Top Artists – Cannonball Adderley

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

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

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 misguided 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.

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Cannonball Adderley – What I Mean

More of the Music of Cannonball Adderley

  • Adderley’s superb double album reissue from 1979, which includes the complete 1961 album Know What I Mean?, here with seriously good Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER on all FOUR sides
  • Sides three and four (Know What I Mean?) were sonically very close to our Shootout Winner – you will be amazed at how big and rich and tubey the sound is
  • With outstanding presence, clarity, space and right-on-the-money timbral accuracy, these pressings are guaranteed to be one of the best sounding jazz records you’ve played in a long, long time
  • A hard record to find, and an even harder record to find with this kind of audiophile sound and playing surfaces
  • This is some of the best sound we have ever heard for this exceptional Golden Age 60s recording, and that is really saying something
  • 4 stars: “This two-LP set combines two fine sessions from 1961. The great altoist is heard with his quintet in 1961 (featuring cornetist Nat Adderley, Victor Feldman on vibes and piano and guest pianist Wynton Kelly) and in a quartet date with pianist Bill Evans.”
  • This is a Must Own album from 1961 that belongs in any jazz-loving audiophile’s collection

Sides one and two of this double LP were originally issued as The Cannonball Adderley Quintet Plus, while sides three and four were originally released as Know What I Mean?

All four sides boast excellent mastering and very good sound. The cymbals have that just right “tap” followed by an open and sweet “shimmer.”

The piano and sax, the heart of the music of course, are rendered as accurately as can be expected.

As good as the OJC sounds, and it can sound very good indeed, this Milestone reissue from the decade before is even better. It has more of a “vintage analog pressing” sound, the kind you would expect to hear on a recording from 1962. (more…)

How to Avoid Making this Rookie Record Collecting Mistake

Record Shopping Day Video!

Not sure how much of this video you can stand — nothing could interest me less than watching a couple of vinyl enthusiasts spouting off on what they think about some random records sitting in a local store’s bins.

But one or two bits caught my eye. I thought I might take the opportunity to share my take on them with you.

Is there any value to the comments of these two collectors? If you care about what music they like, perhaps.  Anything about what to look for on the label or jacket that might correspond to better sound?  If it’s there I sure didn’t see it, but I admit to speeding through most of it, so I can’t say for sure.

The first bit I refer to above is at 18:42.  The album in question is the legendary Kind of Blue. At this point the unseen helmet-cammed audiophile picks up the record, recognizes the cover, and proceeds to pull the record out to see what era the pressing is from.

Drat! The disappointment in this audiophile’s voice is palpable as he drops the record back in the bin with his dismissive comment that  “it’s a later pressing.”

But we here at Better Records would be falling all over ourselves to get our hands on that later pressing.

Those late pressings can and often do win shootouts. We would never look down our noses at a Red Label Columbia jazz LP, and neither should you.

UPDATE 2025

As good as the best pressings on the Red Label can sound, it has been years since one won a shootout. Here is our commentary for a recent 70s copy that went up on the site, one that earned a Super Hot grade on both sides.

They tend to sell for four or five hundred dollars these days. Why so much you ask? Because they beat the pants off of every so-called audiophile pressing of the album ever made. The testimony of one of our customers does a good job of describing the differences.

In addition, it turns out that at least nine out of ten of the copies with the red label are not remotely as good as the ones that earn Super Hot grades. The good ones are so rare that we only pick them up locally since practically none of the ones we find on the web have the right stampers. Trying to find the right red label needle in the haystack is more trouble than it’s worth, so don’t expect to see many coming to the site.

Our intrepid audiophile explorer does much the same thing about 23 minutes in. It seems pretty clear to us that he has no respect for such reissues, another example of one of the most common myths in record collecting land, the myth that the  original pressing is always, or to be fair, usually better.

This is simply not true, and those of our customers who have purchased White Hot Stamper pressings from us that turned out to be reissues know exactly what I am talking about. This is especially true for the records we sell by The Beatles. No original pressing has every won a shootout. [With one exception.]

Let’s get back to Kind of Blue.

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

No to one, two and 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 2025

The above is somewhat misleading. With enough clean 6-Eye pressings on hand to play in a shooout, one of them will win.

That being the case, we have created two lists for those who would like to know which Columbia labels win shootouts — one for 6-Eye winners and one for 360 Label winners.

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Miles Davis – Kind of Blue on a Killer 70s Red Label Pressing

More Miles Davis

  • With two solid Double Plus (A++) sides, this Red Label pressing has Demo Disc sound – sound that’s guaranteed to make you want to take all of your remastered pressings and dump them off at the Goodwill
  • After auditioning a Hot Stamper Kind of Blue like this one – a pressing that captures the sound of this amazing group like nothing you have ever heard – you may be motivated to add a hearty, “Good riddance to bad audiophile rubbish!”
  • KOB is the embodiment of the big-as-life, spacious and timbrally accurate 30th Street Studio Sound Fred Plaut was justly famous for
  • Space, clarity, transparency, and in-the-room immediacy are some of the qualities to be found on this pressing (particularly on side one)
  • It’s guaranteed to beat any copy you’ve ever played, and if you have the new MoFi pressing, please, please, please order this copy so that you can hear just how screwy the sound of their ridiculous remaster is
  • 5 stars: “KOB isn’t merely an artistic highlight for Miles Davis, it’s an album that towers above its peers, a record generally considered as the definitive jazz album, a universally acknowledged standard of excellence.”
  • If you’re a fan of the music Davis, Adderley and Coltrane were playing circa 1959, this album clearly belongs in your collection

The Labels of Kind of Blue

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.

Scores of differently mastered versions have been cut over the years, but to find one that’s lively and dynamic yet still communicates the relaxed nature of this music is a trick that few of them can pull off. These sides did just that.

When the band really starts cutting loose on “So What,” you’re going to lose your mind! The sound is open and spacious with a wonderful three-dimensional quality that gives each musician a defined space. You can easily tune in to one player or another and follow their contribution as the band stretches out.

Quick Listening Tests

This is an easy one. Just listen to the trumpet at the start of Freddie Freeloader. Most copies do not properly reproduce the transient information of Miles’ horn, causing it to have an easily recognizable quality we talk about all the time on the site: smear. No two pressings will have precisely the same amount of smear on his trumpet, so look for the least smeary copy that does everything else right too. (Meaning simply that smear is important, but not all-important.)

On All Blues (track one, side two), the drums in the right channel are key to evaluating the sound of the better copies. The snare should sound solid and fat — like a real snare — and if there is space in the recording on your copy you will have no trouble hearing the room around the kit.

[The drums are precisely where one of the major faults of the disastrous MoFi 2 LP 45 RPM pressing can be heard. A fuller review is coming, soon I hope!}

Next check the cymbals. No two copies will get the cymbals to sound the same, so play a few and see which ones sound the most natural to you. The most natural will be the one with the best top end.

When Adderley comes in hard left, his alto should not be thin, squawky or stuck in the speaker. The best of the best copies have the instrument sounding full-bodied (for an alto) and reedy. The reedy quality tells you that your pressing is highly resolving and not smeared.

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In the Land of Hi-Fi – A Very Good Speakers Corner Reissue

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Cannonball Adderley Available Now

Soon after the album was released in 2000, we wrote the following short review (three words!) in our catalog:

“Outstanding! Top recommendation!”

Ten years or so later, we added this caveat:

A fairly good Speakers Corner jazz album. Hard to know what we would think of this pressing today, but for the thirty bucks you might pay for it, it’s probably worth a listen. 

Well, we recently got one in and gave it that listen. Shockingly, it has held up fairly well for a Heavy Vinyl pressing.

With the mono switch out (inactive) on the EAR 324P, we noted:

Big, loose bass.

Horns are rich and nice but veiled.

With the mono switch in (active), the sound is a bit less veiled but not too different.

It’s not a bad sounding pressing — with a grade of 1.5+, it might qualify for our good, not great sounding LPs section, depending on how side two sounds. We didn’t play side two because 1.5+ is not a grade that makes us want to put any more time into it. It’s our lowest Hot Stamper grade, and it barely qualified for it, meaning there is a good chance that the next one could be 1+ and not worth anybody’s trouble.

The right vintage pressings are a big step up in class sonically, but boy are they hard to find in clean condition. We’ve tried for years and don’t have much to show for our efforts yet.

At a cheap price it’s not a bad record, depending on how you feel about the midrange being veiled.

I can’t stand that sound myself, but since a very large percentage of Heavy Vinyl pressings that we’ve auditioned over the years have suffered from that problem to one degree or another, I guess other music lovers and audiophiles feel differently. (This link will take you to some of the other records we’ve reviewed with veiled sound.)

The average copy on Discogs sells for $29.10. That seems like a decent price for a decent-sounding record.

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Letter of the Week – “Who needs an equipment upgrade with records like these?”

Hot Stamper Pressing of Miles’s Albums Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently:

Hey Tom, 

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

Our reply:

So true!

It’s actually one of the common faults of audiophile thinking, present company excluded, that if you can make a record like KOB sound great, you must have a good stereo system.

The opposite is true; the real test is to get difficult to reproduce recordings to sound good, not easy to reproduce recordings.

If you want to test the limits of your system, here are some difficult to reproduce records that will allow you to do it.

And if you want to buy some records that sound great but are difficult to reproduce because you love or challenge, or for any other reason, these Hot Stamper pressings should do the trick.

Either way, KOB is killer, and the MoFi of it is a joke, but don’t tell this guy, who appears to be rather new to this whole “reviewing” thing.  Watch it here. If you can stomach more than two minutes worth, you may be reading the wrong blog.

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Somethin’ Else on MoFi – How Is This Company Still in Business?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Recordings by Rudy Van Gelder Available Now

For our 2023 White Hot Stamper shootout winning pressing we wrote:

A triumph for Rudy Van Gelder, a top Blue Note title, and as much a showcase for Miles Davis as it is for Cannonball Adderley.

The best sides of this album have as much energy, presence, dynamics and three-dimensional studio space as any jazz recording we’ve ever played.

When you hear it on a copy like this, it’s hard to imagine it could get much better.

We’ve heard more than our fair share of tubby, groove-damaged originals and smeary, lifeless reissues over the years, but this White Hot Stamper blew them all away.

This is a record we could play every week and never tire of. 

But this expensive ($125) MoFi pressing had us wondering what the hell we were on about, because almost nothing about it is right except for something we were not expecting: it’s actually tonally correct.

What are the chances?

With Mobile Fidelity, slim and none, but in this case they managed to pull off slim. So let’s give credit where credit is due.

But the sound is still a mess no matter how tonally correct it is.

Allow me to list its faults based on the notes we took as the record was playing. The last line sums up the experience nicely.

1) It’s very recessed and lean.

2) The trumpet is thin and very squawky.

3) There is an exaggerated resonance in the peaks.

We summed it up this way:

Typical MoFi.

Flabby and compressed.

“Clean” yet the transients are soft.

Our final judgment:

Sucks more with each listen…

Man, that’s gotta hurt.

We made some other notes about how the MoFi compared to the originals and reissues we had on hand, but I did not reproduce them here for the simple reason that they gave away too much information about the pressings that tend to win shootouts.

Those pressings are hard enough to find as it is — we don’t want anybody finding them on his own and robbing our good customers of the chance to hear this amazing album sound the way it should: amazing.

Two to Four Questions

Is this the worst version of the album ever made?

Hard to imagine it would have much competition.

Are any of these Mofi One-Step pressings any good?

I seriously doubt it. Until one comes along that doesn’t sound awful, the jury is out. Those of you looking for miracles are likely to be disappointed.

Having said that, I’m sure there are audiophiles and audiophile reviewers who like the sound of this pressing and have said so online.

Based on what we heard, how on earth are these people qualified to judge the sound of records? I guess that’s three questions.

How bad does a record have to sound before they notice? Make that four, sorry.

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Miles Davis – Milestones

More Miles Davis

  • Milestones appears on the site for only the second time ever, here with solid Double Plus (A++) sound or close to it throughout this vintage MONO 2-Eye pressing – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Huge amounts of three-dimensional space and ambience, along with boatloads of Tubey Magic (particularly on side two) – here’s a 30th Street recording from 1958 that demonstrates just how good Columbia’s engineers were back then
  • Davis partners here with jazz greats, including John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley and others
  • Although the right 6-Eye mono originals will always win our shootouts, the 360 mono reissues still sound quite good to us, just not as good
  • And don’t waste your money on most of the copies in clean enough condition to please an audiophile, meaning the reprocessed stereo pressings — they’re awful
  • 5 stars: “What is immediately noticeable upon listening to Miles Davis’ classic first – and only – album with his original sextet is how deep the blues presence is on it. Though it’s true that the album’s title cut is rightfully credited with introducing modalism into jazz, and defining Davis’ music for years to come, it is the sole selection of its kind on the record. The rest is all blues in any flavor you wish you call your own.”

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Six-Eye, 360 Black Print, 360 White Print, 70s 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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Kind of Blue – Our Shootout Winner from 2013 on the 70s Label

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Miles Davis Available Now

UPDATE 2024: As good as the best 70s Red Label pressings may be, it’s unlikely that any copy other than the Six-Eye original will win a shootout these days.

In other words, in 2013 we still had a lot to learn about Kind of Blue even after we had been doing shootouts for the album for the eight years starting in 2005.

Doing shootouts for the album about twice a year, over the next eleven years and roughly 22 shootouts with every Columbia label represented, the data are in, and the right originals win every time, with no exceptions to that rule in a very long time. As you may have read elsewhere on the blog:

We don’t know it all and we’ve never pretended we did. All knowledge is provisional. We may not be the smartest guys in the room, but we’re sure as hell smart enough to know that much.

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

But we learn things from the records we play not by reading about them, but by playing them. Our experiments, conducted using the shootout process we’ve painstakingly developed and refined over the course of the last twenty years, produces all the data we need: the winners, the losers, and the ranking for all the records in-between.

We’ve learned to ignore everything but the sound of the records we’ve actually played on our reference system.

This approach allows us to have a unique, and, to our way of thinking, uniquely valuable service to offer the discriminating audiophile. When you’re tired of wasting your time and money on the ubiquitous mediocrities that populate the major audiophile dealers’ sites and take up far too much space in your local record store, let us show you just how much more real handpicked-for-quality recordings can do for your enjoyment of music.

Our Commentary from 2013

This is one of the very best copies we’ve ever heard, and we have literally played more than a HUNDRED copies of this album over just the last five years.

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