Top Artists – Superrtramp

Letter of the Week – “Everything is so clear. I can hear every word clear as day”

More of the Music of Supertramp

This letter is about a Supertramp album but I have no record of which one, sorry!

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently:

Hey Tom, 

I am sitting by the door in anticipation as I type this. It’s my birthday to boot, so it will make an awesome present, once the dang Fed Ex guy gets here. Right before I hit send, the doorbell rang. I had been playing records all day in anticipation, warming up my system for this album. Everything was sounding great, and my stereo was begging for some Supertramp.

I was going to listen to my old copy first to compare it. Ah, NO F***ING NEED. Holy hell. This copy you just sent me blew the windows out of my house, and didn’t rip my head off while doing so. Everything is so clear. I can hear every word clear as day, the bass is tight and clear, every instrument in its place and sounding magnificent.

This is truly an incredible pressing and it is night and day [better] even though my old copy was still a $250 Hot Stamper. Thank you. Your services are greatly appreciated. (Not by my neighbors however). Looking forward to my next one already.

Jeremiah H.

Supertramp / Indelibly Stamped – Reviewed in 2010

More of the Music of Supertramp

This is a British Original pressing with the best sound I have ever heard for this album. It’s sweeter, smoother, more delicate and more tonally correct overall than any American copy I have ever heard.

After doing the shootout with some other domestic copies, I put this record in the pile to be cleaned, and today I played it. Like many British pressings of British Rock albums, there is a whole layer of grunge and distortion that has been removed. A veil has been lifted, and you hear into the music in a way that was never before possible. There is no question this record is made from the master tape and the domestic pressings are made from dubs.

This is only the 2nd British copy I have ever seen (in clean condition anyway). My experience with British mastering is that it is all over the map, just like American mastering. Other British copies probably do not sound like this one, but I have no way of being sure.

I thought my last Hot Stamper copy was better sounding than this one, but that was only true for the track Potter, which on this Brit copy sounds a bit tame. Everything else is better here. It’s easy to make a mistake like that when you’re only comparing one song. (more…)

The Supertramp You Don’t Know – Even In The Quietest Moments

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Supertramp Available Now

After discovering killer Hot Stampers for this Forgotten Classic we feel the album can hold its own with any of Supertramp’s classic ’70s releases, from Crime of the Century all the way through to Breakfast in America.

Our White Hot stamper pressings showed us some of the best Supertramp sound we have ever heard on any of their albums, which is saying a lot. Supertramp is one of the most well-recorded bands in the history of pop music. GEOFF EMERICK took over most of the recording duties after the band decided to work with a different engineer for this, their 1977 album.

KEN SCOTT recorded the two albums that came before this one, Crime and Crisis, and as has been well documented on this very site, he knocked the two of them out of the park.

As I’m sure you know, both famously engineered The Beatles.

What we didn’t know, not until 2015 anyway, was how amazingly well recorded this album was.

In 2005 we noted that we had basically given up on ever finding a good sounding copy of Even in the Quietest Moments. It’s now ten years later. Having gone gone through more copies than we care to remember we think we’ve got EITQM’s ticket. We think we know which stampers have the potential to sound good as well as the ones to avoid. Finding the right stampers has been a positive boon.

Once we discovered the right stampers we were in a much better position to hear just how well recorded the album is. Now we know beyond all doubt that this recording — the first without Ken Scott producing and engineering for this iteration of the band — is of the highest quality, in league with the best.

Until recently we would never have made such a bold statement. Now it’s nothing less than obvious.

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Breakfast in America – Nimbus Reviewed

More on Breakfast in America

Sonic Grade: D

UPDATE 

We were a bit generous with our sonic grades for this record in the past. It’s not hard to do quite a bit better with an original domestic pressing.

For 33 38 years we’ve been helping music loving audiophiles the world over avoid bad sounding records.

To see the audiophile records with bad sound or bad music we’ve reviewed, click here.

It’s yet another public service from Better Records, the home of the best sounding records ever pressed. Our records sound better than any others you’ve ever heard or you get your money back.

Breakfast In America – MoFi Reviewed

More of the Music of Supertramp

Sonic Grade: C-

The MoFi Standard Operating Procedure of boosting the top end does this album no favors; it’s positively ruinous in fact. How dull does a system have to be to make this record sound right? Pretty damn dull.

And the bad bass definition just adds to the phoniness.

The average domestic copy is not that great either, so let’s give the MoFi a somewhat forgiving grade of C minus.  

More recently we played a copy that was too smooth. Go figure!

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Even In The Quietest Moments… on Sweet Thunder

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Supertramp Available Now

A hall of shame pressing and a Half-Speed Mastered disaster if there ever was one.

We’re big fans of this album here at Better Records and consider it to be one of Supertramp’s best. That said, this Half-Speed is a disgrace.

There is absolutely no presence to the sound of the copy we played. The guitars, which on some cuts are double tracked, each coming directly out of the speaker hard right and hard left, are so dull it sounds like the speaker is facing the back wall!  

I think I know why — there is quite a bit of processing distortion and grit on the vocals. The Audiophile Masterminds at Sweet Thunder thought the best way to deal with it was to suck the hell out of the presence region (3 to 6k), which takes off some of the edge on the vocals but throws a thick blanket over the acoustic guitars.

On the opening track of side one, the big hit off the album, it takes all the energy out of the one element that really drives the music — the guitars.

This is truly one of the worst Half-Speed mastered records we have ever had the displeasure of hearing.

Shame on you, Sweet Thunder.

This link will take you to some other exceptionally bad records that were marketed to audiophiles for their supposedly superior sound. On today’s modern systems, it should be obvious that they have nothing of the kind and that, in fact, they offer only the reverse: junk sound for bad stereos.

Further Reading

If you are still buying these remastered pressings, making the same mistakes that I was making before I knew better, take the advice of some of our customers and stop throwing your money away on Heavy Vinyl and Half-Speed mastered LPs.

At the very least let us send you a Hot Stamper pressing — of any album you choose — that can show you what is lacking on your copy of the album.

And if for some reason you disagree with us that our record sounds better than yours, we will happily give you all your money back and wish you the very best.