Top Artists – Antonio Carlos Jobim

A.C. Jobim – The Composer of ’Desafinado’ Plays

More Antonio Carlos Jobim

More Bossa Nova

  • You’ll find stunning Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) sound throughout this original Verve Stereo pressing – just shy of our Shootout Winner
  • Both of these sides are clean, clear and dynamic yet still full of rich, warm 1963 Tubey Magical Analog sound
  • We love the music of Antonio Carlos Jobim here at Better Records and we think this album is his best – no serious Jazz Collection should be without it
  • Marks and problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you
  • 4 1/2 stars: “A dozen songs, each one destined to become a standard — an astounding batting average.”

We’re big fans of Jobim here at Better Records, and this pressing was close to the best from our recent shootout. We had a wonderful time listening to a big pile of pressings — the sound (and music) were out of this world. We were shocked at just how well recorded this album is.

(more…)

Stan Getz & Joao Gilberto / Getz-Gilberto on Japanese Vinyl

Hot Stamper Pressings of Bossa Nova Albums Available Now

More Reviews and Commentaries for Japanese Pressings

Sonic Grade: C

This is a Minty looking Verve Japanese Import LP. It’s not competitive with the best domestic pressings, but you could definitely do worse. Trying to find domestic copies that aren’t trashed is getting harder every day, so if you’re a click and pop counter, this copy may be the ticket.

Stan Getz is a truly great tenor saxophonist, the cool school’s most popular player. This LP is all the evidence you need. Side 1 has those wonderfully relaxed Brazilian tempos and the smooth sax stylings of Stan Getz.

Side two for me is even more magical. Getz fires up and lets loose some of his most emotionally intense playing. These sad, poetic songs are about feeling more than anything else and Getz communicates that so completely you don’t have to speak Portugese to know what Jobim is saying. Call it cool jazz with feeling.

A Must Own Jazz Record

We consider this album a Masterpiece. It’s a recording that should be part of any serious Jazz Collecton.

Others that belong in that category can be found here.

Further Reading

Antonio Carlos Jobim – Wave

More Antonio Carlos Jobim

More Bossa Nova

  • Wave FINALLY returns to the site after about a ten year absence, here with excellent Double Plus (A++) sound throughout – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Both of these sides are remarkably full-bodied, natural and present, with tight bass and lots of space around all of the players
  • We love the music of Antonio Carlos Jobim here at Better Records and we think this album is one of his best — no serious jazz collection should be without it
  • 5 stars: “When Creed Taylor left Verve/MGM for his own label under the auspices of A&M, he quickly signed Antonio Carlos Jobim and they picked up right where they left off with this stunningly seductive record, possibly Jobim’s best.”

This vintage A&M/CTI pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records can barely BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing signs of coming back. If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to “see” the performers, and feeling as if you are sitting in the studio with the band, this is the record for you. It’s what vintage all analog recordings are known for — this sound.

If you exclusively play modern repressings of vintage recordings, I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it — not often, and certainly not always — but maybe one out of a hundred new records do, and those are some pretty long odds.

(more…)

The Recordings of Antonio Carlos Jobim – These Two Didn’t Make the Grade

More of the Music of Antonio Carlos Jobim

Hot Stamper Pressings of Bossa Nova Albums Available Now

Pictured to the left are a couple of the Antonio Carlos Jobim albums we’ve auditioned over the years.

Without going into specifics, we’ll just say these albums suffer from weak music, weak sound, or both. They may have some appeal to fans of Mr. Jobim, but audiophiles looking for top quality sound and music — our stock in trade — are best advised to look elsewhere.

We play mediocre-to-bad sounding pressings so that you don’t have to, a public service from your record-loving friends at Better Records.

You can find this one in our Hall of Shame, along with others that — in our opinion — are best avoided by audiophiles looking for hi-fidelity sound. Some of these records may have passable sonics, but we found the music less than compelling.  These are also records you can safely avoid.

We also have an Audiophile Record Hall of Shame for records that were marketed to audiophiles for their putatively superior sound. If you’ve spent any time on this blog at all, you know that these records are some of the worst sounding pressings we have ever had the displeasure to play.

We routinely play them in our Hot Stamper Shootouts against the vintage records that we offer, and are often surprised at just how bad an “audiophile record” can sound and still be considered an “audiophile record.” Some of the worst examples of the “bad sounding audiophile record” — not a contradiction in terms! — can be found here.

(more…)

Stan Getz & Joao Gilberto / Getz-Gilberto

More Bossa Nova

More Jazz Recordings Featuring the Saxophone

  • A vintage Verve Stereo pressing of this Brazilian-flavored cool jazz classic with a STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side two mated to a superb Double Plus (A++) side one
  • An impossibly difficult album to find in audiophile playing condition – we sunk a lot of time and dough into finding this copy, and it ain’t all that quiet, but it’s about as quiet as we can find them on vintage vinyl
  • If you want to hear this music right, the only way we know to do that is to get hold of as many copies as you can, clean them and play them and hope for the best, our business model in a nutshell
  • These sides have wonderful transparency and lovely presence – Astrud’s vocals sound breathy and Getz’s sax is full bodied, with fast transients
  • 5 stars: “This music has nearly universal appeal; it’s one of those rare jazz records about which the purist elite and the buying public are in total agreement. Beyond essential.”
  • You may be surprised to learn that the right reissues of this album consistently win the shootouts, something we’ve know for many years
  • Not that it does us much good, as they are so hard to find that our last shootout was, I kid you not, 2012
  • If I were to compile a list of The Best Non-Classical Albums from 1964, this album would obviously have to be on it

We have been trying to find great sound (on reasonable surfaces) for this album for years — I kid you not — which is why this is one of only a very small handful of Hot Stamper versions to hit the site in, oh, about ten years.

We have fired up this shootout multiple times since 2012 and been left empty-handed each and every time until the last go-around. We have sunk an insane amount of dough into trying to get a few killer copies because we love the music so much, but we just haven’t had much to show for it. If you love this Brazilian-flavored cool jazz as much as we do, you might want to snap this one up because who knows when or if we’ll find another one.

(more…)

Frank Sinatra – Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim

More Frank Sinatra

More Antonio Carlos Jobim

  • Boasting superb sound from start to finish, this vintage stereo pressing of Sinatra and Jobim’s sublime collaboration will be very hard to beat
  • The presence and three-dimensional space of the recording have the power to transport the Chairman of the Board and his Brazilian buddy right into your listening room
  • This is a magical album from start to finish, one of a handful of a Must Own Sinatra releases, and my personal favorite of all his recordings
  • 4 1/2 stars: “After a few plays, the album begins to slowly work its way underneath a listener’s skin, and it emerges as one of his most rewarding albums of the ’60s.”
  • We’ve recently compiled a list of records we think every audiophile should get to know better, along the lines of “the 1001 records you need to hear before you die,” with less of an accent on morbidity and more on the joy these amazing audiophile-quality recordings can bring to your life. This is a good example of a record audiophiles should make an effort to get to know better

This is, in our opinion, one of the two best sounding Sinatra album on Reprise (the other being September of My Years from 1965). The recording is so rich, sweet, and Tubey Magical, you would think it was prime Capitol period Sinatra — but it’s not, obviously; it just sounds that way.

If you like romantic music, you will be hard-pressed to find a better album than this one. The song “Quiet Nights Of Quiet Stars” perfectly encapsulates the mood of this album. My favorite track here is “Dindi.” Sinatra is the king of lost loves, and the song “Dindi” offers him another opportunity for regret. Nobody does it better than Frank. It’s a cliche to say he wears his heart on his sleeve, but the man made a career out of it. If the cliche fits…

(more…)

Herbie Mann and Joao Gilberto – Herbie Mann and Joao Gilberto With Carlos Jobim

More Joao Gilberto

More Bossa Nova

  • This vintage Atlantic stereo pressing boasts outstanding Double Plus (A++) sound from first note to last – exceptionally QUIET vinyl too
  • It’s big, lively, clear and present, with the kind of Tubey Magical richness we flip out for here at Better Records
  • A difficult record to find with audiophile playing surfaces – we go years without seeing a clean copy in stereo
  • Side two has the best condition grade we give out, Mint Minus – there may not be another record on the site with vinyl that quiet!
  • “The two make an effective team, with Gilberto’s sometimes sentimental, sometimes impressionistic works effectively supported by Mann’s lithe flute solos.”

(more…)

The Recordings of Antonio Carlos Jobim – These Are Two that Didn’t Make the Grade

More of the Music of Antonio Carlos Jobim

Hot Stamper Pressings of Bossa Nova Albums Available Now

Pictured to the left are a couple of the Antonio Carlos Jobim albums we’ve auditioned over the years.

Without going into specifics, we’ll just say these albums suffer from weak music, weak sound, or both. They may have some appeal to fans of the man, but audiophiles looking for top quality sound and music — our stock in trade — are best advised to look elsewhere.

We play mediocre-to-bad sounding pressings so that you don’t have to, a public service from your record-loving friends at Better Records.

You can find this one in our Hall of Shame, along with others that — in our opinion — are best avoided by audiophiles looking for hi-fidelity sound. Some of these records may have passable sonics, but we found the music less than compelling.  These are also records you can safely avoid.

(more…)

Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim on Bad Rhino Heavy Vinyl

More of the Music of Frank Sinatra

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Frank Sinatra

Sonic Grade: C-

The Rhino 180 gram LP mastered by Kevin Gray is passable, but the real thing is the real thing and just can’t be beat by some wannabe reissue.

There is a richness, a sweetness and a relaxed naturalness on the best early pressings that are virtually never found on modern remasterings.

Rhino Records has really made a mockery of the analog medium. Rhino touts their releases as being pressed on “180 gram High Performance Vinyl.” However, if they are using performance to refer to sound quality, we have found the performance of their vinyl to be quite low, lower than the average copy one might stumble upon in the used record bins.

Mastered by Kevin Gray, this record has what we would call ”modern” sound, which is to say it’s clean and tonally correct, but it’s missing the analog qualities the better originals have plenty of, most notably Tubey Magic. [1]

In other words, it sounds like a CD.

Who can be bothered to play a record that has so few of the qualities audiophiles are looking for on vinyl?

Back in 2007 we put the question this way: Why Own a Turntable if You’re Going to Play Mediocrities Like These?

[1] Some records are so completely lacking in Analog Warmth, Richness and Sweetness that they sound like CDs, and bad ones at that. They have so little Tubey Magic that you might as well peg the figure at ZERO.

This is decidedly not our sound. No Hot Stamper pressing could possibly lack Tubey Magic — it’s one of the things that sets our records apart from the modern mediocrity known as the Heavy Vinyl LP.

Direct to Discs on Crystal Clear – What Was I Thinking?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Direct-to-Disc Recordings

Reviews and Commentaries for Direct to Disc Recordings

These are just some of the recordings on Crystal Clear that we’ve auditioned over the years and found wanting.

Without going into specifics — who would bother to take the time? — we’ll just say these albums suffer from poor musical performances, poor sound, or both, and therefore do not deserve a place in your collection.  

The Big Picture from a Lifelong Audiophile

You may have seen this text in another listing, but it bears repeating. There is nothing new under the sun, and that is especially true when it comes to bad sounding audiophile records. The world is full of them.

Hey, the records being marketed to audiophiles these days may have second- and third-rate sound, but at least now they have good music

That’s progress, right?

These two titles are the kind of crap we newbie audiophiles used to put up with back in the ’70s before we had anything resembling a clue.

They clearly belong on our list of Bad Audiophile Records

You might be asking: What Kind of Audio Fool Was I? to buy dumbass records like these.

Yes, I was foolish enough to buy these records (and dozens more like them) and expect them to have good music, or at least good sound. Of course they had neither. Practically none of these kinds of records ever did. Sheffield and a few others made some good ones, but most Crystal Clears were crap.

As clueless as I was, even back in the day I could tell that I had just thrown my money away on these two lipsticked-pigs in a poke.

But I was an audiophile, and I wanted to believe. These special super-hi-fidelity records were being made for me, for special people like me, because I had expensive equipment and regular records would just never be good enough to play on my special equipment, right?

To say I was wrong to think about audio that way is obviously an understatement. Over the course of the last forty years, I (and to be fair, my friends and my staff) have been wrong about a great deal when it comes to records and audio.

You can read more about many of the things we got wrong under the heading: Live and Learn.

Thank goodness Audio Progress is real and anyone who goes about it the right way can achieve it.

(more…)