Top Artists – Linda Ronstadt

Rockin’ Out to Simple Dreams

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Linda Ronstadt Available Now

Clearly this is one of Linda’s best albums, and I would have to say, based on my fairly extensive experience with her recorded output, that it is in fact THE BEST SOUNDING record she ever made.

I love Heart Like a Wheel, but it sure doesn’t sound like this, not even on the Triple Plus copies that win our shootouts. (Roughly 150 other listings for the Best Recording by an Artist or Group can be found here.)

I confess to having never taken the album seriously, dismissing it as a commercial collection of pop hits with about as much depth as the L.A. River — but I was wrong wrong WRONG.

This is a great sounding album on the right pressing, not the compressed piece of grainy cardboard we’ve all been playing for years, unaware of the tremendous sound quality lurking in the grooves of other copies, the ones that were blessed with the right stampers, the right vinyl and a healthy amount of fairy dust wafting over the press that day.

That’s what Hot Stamper shootouts are all about — finding those copies, the ones no one knows exist.

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Heart Like A Wheel – Cisco Heavy Vinyl Reviewed

More of the Music of Linda Ronstadt

UPDATE 2026

This review was written in 2006. These days I doubt very much that I would consider this record a service to the audiophile community, as I mistakenly wrote at the time. Many of the records that sounded good to me back in the day don’t sound so good to me anymore.

Like most Heavy Vinyl, it is at best a stopgap.

Sonic Grade: C

This pressing beats the average Capitol LP in some ways, which is typically an aggressive, grainy piece of crap.

Take my word for it: I easily have 30-40 copies of this album, and I can tell you from years of experience that it is extremely difficult to find good sounding pressings of this music.

Cisco has done a service to the audiophile community by producing a very enjoyable LP of this, Linda’s masterpiece. It’s music that belongs in your collection. (If you have the bread, check out our Hot Stamper copies, guaranteed to kill any modern pressing — including this one — or your money back.) 

Cisco’s version is completely free from compression of any kind, and sometimes that works in favor of the overall sound and sometimes it doesn’t. I may have additional commentary discussing these issues down the road, but for now let’s just say you will have a hard time finding a better copy of Heart Like A Wheel on vinyl.

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You’ll Be Crying When You Get This Record on Your Turntable

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Linda Ronstadt Available Now

UPDATE 2026

This review was most likely written when the record came out, circa 2008 I’m guessing. The intro is of course new for 2026.

You’re looking at one of the worst sounding audiophile releases in recent memory, a remastering disaster that has no reason to exist other than to satisfy the needs of the mid-fi collector market for numbered, limited editions on premium vinyl, perhaps so that they can be sold at a later date for a profit (discogs average price today: $62.50.)

This is a label that should have gone under decades ago but, with a nod to Frank Zappa channeling Edgar Varese, refuses to die.

Like this guy, this guy and far too many others, they are making money hand over fist at the expense of audiophiles who have yet to get very far — anywhere, really — in audio. (I know whereof I speak. I was one of those guys and you couldn’t tell me anything back then.)

We go to great pains to lay out the problems with these records in detail, but what good does reading about their problems do if the systems playing these records iare not only hiding their flaws, but making up for some of their weaknesses. The junk pressings these collectors are buying practically guarantee they will never manage to put together a system that can show them what is really on their records.

Regardless of what kind of equipment they own, if this crap is sounding good to them, which it seems to be based on the comments section I make the mistake of reading on Discogs from time to time, nothing we say can possibly interfere with them buying more of it.

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Take Our Advice and Skip the Original of The Stone Poneys

More of the Music of Linda Ronstadt

The originals from 1967 have never impressed us much.

Click on the links below for more records that sound best to us on the right reissue pressing 

Here are some Hot Stamper pressings that we think sound their best on the right reissue (the ones we sell, obviously; there are plenty of reissues that don’t have good sound, but the ones we offer handily beat the originals we’ve — and no doubt you’ve — heard).

Here are all the titles we’ve reviewed to date that have the potential to sound their best on the right reissue

On this album the sound varies quite a bit from track to track.

The best tracks are rich, tubey and clear; the worst thin, bright and hard. 

The first track on side one rarely stayed clean when loud, but here for the most part it does. It’s a good test for whether or not you have a copy with high quality, low distortion mastering.

Listen for the least amount of smear and congestion and the most resolution.

The second track is richer and tubier – it proves that side one is mastered correctly.

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Emmylou Harris – Blue Kentucky Girl

More of the Music of Emmylou Harris

  • Here is a vintage copy of Blue Kentucky Girl with a KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side two mated to a solid Double Plus (A++) side one
  • These sides have the kind of rich, natural sound we found on far too few copies and little of the vocal edginess that many EH albums suffer from
  • Surprisingly full-bodied and not overly detailed for a recording from 1979 – they still knew what they were doing then
  • “In response to criticism that her records weren’t country enough, Harris recorded Blue Kentucky Girl, one of her most traditional outings. Relying on a more acoustic sound, the album largely forsakes contemporary pop songs in favor of standard country fare, including the Louvin Brothers’ ‘Everytime You Leave’ and Leon Payne’s ‘They’ll Never Take His Love from Me.'”

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The Middle of the Midrange Is Key on Prisoner in Disguise

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Linda Ronstadt Available Now

Here’s what we learned when doing a shootout years ago: many copies sounded like they were Half-Speed mastered.

For those of you who don’t know what that means, or sounds like, the blog is full of commentaries about the sonic shortcomings of this mastering technique.

In this case, these Half-Speed sounding ones had a little something phony added to the top of Linda’s voice; they had a little bit of suckout right in the middle of the midrange, the middle of her voice; and they had an overall diffuse, vague quality, with sound that lacked the solidity we heard on the best of the non-audiophile pressings we played. 

These hi-fi-ish qualities that we heard reminded us of the kind of sound we decry at every turn. We’ve played literally hundreds and hundreds of MoFi’s and other Half-Speed mastered records over the course of the last twenty thirty-plus years, and one thing we know well is that sound.

But stop and think about it for a moment.

What if you only had one copy of the album — why would someone have more than one anyway? — and it had that Half-Speed sound?

You’d simply assume the recording had those qualities, assuming you recognized them in the first place.

(Let’s face it, most audiophiles can’t, or all these companies that use this approach to mastering would have gone out of business and stayed out of business, and their out of print records would sell for peanuts, not the collector prices they bring on ebay and discogs. More on that subject here.)

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Linda Ronstadt – Simple Dreams

More of the Music of Linda Ronstadt

  • An original Asylum pressing with seriously good Double Plus (A++) sound from first note to last
  • Linda’s best sounding recording and a proud member of our Top 100 – this is the album that showed us she could do it all
  • Val Garay does it again, filling the grooves with his trademark super-punchy, jump-out-the-speakers, rich and smooth ANALOG sound
  • 4 1/2 stars: “…reconfirms [Rondstadt’s] substantial talents as an interpretive singer…and [her] powerful performance makes the record rival Heart Like a Wheel in sheer overall quality.”
  • If you’re a Linda Ronstadt fan, this undeniable classic from 1977 is surely a Must Own
  • Simple Dreams is our pick for Linda’s best sounding album. Roughly 150 other listings for the Best Recording by an Artist or Group can be found here.

This is clearly one of Linda’s best albums and I would have to say, based on my fairly extensive experience with her recorded output, that it is in fact the best sounding record she ever made. I love Heart Like a Wheel, but it sure doesn’t sound like this, not even on the Triple Plus copies that win our shootouts. (It is her best album, though.)

I confess to having never taken the album seriously, dismissing it as a commercial collection of pop hits with about as much depth as the L.A. River — but I was wrong, wrong, wrong.

This is a great sounding album on the right pressing, not the compressed piece of grainy cardboard we’ve all been playing for years, unaware of the tremendous sound quality lurking in the grooves of other copies; the ones that were blessed with the right stampers, the right vinyl and a healthy amount of fairy dust wafting over the press that day.

That’s what Hot Stamper shootouts are all about — finding those copies, the ones no one knows exist. (No one but us it seems; who else would think to put this album in their Top 100?)

This Is a Real Band

Until a Hot Stamper found its way onto our turntable, we had absolutely no idea the album could sound like this, or that the music was so good.

The first thing that came to mind when I looked inside the fold open cover and saw all the guys who back Linda up on the album is that this is a real rock band. These are not a bunch of studio cats punching a time card. These guys know how to rock; just listen to the way they come blasting out of the gate on “It’s So Easy.” Linda is with them all the way, giving one of the best performances of her career.

Song after song, this super-tight band with the hot female lead (!) show that they can rock with the best of them. And do beautiful ballads (“Blue Bayou”) too.

Folks, I hereby testify that a Hot Stamper copy of this very album gave me a newfound respect for Linda beyond her work on Heart Like a Wheel. This is the album that shows she can do it all, as the All Music Guide points out, and I’m a believer.

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Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris – Trio

More Linda Ronstadt

  • With KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them on both sides, this original Warner Bros. pressing could not be beat
  • Here are just a few of the things we had to say about this stunning copy in our notes: “present and breathy vox”…”big and rich”…”so present and open”…”jumping out of the speakers”…”clear and detailed”
  • Big, rich, smooth, and sweet, how did George Massenburg pull off this kind of analog sound in 1987?
  • We don’t know, but we do know good sound when we hear it, and we heard remarkably good sound on this copy
  • Problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs, but once you hear how incredible sounding this copy is, you might be inclined, as we were, to stop counting stitches and just be swept away by the music
  • 4 1/2 stars: “…that rare example of an all-star collaborative effort that truly shows everyone involved to their best advantage, and it ranks with the best of all three headliners’ work.”

With three brilliant and accomplished singers harmonizing in the studio you can imagine that faultless midrange tonality is key to the best copies, and you would be right.

Some copies had the girls’ sounding a bit dark and veiled. Some had them a bit thin and bright. The Goldilocks Principle comes into play here as it does in so many of our shootouts: the best copies find the right balance of richness and clarity.

This Is 1987? Seriously?

And what richness! How did so much Tubey Magic get recorded onto a tape produced in the dark ages of 1987? I can’t think of another recording from the period that sounds this good.

A big fat solid snare, full-bodied yet breathy vocals, huge amounts of space around the musicians, a wide and deep stage, dead-on tonality from top to bottom — once we got into our shootout, these unexpected sonic qualities took us completely by surprise.

As a point of comparison, I am not aware of any Emmylou Harris album that is as well recorded as Trio. As for Linda, only her best 70s recordings are this rich and natural. Can’t say much about Dolly’s albums as we have never done a shootout for one, not that we wouldn’t like to.

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Which Side Lacked Space, and How Did You Figure That Out?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Linda Ronstadt Available Now

Big, rich, smooth, and sweet, how did George Massenburg pull off this kind of analog sound in 1987?

We don’t know, but we do know good sound when we hear it, and we heard remarkably good sound on this copy.

The first track on side one was big and rich, with vocals that were breathy and present, just the way we like ’em.

The third track was every bit as good, with sound that was rich and weighty. The vocals wer so present and open, sweet and silky. This is exactly what you want on this album.

And the way we know that is we played a bunch of copies and nothing could beat it. This side one took top honors for having sound we described above.

Side two is another matter. We came across a side two that was slightly better than the side one you see here.

How did that kind of thing happen, you ask?

Well, when we played the two best copies back to back, side one of this copy came out on top, earning a grade of 3+, but the side two of another pressing showed us there was even more space in the recording than we noticed the first time around.

We knew side two was “at least 2+,” the crossed-out text you see in the notes.

With another copy earning a better grade, 3 pluses, we felt the right grade for this side two was 2.5+.

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Linda Ronstadt – Lush Life

More Linda Ronstadt

More Nelson Riddle

  • A vintage copy of Ronstadt’s 1984 release with INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Plus (A+++) sound or close to it on both sides
  • Here are just a few of the things we had to say about this stunning copy in our notes: “big and weighty”…”huge and rich and dynamic vox”…”3D and jumping out of the speakers”…”big bass”…”silky and huge”
  • Getting the strings to sound sweet and rosiny, not smeary and hard, is no mean feat, but it’s the kind of thing the best Hot Stamper pressings are guaranteed to give you on any of Linda’s American Songbook period albums
  • Marks and problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs, but once you hear just how killer sounding this copy is, you might be inclined, as we were, to stop counting ticks and pops and just be swept away by the music
  • “What’s New illustrated that Linda Ronstadt was no longer interested in contemporary pop, and since it was a surprise success, there was no reason not to repeat the formula on Lush Life. Working again with Nelson Riddle, Ronstadt runs through several pop standards — ‘When I Fall in Love,’ ‘Sophisticated Lady,’ ‘Falling in Love Again,’ ‘It Never Entered My Mind’…”

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