Top Artists – Joni Mitchell

Dopey Record Theories – Putting Bad Ideas to the Test

More of the Music of Joni Mitchell

Reviews and Commentaries for Court and Spark

Below we discuss some record theories that seem to be making the rounds these days.

The discussion started with a stunning White Hot Stamper 2-pack that had just gone up on the site..

I implored the eventual purchaser to note that side two of record one has Joni sounding thin, hard and veiled. If you look at the stampers you can see it’s obviously cut by the same guy (no names please!), and we’re pretty sure both sides were stamped out at the same time of the day since it’s impossible to do it any other way.

What accounts for the amazing sound of one side and the mediocre sound of its reverse?

If your theory cannot account for these huge differences in sound, your theory is fundamentally flawed. 

Can anything be more ridiculous than the ad hoc, evidence-free theories of some audiophile record collectors desperately searching for a reason to explain why records — even the two sides of the same record — sound so different from one another?

The old adage “the proof of the pudding is in the eating” couldn’t be more apt. If you want to know if a pudding tastes good, a list of its ingredients, the temperature it was cooked at, and the name of the person stirring it on the stove is surely of limited value. To know the taste one need only take a bite.

If you want to know the sound of a record, playing it is the best way to find out, preferably against other pressings, under carefully controlled conditions, on good equipment, while listening critically and taking notes.

The alternative is to… Scratch that. There is no alternative. Nothing else will ever work. In the world of records there are no explanatory theories of any value, just as there are no record gurus with all the answers. There are only methods that will help you find the best pressings, and other methods that will not.

The good news is that these methods are explained in detail on this very site, free of charge.

We’ve made it clear to everyone how to go about finding better sounding LPs. Once you see the positive results our methods produce, we suspect you will no longer be wasting time theorizing about records.

You will have learned something about them, at least about some of them, and that hard-won knowledge is the only kind that counts for much in the world of records.

Scientific Thinking – A Short Primer

Some approaches to this audio hobby tend to produce better results than others. When your thinking about audio and records does not comport with reality, you are much less likely to achieve the improvements you seek.

Without a good stereo, it is hard to find better records. Without better records, it is hard to improve your stereo.

You need both, and thinking about them the right way, using the results of carefully run experiments — not feelings, opinions, theories, received wisdom or dogma — is surely the best way to acquire better sound.

A scientific, empirically-based audio approach leads to better quality playback. This will in turn make the job of recognizing high quality pressings — the ones you find for yourself, or the ones we find for you — much, much easier.

Further Reading

Listening in Depth to James Taylor’s Forgotten Classic – Mud Slide Slim

More of the Music of James Taylor

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of James Taylor

Mud Slide Slim is one of those albums that we think should be more popular with audiophiles, at least the ones looking for timeless music with top quality sound.

It has some of the man’s strongest material:

  • You’ve Got a Friend;
  • You Can Close Your Eyes;
  • Hey Mister, That’s Me up on the Jukebox, and one of his best and most underrated,
  • Love Has Brought Me Around.

If you’ve got a top copy of the album, this song, the leadoff on side one, can really rock. It’s yet another in the long list of recordings that really comes alive when you Turn Up Your Volume.

Side One

Love Has Brought Me Around

One of my all-time favorite James Taylor tracks. When you get a good copy, this music comes ALIVE! This is not your typical sad sack, touchy feely James Taylor song. This song ROCKS!

You’ve Got a Friend

Listen to Carole King’s piano. On the best copies the transparency allows her playing to be heard clearly. Her style is unmistakable. (more…)

For a More Scientific Approach to Finding Better Records, Sweat the Details

More of the Music of Joni Mitchell

More Commentaries on the Basics of Shootouts

When it comes to doing shootouts, half the battle is just being able to play the record right.

Our approach is simply a matter of precisely adjusting the arm and cartridge for every title, then comparing the various pressings, properly cleaned of course, under carefully controlled conditions, with as much scientific rigor as we can bring to the proceedings.

In some ways it is analogous to rocket science, which we would define as the seemingly simple process of discovering all the details that need to be sweated and then sweating the hell out of them.

It’s the opposite of theoretical physics. One doesn’t need to be a novel thinker or have big ideas to do audio well.

Obsessively working through the basics of table setup, tweaks, room treatments and electrical quality will take your system to levels beyond those you could have ever imagined.

And, you sure don’t need a bloody microscope to check your stylus rake angle, unlike some audiophile reviewers who insist that such devices are somehow essential.

Your ears, if they are any good at all, will do the job just fine, and probably much better.

Tuning and Tweaking Are Essential to Improving Your Critical Listening Skills

The Science of Hot Stampers – Incomplete, Imperfect, and (Gulp!) Provisional

How To Get The Most Out Of Your Records – A Step By Step Guide

More Commentaries and Advice on Equipment

Joni Mitchell – Night Ride Home

More Joni Mitchell

 More Singer-Songwriter Albums

  • This original import copy of Joni’s hard-to-find 1991 release boasts STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it throughout – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Both of these sides are rich, full, and Tubey Magical for days with exceptional immediacy to the wonderful breathy, clear vocals
  • ANALOG at its Tubey Magical finest – you’ll never play a CD (or any other digital sourced material) that sounds as good as this record as long as you live
  • “Cutting back on the guest musicians of her previous effort and paring down to a basic small group of musicians helps add immediacy to Night Ride Home. Very involved and a rather tough listen, but well worth the attention….”
  • Our Overview of Joni Mitchell‘s Albums can be found here

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Joni Mitchell – Ladies Of The Canyon

More Joni Mitchell

More Singer-Songwriter Albums

  • This vintage Reprise pressing boasts a STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side two mated to an excellent Double Plus (A++) side one
  • Ladies of The Canyon is a very strong album for Joni, with some of her most well known, seemingly timeless songs: “Morning Morgantown,” “For Free,” “Big Yellow Taxi,” “Woodstock,” “The Circle Game” and more
  • We guarantee there is dramatically more space, richness, vocal presence, and performance energy on this copy than others you’ve heard, and that’s especially true if you made the mistake of buying whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing is currently on the market
  • 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: “Yet another essential listen in Mitchell’s recorded canon.”

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James Taylor – This Copy Rocked Like No Other

More of the Music of James Taylor

Reviews and Commentaries for Mud Slide Slim

This Shootout Winning copy from 2008 or thereabouts showed us a Mud Slide Slim we had no idea could possibly exist. We have a name for records like this. We call them Breakthrough Pressings. They are one of the reasons we play so many thousands of records every year. We’re looking for records that sound like this. Experience has taught us they cannot be found any other way. 

As you will see from our commentary, the first track on side one, Love Has Brought Me Around, is a great test for energy.

If your copy does not seem very energetic to you, then we recommend you keep buying every green label original you see until you find one that does.

Our commentary from the early days of shootouts can be seen below.

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Even shootouts won’t teach you what you can learn from variations in your table setup

Reviews and Commentaries for Court and Spark

Hot Stamper Pressings of Court and Spark Available Now

There are loud vocal choruses on many tracks, and more often than not at their loudest they sound like they are either breaking up or threatening to do so. I always assumed it was compressor or board overload, which is easily heard on Down to You.

On the best copies there is no breakup — the voices get loud and stay clean throughout.

This assumes that your equipment is up to the job. The loudest choruses are a tough test for any system.

Setup Advice

If you have one of our hottest Hot Stampers, try adjusting your setup — VTA, Tracking Weight, Azimuth, Anti-Skate — Especially! Audiophiles often overlook this one, at their peril — and note how cleanly the loudest passages play using various combinations of settings.

Keep a yellow pad handy and write everything down step by step as you make your changes, along with what differences you hear in the sound.

You will learn more about sound from this exercise than you can from practically any other. Even shootouts won’t teach you what you can learn from variations in your table setup.

And once you have your setup dialed in better, you will find that your shootouts go a lot smoother than they used to.

New to the Blog? Start Here

Record Playback Advice 

Turntable Setup Advice 

Joni Mitchell – Years Ago We Heard a Piano on a Copy that Really Knocked Us Out

More of the Music of Joni Mitchell

Reviews and Commentaries for Blue

About ten years ago we played a copy of Blue that showed us a piano we had never heard on the album before. We found it on the track The Last Time I Saw Richard.

This is not the thin and hard-sounding instrument that accompanies Joni on every pressing you have ever had the misfortune to audition, hoping against hope that someday you would find that “elusive disc” with sound worthy of such extraordinary music.

No, this piano had real weight; it has body; and it was surrounded by real, three-dimensional studio space. No vinyl pressing we had ever played up to then has managed to capture the sound of the piano on this record any better. Exactly no copies.

For those of you with a certain Heavy Vinyl pressing in your collection, we can only say that the piano on this copy will show you everything that is wrong with the piano on that one.

The piano had no smear, allowing both the percussive aspects of the instrument and the extended harmonics of the notes to be heard clearly and appreciated fully.

Pianos are very good for testing your system, room, tweaks, electricity and all the rest, not to mention turntable setup and adjustment.

A great many more records that are good for testing and improving your playback can be found here.

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Joni Mitchell – Mingus

More Joni Mitchell

More Charles Mingus

  • This vintage pressing of Joni Mitchell’s brilliant collaboration with Charles Mingus boasts seriously good Double Plus (A++) sound from start to finish
  • If you’re a fan of Joni’s more adventurous work, you’ll find a lot to like here
  • Features “luminaries” including Herbie Hancock and some of Weather Report, who join Mingus in helping Joni bring these jazzy works to life
  • “… Mitchell could not have chosen any finer musicians than the sextet she ultimately incorporated into this work.”

Two of Joni’s more famous late ’70s songs are on here — “God Must Be A Boogie Man” and “The Wolf That Lives In Lindsey.” If you like the more adventurous music that Joni produced at the later stages of her career, this should make a wonderful addition to your collection.

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Listening in Depth to Blue

More of the Music of Joni Mitchell

Reviews and Commentaries for Blue

Presenting another entry in our extensive Listening in Depth series with advice on what to listen for as you critically evaluate your copy of Blue. Here are some albums currently on our site with similar Track by Track breakdowns.

The best copies bring out the breathy quality to Joni’s voice, and she never sounds strained either. They are sweet and open, with good bass foundation and transparency throughout the frequency range.

The best pressings (and today’s better playback equipment) have revealed nuances in this recording — and of course the performances of all the players along with it — that made us fall in love with the music all over again. Of all the tough nuts to crack, this was the toughest, yet somehow copies emerged from our shootouts that made it easy to appreciate the sonic merits of Blue and ignore its shortcomings.

Hot Stampers have a way of doing that. You forget it’s a record; it’s now just music. The right record and the right playback will bring Joni’s music to life in a way that you cannot imagine until you hear it. That is our guarantee on Blue — better than you ever thought possible or your money back.

Side One

All I Want

This is a do-or-die song for side one. When Joni sings “traveling, traveling, traveling, traveling,” she really pushes on the last couple of them, and even the best copies have a hard time dealing with it. When a copy of this record comes in, that first line often tells me that there is no hope for side one.

If an LP can get through that first line properly, it’s at least a ‘B’ and often times a Hot Stamper.

My Old Man

The piano on this track needs to be solid and full-bodied. The sound of the piano tells you if there’s any real weight to the sound of the pressing you are auditioning.

More records that are good for testing the sound of the piano.

Notice that Joni’s voice is much smoother on this track as well. If the whole album sounded like this it wouldn’t be so hard to find a good sounding copy.

Little Green
Carey
Blue

This is a tough track for a number of reasons. Joni really pushes her vocal; it’s at the end of the record where inner groove distortion is at its most problematical; and her voice is quite naked. When you add up these three factors, you have some real hurdles to overcome.

The best copies “survive” this track. Everything before this song on side one can sound awfully good. This song we try to do the best we can with, but it’s the rare copy that won’t have problems of one kind or another.

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