Top Artists – Miles Davis

Miles Davis – In Person: Saturday Night At The Blackhawk, Volume II

More Miles Davis

More Live Recordings of Interest

  • This superb 6-Eye Stereo pressing boasts relaxed, full bodied, three-dimensional Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER from start to finish
  • Both of these sides are huge, spacious, lively, transparent and above all real – you won’t believe how good the live sonics captured on this album is (until you play it anyway)
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Davis himself has never played with more intensity and muscularity on record than he does here. Miles fans will need both [sets] to fully appreciate how special this engagement with this particular band was.”

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Miles Davis – Quiet Nights

More Miles Davis

More Jazz Recordings Featuring the Trumpet

  • This oh-so-spacious Miles Davis / Gil Evans classic finally returns to the site with INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it on both sides of this original 360 Stereo pressing
  • Rich, warm, smooth and clear throughout, this 30th Street Studios recording is another engineering triumph from the legendary Fred Plaut
  • Produced by Teo Macero, the album is the fourth and final collaboration between Davis and Evans
  • In the Saturday Review, Quiet Nights received praise for Davis’ “wonderfully songful trumpet in a Latin-American vein,” set against “piercingly lustrous curtains of tone and discreet Caribbean rhythms.”“

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Miles Davis – Miles Smiles

More Miles Davis

More Jazz Recordings Featuring the Trumpet

  • A Miles Smiles like you’ve never heard, with superb Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER throughout this original 360 Stereo pressing – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • Both of these sides are full-bodied, high-rez and spacious, with Miles’ horn uncannily present, a sound you just cannot find on Heavy Vinyl no matter who makes it
  • Miles here is backed by his classic ’60s All Star crew – Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter & Tony Williams
  • 5 stars: “This is music that demands attention, never taking predictable paths or easy choices. Its greatest triumph is that it masks this adventurousness within music that is warm and accessible – it just never acts that way… Arguably, this quintet was never better than they are here, when all their strengths are in full bloom.”

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Michel Legrand – Legrand Jazz

More of the Music of Michel Legrand

Hot Stamper Pressings of Large Group Jazz Recordings Available Now

  • Legrand Jazz returns to the site for the first time in close to ten years, with STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) throughout this vintage 6-Eye Stereo pressing – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • Both of these sides are open and spacious with real depth to the soundfield and lots of separation between the various instruments, a very important quality for a recording of a large ensemble recording such as this
  • Rich, solid bass; you-are-there immediacy; energy and drive; instruments that are positively jumping out of the speakers – add it all up and you can see that this copy had the sound we were looking for
  • Legrand rounded up 31 of the greatest jazz players of the 50s, divided them up into three groups, and the result was a landmark recording with audiophile sound to die for
  • We’re talking jazz giants: John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Bill Evans, Ben Webster, Herbie Mann, Art Farmer, Donald Byrd, Phil Woods — everybody who was anybody is on this record
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Throughout this superlative album, the arrangements are colorful and unusual, making one wish that Legrand had recorded more jazz albums through the years.”
  • Robert Brook recently played the “award winning” Impex 45 RPM pressing from 2019 (as did we) and wants to know what you made of the sound

This album is more common in mono than stereo, but we found the sound of the mono pressing we played seriously wanting. It’s dramatically smaller and more squawky and crude than even the worst of the stereo pressings we played.

We had a copy we liked years ago, but that was years ago. We don’t have that copy anymore and we don’t have a stereo that sounds the way our old one did either.

The unique voices of each of the jazz giants featured on this landmark recording contributes memorable solos then receeds into the group to provide the structure for the rest of the music. Which is an awkward way of saying everybody does his thing in service to the song and then gets out of the way. “The Jitterbug Waltz,” which opens up side one, is a perfect example: the arrangement is completely original, and within its structure, Miles Davis, Phil Woods, John Coltrane and others solo beautifully, each taking a turn at the melody. If three minutes into this song you don’t like what you’re hearing, jazz is just not for you.

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Miles Davis – Sketches of Spain on 6-Eye in Stereo

More Miles Davis

More Vintage Columbia Pressings with Hot Stampers

  • With two killer Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) sides, this 6-Eye Stereo pressing is close to the BEST we have ever heard, right up there with our Shootout Winner
  • Reasonably quiet vinyl for an early label pressing, few are this clean, and none come any quieter if our experience with dozens of them over the years counts for anything
  • The better copies capture the realistic sound of Davis’s horn, the body, the breath and the bite (and the correct amount of squawk as well)
  • Balanced, clear and undistorted, this 30th Street recording shows just how good Columbia’s engineers (lead by the inestimable Fred Plaut) were back then
  • 5 stars: “Sketches of Spain is the most luxuriant and stridently romantic recording Davis ever made. To listen to it in the 21st century is still a spine-tingling experience…”
  • This pressing is clearly a demo disc for orchestral size and space

On the best pressings of this masterpiece, the sound is truly magical. (AMG has that dead right in their review.) It is lively but never strained. Davis’s horn has breath and bite, just like the real thing. What more can you ask for?

On the better pressings of this masterpiece, the sound is truly magical. (AMG has that dead right in their review.) It is lively but never strained. Davis’s horn has breath and bite, just like the real thing. What more can you ask for?

We Was Wrong in the Past About HP and Six Eye Labels

In previous commentary we had written:

Harry Pearson added this record to his TAS list of super discs many years ago, not exactly a tough call it seems to us. Who can’t hear that this is an amazing sounding recording?

Of course, you can be quite sure that he would have been listening exclusively to the earliest pressings on the Six Eye label. Which simply means that he probably never heard a copy with the clarity, transparency, and freedom from distortion that these later label pressings offer.

The Six Eyes are full of Tubey Magic, don’t get me wrong; Davis’s trumpet can be and usually is wonderful sounding.

It’s everything else that tends to suffer, especially the strings, which are shrill and smeary on most copies, Six Eyes, 360s and Red Labels included.

Over the course of the last few years, we’ve come to appreciate just how good the right Six Eye stereo pressing can sound.

In other words, we was wrong.

A Big Group of Musicians Needs This Kind of Space

One of the qualities that we don’t talk about on the site nearly enough is the SIZE of the record’s presentation. Some copies of the album just sound small — they don’t extend all the way to the outside edges of the speakers, and they don’t seem to take up all the space from the floor to the ceiling. In addition, the sound can often be recessed, with a lack of presence and immediacy in the center.

Other copies — my notes for these copies often read “BIG and BOLD” — create a huge soundfield, with the music positively jumping out of the speakers. They’re not brighter, they’re not more aggressive, they’re not hyped-up in any way, they’re just bigger and clearer.

And most of the time those very special pressings are just plain more involving. When you hear a copy that does all that — a copy like this one — it’s an entirely different listening experience.

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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

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Miles Davis

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

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 banal 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.

To presume that there is a clear answer to the question, “What is the best sounding pressing of Kind of Blue?” is a sign that such a person is a True Believer. He is no doubt someone not at all interested in entertaining disconfirming evidence, no matter the source or the strength.

To take it to an even more absurd level, the reviewer in question says it will be the best ever forever. Well, that’s certainly good to know!

Mistakes Were Made

We ourselves used to make mistakes along these lines. We also make no effort to deny the fact that we didn’t know what we were talking about. We made a quite foolish claim in a review from 2006 for Rock of Ages.

The audiophile press may do things differently, but here at Better Records the practice of making “definitive sonic assessments” goes against everything we believe to be true about records: that any judgment we’ve made about any record, good or bad, as well as any knowledge we may think we possess, will always be incomplete, imperfect, and provisional.

However, there is one thing that will never change: our deep appreciation of the fundamentally mysterious nature of records, based on the thousands of experiments we’ve carried out since making that silly statement about Rock of Ages in 2006.

And sometimes, after hundreds and hundreds of observations has led us to believe that all swans are white, we find a black one and have to admit, and not for the first time, that we were wrong. (Well, we don’t have to, but we do, mostly because it mocks the risible certainty of the audiophile reviewing class and their low-rent hucksterism.)

Doing the Work

The “believers” have chosen to buy into this particular reviewer’s nonsense rather than staying focussed and doing the work. What work you ask? Why, the work it takes to find a better sounding vintage copy. (For those of you who are up for the challenge, we advise sticking with the 6-Eye and 360 pressings rather than digging for the 70s reissue like the one we sold Art. The right 70s pressings have especially hard-fo-find stampers, which explains why you rarely see them on the site.)

Art, perhaps you see now that buying remastered records — even those that get raves in the audiophile press — is a fool’s game and more often than not a waste of money, money that would have been much better spent on records that have the potential to sound amazingly good.

And by that we mean records put out by major labels for the general record buying public and pressed on regular weight vinyl.

Those are the ones that can have real analog magic, as your most recent head to head comparison — with a 70s reissue no less — proved once again.

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Miles Davis – Someday My Prince Will Come

More Miles Davis

More Vintage Columbia Hot Stamper Pressings

  • An outstanding copy of this Miles Davis classic, with a KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side one mated to a solid Double Plus (A++) side two
  • This original Columbia 6-Eye stereo LP is full-bodied, high-rez and spacious, with Miles’ horn uncannily present, a sound you just cannot find on Heavy Vinyl no matter who makes it
  • If you have the big system and dedicated room a record of this quality demands, you can put Miles right in the room with you with a Hot Stamper pressing as good as this
  • Vintage pressings that play this reasonably quiet and are free of scratches (minor noted issue below notwithstanding) and groove damage are few and far between, but here’s one, perfect for even the most demanding audiophile
  • Another engineering triumph for Fred Plaut at Columbia’s legendary 30th Street Studios – the man is a genius
  • Musically this is one of our very favorite Miles albums, and the sound is Demo Disc Quality on the better copies
  • If you’re a jazz fan, this Must Own Title from 1961 belongs in your collection

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Miles Davis – E.S.P.

More Miles Davis

More Hot Stamper Pressings on Vintage Columbia Vinyl

  • An E.S.P. like you’ve never heard, with STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them on both sides of this original pressing
  • There’s plenty of 1965 Columbia 360 Label Stereo Tubey Magic – the analog sound is real, tonally correct, and above all, natural
  • Miles fronts his second classic quintet here – saxophonist Wayne Shorter, pianist Herbie Hancock, bassist Ron Carter, and drummer Tony Williams
  • 4 1/2 stars: “They created a unique sound that came to define the very sound of modern jazz … ESP remains one of their very best albums.”

You’re going to have a fairly tough time finding a copy that is anywhere near as impressive as this one. Trust me — we know whereof we speak. We’re always trying and all too often coming up short; but most of them are too dull and lifeless to get excited about. Many of them are too congested and veiled to make any sense of. Not here though!

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Kind of Blue – Is This a Good Test Record?

Hot Stamper Pressing of Miles’s Albums Available Now

More of Our Favorite Jazz Test Discs

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 at the time:

So true!

But on further reflection, it became clear to me that there is more to this idea than one might think upon first hearing it.

When records sound as good as Kind of Blue on vintage vinyl (not this piece of trash), it’s easy to think that everything in the system must be working properly, and, more to the point, reproducing the sound of the album at a high level.

If only more records were as well recorded as KOB, we could save ourselves a lot of time and money, time and money that we’re currently spending on tweaking, tuning and upgrading the various components of our systems. (Assuming you are in fact doing these things. I certainly hope you are. Achieving higher quality sound is one of the greatest joys to be had in all of audio.)

This is undoubtedly true, as far as it goes. But we must live in the world of records as we find it, not the one we want to exist.

Finding good sound for most of the records you wish to enjoy takes a great deal of effort, assuming you are setting your standards for sound at an exceptionally high level. Yours don’t have to be as high as ours — we’re the guys who put their reputations on the line for extravagantly priced Hot Stampers, not you — but the records you are playing have to sound good enough to allow you to forget they are records and just get lost in the music.

With every improvement you make to your system, you eventually will find yourself banging your head up against the psychological effect of Hedonic Adaptation.* Once you have achieved better sound, it doesn’t take long before you get used to it, and now your much-improved “new normal” isn’t as thrilling as it was when you first experienced it.

It’s a common misconception among many audiophiles that if you can make a record like KOB sound great, you must have a good stereo system. Some of them write to us to tell us that the so-called Hot Stamper pressing we just sent them didn’t sound good, which must be the record’s fault since so many of their other records sound just fine.

A certain Bob Dylan record came back to us, twice, something that has never happened before or since. One customer said it just didn’t sound good enough to qualify as a Hot Stamper, and another said it was full of distortion.

In both cases, once the record had come back to us, we immediately played it to see where we might have gone wrong. In both cases it still sounded fine. We realized there was something about it that made it difficult to play, but since we were able to reproduce it properly, there was no way for us to even know what that might be. Eventually the next person to buy it found it to his liking and that was the last we heard of it. Since then no copies have been returned.

We’re Devoted

A great deal of this blog is devoted to helping audiophiles gain a better understanding of the vagaries of high-quality record pressings and the difficulty of finding and setting up the equipment needed to play them.

To this end, we have created a number tests to help improve your playback. Kind of Blue is a phenomenally good sounding jazz record. You can certainly use it as a test disk, but only if you go about it the right way, by setting very, very high standards for it.

Rather than play a record that tends to sound good in order to improve your stereo, set up, etc., why not play something that’s difficult to get to sound good? Once you have improved the sound of such a record, then it will be much more obvious  that your efforts were actually successful. (Here are some of the toughest test discs we’ve encountered over the years.)

We live the challenges posed by difficult recordings, not the ones that are easy to reproduce.

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, these Hot Stamper pressings should do the trick.

*Psychology Today explains one aspect of the Hedonic Treadmill this way:

What are examples of hedonic adaptation?

After moving to a new house or apartment, one may revel in the extra room, the higher ceilings, the improved view to the outside, or other features—only to stop appreciating these things as much as the months wear on. The same could be said for the mood boost we might receive from other new possessions or highly anticipated experiences… such that eventually, their level of happiness returns back to where it started, or at least closer to the baseline than immediately after the event.

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Miles Davis – Seven Steps to Heaven

More Miles Davis

More Top Quality Recordings on Vintage Columbia Vinyl

  • This original black print 360 Stereo label pressing was doing just about everything right, with both sides earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER
  • The Demo Disc sound throughout these sides is rich, full, sweet, tonally right on the money, and lively as can be
  • Columbia jazz records from this period are some of the best sounding jazz records ever made, and this is a perfect example of what is right with their recordings
  • When you drop the needle at the beginning of side one and hear Miles’ muted trumpet come jumping out of your speakers, we guarantee you will be amazed, or your money back
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Seven Steps to Heaven finds Miles Davis standing yet again on the fault line between stylistic epochs.”

This is an interesting album: half of it is recorded in Hollywood and half of it in New York, with the songs in each location interspersed on the sides. Victor Feldman handles the piano duties in California; Herbie Hancock in New York. I actually prefer Victor Feldman’s playing on this record. We don’t get to hear his piano work often — he’s really quite good. (Cal Tjader started out on the drums but it’s tough to find records with him drumming.)

The Question Before the House

One of the thoughts that occurred to me when I was playing this record is this: Why is there no audiophile reissue on any label that sounds like this? There’s something about the sound of these old records, these original pressings, that’s impossible to recapture with modern equipment. It may not be impossible, but until somebody manages to do it, it might as well be.

If you exclusively play modern repressings of vintage recordings, I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it — not often, and certainly not always — but maybe one out of a hundred new records do, and those are some pretty long odds.

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