David Byrne, How did it get here?

  • We no longer give Four Pluses out as a matter of policy, but that doesn’t mean we don’t come across records that deserve them from time to time.
  • Nowadays we usually place them under the general heading of breakthrough pressings. These are records that, out of the blue, reveal to us sound that fundamentally changes what we thought we knew about these familiar recordings.
  • When this pressing (or pressings) landed on our turntable, we found ourselves asking “Who knew?“
  • Perhaps an even better question would have been “How high is up?”

Which brings us to this commentary, which centers around the concept of outliers.

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