Top Artists – Lena Horne

On Porgy and Bess, Stick with the Early Pressings on the Black Label

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Harry Belafonte Available Now

A Living Stereo knockout! We sometimes forget to spend time with records like this when there are so many Zeppelin and Floyd records waiting to be played (and a lot more customers waiting to get hold of them to add to their collection).

We’ve always enjoyed Belafonte At Carnegie Hall, but when we’ve dug further into his catalog we’ve been left cold more often than not. However, when we finally got around to dropping the needle on a few of these many years ago we were very impressed by the music and blown away by the sound on the better pressings.

Just make sure that you avoid the orange label reissues.

They are dry, gritty and spitty. The notes below show a side one earning a single plus (1+) not-quite-Hot Stamper grade. We discuss its faults on the far right, and the other orange label pressing we played was even worse, earning a grade of NFG.

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Bob and Ray / Throw a Stereo Spectacular

More of the Music of Bob and Ray

  • With outstanding Double Plus (A++) grades from start to finish, this TAS-approved Living Stereo pressing will be very hard to beat, practically impossible even
  • Originally produced as a sampler record for the Living Stereo line, it is an absolute MUST OWN for serious audiophiles looking to take their system to the next level
  • Our reference copy here at Better Records is so vital to our operation that it would not be for sale at any (well, almost any) price
  • It has long been my personal favorite test disc, as well as one of our three best cartridge tweaking and turntable setup discs
  • 4 stars: “The gleefully cacophonous Guckenheimer Sour Kraut Band takes the prize for providing the most unusual musical selection, but the overall program is extremely diverse [and] the comedy and music are enjoyable.”

Bob and Ray Throw A Stereo Spectacular just happens to be our favorite Test Disc, eclipsing all others in the areas of naturalness and difficulty of reproduction. Any tweak or new room treatment — we seem to do them almost weekly these days — has to pass one test and one test only: The Bob and Ray Test.

This record has the power to help you get to the next level in audio like no other.

Six words hold the key to better sound: “The Song of the Volga Boatman.”

For the purpose of mounting new carts, our favorite track is “The Song of the Volga Boatman” on Bob and Ray Throw A Stereo Spectacular (LSP 1773). It’s by far the most difficult track we know of to get to sound right.

There are about twenty places in the music that we use as tests, and the right setting is the one that gets the most of them to sound their best. With every change, some of the twenty will sound better and some will sound worse. Recognizing when the sound is the biggest, clearest, and most balanced from top to bottom is a skill that has taken me twenty years to acquire.

It’s a lot harder than it looks. The longer you have been in audio, the more complicated it seems, which may be counterintuitive but comports well with our day-to-day experience extremely well.

All our room treatments and tweaks must pass The Bob and Ray Test. It’s the one record we have relied on more than any other over the course of the last several years.

Presenting as it does a huge studio full of brass players, no record we know of is more dynamic or more natural sounding — when the system is working right. When it’s not working right, the first thirty seconds is all it takes to show you the trouble you are in.

If you don’t have a record like that in your collection, you need to find one. It will be invaluable to you in the long run.

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Porgy and Bess – “This is a serious step up! Crazy good.”

More of the Music of Harry Belafonte

A Living Stereo knockout. We often forget to spend time with records like this when there are Zeppelin and Floyd records to play. We’ve always enjoyed Belafonte At Carnegie Hall, but when we’ve dug further into the man’s catalog we’ve been left cold more often than not.

However, when we finally got around to dropping the needle on a few of these we were very impressed by the music and completely blown away by the sound on the best pressings.

Our Shootout Winner showed us everything we could ever want in this kind of recording and more. More, in this case, was a side two that was a step up over our best side one. We used to give records with a side two like this one a grade of A++++, but we stopped doing that years ago. (We discuss the subject of outliers down below.)

The notes for side one read:

Track One

Big, dynamic and rich vocals. Very full and rich.

Track Four

Good bass, rich and note-like.

Vocals are silky and present and hi-rez.

The notes for side two read:

Track Two

Dynamic, three-deimensional vocals.

Frequencies extend high and low.

Sweet and breathy flutes and vocals. Tubey.

Track One

So sweet and rich, can’t complain.

This is a serious step up! Crazy good.

If you want to hear a record with sound like that, focus your attention on the pressings made in 1959 – that’s where that sound can be found, and you will have a hard time finding it on any record made in the last 50 years, no matter what anybody may tell you.

If someone disagrees with that assessment, have them play you the record that beats this one, something they will have a devil of a time managing to do.

1959 Tubes?

You just can’t beat ’em.

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Lena Horne / Harry Belafonte – Porgy and Bess

More Harry Belafonte

More Pop and Jazz Vocal Recordings

  • This wonderful recording from 1959 returns to the site for the first time in years, here with INSANELY GOOD Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) Living Stereo sound throughout this original pressing
  • The notes for our top copy on side one are all raves, “big, dynamic and rich vocals / very full and rich,” etc.
  • For side two, track one, the notes read, “So sweet and rich, can’t complain” followed by “This is a serious step up! crazy good.”
  • If you want to hear a record with sound like that, focus your attention on the pressings made in 1959 – that’s where that sound can be found, and you will have a hard time finding it on any record made in the last 50 years, no matter what anybody may tell you
  • If someone disagrees with that assessment, have them play you the record that beats this one, something they will have a devil of a time trying to do
  • “The first of Belafonte’s duet albums with female performers, this one paired two attractive black American singers at the peak of their respective talents.”

A Living Stereo knockout! We often forget to spend time with records like this when there are Zeppelin and Floyd records to play. We’ve always enjoyed Belafonte At Carnegie Hall, but when we’ve dug further into his catalog we’ve been left cold more often than not. However, when we finally got around to dropping the needle on a few of these we were very impressed by the music and blown away by the sound on the better pressings.

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These Two Lena Horne Living Stereo Releases Didn’t Make the Grade

Hot Stamper Pressings of Vocal Albums Available Now

The words “Living Stereo” on the cover are apparently no guarantee of good sound.

We have never played a copy of either of these two albums that was especially good sounding, certainly not good enough to charge the kind of money we charge.

We love female vocal recordings, but these two just did not make the grade.

There are a great many male and female vocal albums that actually did make the grade, most often by going through a shootout, and here are some of the categories we use to separate them:

We’ve Played ‘Em

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 these two 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.

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Watch What Happens – Now That’s What a Real Drum Kit Sounds Like!

Another Record We’ve Discovered with (Potentially) Excellent Sound…

and One We Will Probably Never Shootout Again

Some records are just too consistently noisy for us to offer to our audiophile customers no matter how good they sound.

We have a section for records that tend to be noisy, and it can be found here.

This is the most realistic drum kit I have heard on a non-jazz album in my life. The drum sound on the first track is exactly the sound we all know from hanging around small clubs and our friends’ garage bands. There is simply no audible processing on any part of the kit. The drums are centered behind the vocals and lead instruments, with what sounds like to me the barest of miking, surrounded by just the right amount of unbaffled studio space.

When the drums come in on the first track on side one you will hear immediately what I mean. The third track on side two has especially good drums as well. The vocals on that third track, Message to Michael, are some of the most natural on the album as well. Lena can strain a bit on some songs in the loudest passages, but on others she can belt it out and stay clean all the way to the top. Listen track by track to hear how well she holds up when the bigger choruses come in.

As music lovers and audiophiles this was a truly marvelous discovery for us years ago. True, we’ve known about the album for a long time, but as a practical matter it’s been impossible to find enough clean copies to do a shootout — until now of course.

Dave Sanders, a name I — and no doubt most audiophiles — was not familiar with, brilliantly engineered the album as well as other favorites of ours, including Szabo’s 1969, Gilberto’s Windy and McFarland’s Does The Sun Really Shine On The Moon? It’s hard to find a recording he did that isn’t full of Tubey Magic, huge studio space and right-on-the-money instrumental timbres. (more…)

Lena Horne & Gabor Szabo – Lena & Gabor

More Jazz Recordings Featuring the Guitar

Reviews and Commentaries for Gabor Szabo

  • With outstanding Double Plus (A++) grades on both sides this copy sounds right from top to bottom
  • Some of the most UNPROCESSED and REAL sounding jazzy pop we have ever played
  • A True Sleeper from 1968 – love the choice of material, love the players, love Lena, love the album!
  • “The contrast of Horne’s full-throated voice and Szabo’s unconventional, modal guitar playing is mesmerizing…”

As music lovers and audiophiles this was a truly marvelous discovery for us years ago. True, we had known about the album for a long time, but as a practical matter it had been all but impossible to find enough clean copies to do a shootout — until now of course. We had a big pile to work with, a pile that took about five years to acquire, and one that includes both Buddah and Skye pressings.

Dave Sanders, a name I was not familiar with, brilliantly engineered the album as well as other favorites of ours, including Szabo’s 1969, Gilberto’s Windy and McFarland’s Does The Sun Really Shine On The Moon? It’s hard to find a recording he did that isn’t full of Tubey Magic, huge studio space and right-on-the-money instrumental timbres.

What to Listen For (WTLF)

This is the most realistic drum kit I have heard on a non-jazz album in my life. The drum sound on the first track is exactly the sound we all know from hanging around small clubs and our friends’ garage bands. There is simply no audible processing on any part of the kit. The drums are centered behind the vocals and lead instruments, with what sounds like to me the barest of miking, surrounded by just the right amount of unbaffled studio space. (more…)