One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently:
Hey Tom,
As a coda, I just played my existing copies of Troubador and Christopher Cross against new arrivals from the South. [That’s us.]
Troubador was a new heavy vinyl pressing. Cross was my ‘shootout’ winning copy out of 4. Both times I played my copy and said, “Man that’s gonna be tough to beat.”
Then I put on the Better Records – and proceeded to repeat the word “Wow!” about fifty times.
D
More of the Music of The Doobie Brothers
Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of The Doobie Brothers
Sonic Grade: D
You may remember reading on the site that we used to like the Nautilus Half-Speed of this title. Playing our Nautilus copy against the better domestic pressings made us wonder what the hell we must have been smoking.
The Nautilus was awful — veiled and compressed, with a lightweight bottom end. (The Nautilus of Threshold of a Dream is another one we used to like and boy does that record sound awful these days.)
Maybe we had played a better copy years ago, or maybe we had played some really bad domestics back then, who can say? A lot of water has gone under the bridge since then.
All we can say for now is that our Hot Stampers are going to blow that audiophile piece of junk — and any other pressing of the album that might exist — right out of the water. (Or your money back.)
And the gold CD too of course. I have never in my life heard a CD sound like this record does, and I don’t think anyone else has either. CDs do some things reasonably well, but few of them have the kind of richness, sweetness and Tubey Magic that the best vinyl copies of this album do, cleaned right and played on a proper stereo of course. (more…)
More of the Music of Michael McDonald
Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Michael McDonald
Sonic Grade: F
The MoFi pressing of this album is a complete disaster — it’s even fatter, muddier and more compressed than the standard domestic copy, as improbable as that may seem.
It was mastered by Jack Hunt, a man we know to be responsible for some of the thickest, dullest, deadest MoFi recuts throughout their shameful catalog.
With mastering credits on this Michael McDonald album, Gerry Rafferty (058) and Blondie (050), you have to wonder how this guy kept getting work.