Top Artists – The Band

The Band on MoFi – Bad Bass Like This Is Just Annoying

More of the Music of The Band

Roots Rock LPs with Hot Stampers Available Now

In 2012 the “new” MoFi put out another remastered Big Pink. Since their track record at this point is, to be honest, abysmal, we have not felt the need to audition it.

It’s very possible, even likely, that they restored some of the bass that’s missing from so many of the originals.

But bad half-speed mastered bass — poorly defined, never deep and never punchy — is that the kind of bass that would even be desirable?

To us, it is very much a problem. Bad bass is just plain annoying.

Fortunately for all, it is a problem we have to deal with much less often now that we’ve all but stopped playing Half-Speed mastered records.

Here are some other records with exceptionally sloppy bass. If the bass on these records does not sound sloppy, you have your work cut out for you.

Some of our favorite records for testing bass definition can be found here.

Sucked Out Mids

The Doors first album was yet another obvious example of MoFi’s predilection for sucked-out mids. Scooping out the middle of the midrange has the effect of creating an artificial sense of depth where none belongs.

Play any original Bruce Botnick engineered album by Love or The Doors and you will notice immediately that the vocals are front and center. 

The midrange suckout effect is easily reproducible in your very own listening room. Pull your speakers farther out into the room and farther apart and you can get that MoFi sound on every record you own. I’ve been hearing it in the various audiophile systems I’ve been exposed to for more than 40 years.

Nowadays I would place it under the general heading of My-Fi, not Hi-Fi. Our one goal for every tweak and upgrade we make is to increase the latter and reduce the former.

And note also that when you play your records too quietly, it results in an exaggerated, artificial sense of depth. That’s one of the main reasons we play them loud; we want to hear the pressings that have real presence and immediacy, because they’re the ones that are most likely to win our shootouts.

If you have any of our White Hot stampers you surely know what I’m talking about.

Further Reading

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The Band – Music From Big Pink

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  • Both sides of this vintage copy of The Band’s 1968 masterpiece boast superb Double Plus (A++) sound
  • Forget all those vague, veiled, lifeless, ambience-free Heavy Vinyl pressings – this is the Big Pink that The Band recorded!
  • Remember when you used to play the same record over and over, never taking it off the turntable for days at a time?
  • Well here it is – this pressing captures the music in a way that will make repeated plays the joy they are meant to be
  • 5 stars: “…as soon as ‘The Weight’ became a singles chart entry, the album and the group made their own impact, influencing a movement toward roots styles and country elements in rock. Over time, [the album] came to be regarded as a watershed work in the history of rock, one that introduced new tones and approaches to the constantly evolving genre.”
  • We’ve recently compiled a list of records we think every audiophile should get to know better, along the lines of “the 1001 records you need to hear before you die,” with an accent on the joy these amazing audiophile-quality recordings can bring to your life. Music from Big Pink is a good example of a record many audiophiles may not know well but would be well advised to get to know better.

We guarantee you have never heard Music from Big Pink sound as good as it does on this very copy. There’s plenty of the all-important Tubey Magic and real weight to the bottom. You’ll have a VERY hard time finding one that sounds this good, if our experience is any guide.

This copy has the kind of sound we look for in a top quality Band record: immediacy in the vocals (so many copies are veiled and distant); natural tonal balance (most copies are at least slightly brighter or darker than ideal; ones with the right balance are the exception, not the rule); good solid weight (so the bass sounds full and powerful); spaciousness (the best copies have wonderful studio ambience and space); and last but not least, transparency, the quality of being able to see into the studio, where there is plenty of musical information to be revealed in this sophisticated recording. (more…)

The Band – Self-Titled

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  • A killer copy of an absolutely essential album with Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) grades on both sides – just shy of our Shootout Winner
  • One of the most difficult albums to find great sound for, but the music makes it worth all the time and trouble we spent finding this outstanding copy
  • Huge amounts of deep bass (something that only the best Robert Ludwig-mastered original pressings can offer), meaty guitars and silky vocals make this pressing of The Band’s second album a very special listenng experience indeed
  • Problems in the vinyl, especially for this title, are sometimes the nature of the beast with vintage LPs – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of analog is important to you
  • 5 stars: “As had been true of the first album, it was the Band’s sound that stood out the most… The arrangements were simultaneously loose and assured, giving the songs a timeless appeal…”

The lucky person who takes this record home is in for quite a shock. This very pressing is proof positive that this album is much better recorded than the audiophile community gives it credit for being. How could anyone judge the sound of the record without a great copy such as this one to play?

This vintage pressing has no trace of phony sound from top to bottom. It’s raw and real in a way that makes most pop records sound processed and wrong. These two sides have plenty of the qualities we look for in an album by The Band. Energy, presence, transparency, Tubey Magic… you name it, you will find it here. Its biggest strength — and the biggest strength of the album as a whole — is its wonderful, natural midrange.

And the bass is huge. On the better copies it always is.

Drop the needle on “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” or “King Harvest Has Surely Come” and get ready for some serious Analog Magic. This is The Band’s second album like you have never heard it before.

Overview

This copy has superb space in the midrange — it was wider, deeper and clearer than practically all of the Robert Ludwig originals we played (which are, of course, the only way to go on this album). Few copies were this full-bodied, solid, meaty and rich, yet clear. It was so tubey, never dry, unlike more copies than we care to remember.

Despite what anyone might tell you, it’s no mean feat to find good sounding copies of this record. There are good originals and bad originals, as well as good reissues and bad reissues. Folks, we’ve said it many times — the label can’t tell you how a record sounds, but there’s a sure way to find out that information. You’ve got to clean ’em and play ’em to find out which ones have Hot Stampers, and we seem to be the only record dealers who are doing that, in the process making unusually good pressings like this one available to you, the music-loving audiophile.

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Bob Dylan – Planet Waves

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More of The Band

  • You’ll find KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it throughout this vintage copy of Dylan’s 1974 release
  • With wonderfully rich, natural tonality, these early pressings are by far the best way to hear the album sound the way it should
  • Lots of great material on this one, not sure why it doesn’t get more respect: “On A Night Like This,” “Going Going Gone,” “Forever Young,” “You Angel You”… these are seriously good, very well-recorded songs
  • “Reteaming with The Band, Bob Dylan winds up with an album that recalls New Morning more than The Basement Tapes, since Planet Waves is given to a relaxed intimate tone…”
  • If you’re a Dylan fan, this 1974 release surely deserves a chance to find a home in your collection

This is an excellent recording, boasting not only great Bob Dylan sound, but some of the best sound for The Band that you’ll ever hear. That’s right, Dylan is backed by Messrs. Robertson, Danko, Helm, Manuel and Hudson on this album, and I don’t know when we’ve ever heard such audiophile quality sound from that crew. It’s a real treat to hear their signature styles without the cardboard-y, compressed quality we usually find on their albums.

This is not one of Dylan’s best-known or most-loved albums, but it’s definitely a good one. You can certainly tell that these are very emotional songs for him, and it really shows in the performances.

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The Band – Are the Originals the Best Sounding Pressings?

More of the Music of The Band

In the case of this album, no. The copies with the later covers always win our shootouts.

This is not the least bit surprising to us. We’re the guys who are all about sound, not originality.

We discussed it in this commentary: Are hot stampers just original pressings?

The links below should be helpful to those looking for the highest quality sound on vinyl.

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The Band – Moondog Matinee

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More Roots Rock

  • Moondog Matinee returns to the site on this early Capitol pressing with a STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side one mated to an outstanding Double Plus (A++) side two – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • Both of these sides are tonally balanced from top to bottom, with more vocal presence and rock and roll energy than practically all the others we played
  • The bass is huge, the brass rich, and the all analog sound smooth and natural
  • Listen to the Tubey Magical sound of the organ on The Great Pretender — modern records simply cannot get the sound of that organ right, and that’s why we stopped taking them seriously years ago
  • Yes, the copies from 1973 with the second cover always win the shootouts – we’ll leave it to you to make of that what you will
  • “The Band essentially went back to being the Hawks of the late ’50s and early ’60s on this album of cover tunes. They demonstrated considerable expertise on their versions of rock & roll and R&B standards like Clarence “Frogman” Henry’s ‘Ain’t Got No Home,’ Chuck Berry’s ‘The Promised Land,’ and Fats Domino’s ‘I’m Ready.'”

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The Band – Stage Fright

More of The Band

More Roots Rock LPs

  • With killer Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) sound throughout, this vintage Capitol pressing is close to the BEST we have ever heard, right up there with our Shootout Winner
  • Both of these sides boast Tubey Magical richness, musical tonality and big bottom end few other copies can touch
  • “Stage Fright” and “The Shape I’m In” are among the most well-known tracks here and they sound out of this world on a copy like this
  • 4 1/2 stars: “… their most nakedly confessional [album]. It was certainly different from their previous work, which had tended toward story-songs set in earlier times, but it was hardly less compelling for that.”

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Thoughts on MoFi’s Midrange Suckout

More of the Music of The Band

Our Favorite Roots Rock Albums with Hot Stampers Available Now

I was already a huge Mobile Fidelity fan in 1982 when they released Music from Big Pink, which, for some strange reason, was an album I knew practically nothing about.

I was 15 when the second album came out and I played that album all the time, but the first album had eluded me. How it managed to do that I cannot understand, not at this late date anyway. A major malfunction on my part to be sure.

At some point in the early ’90s I got hold of an early British pressing of the album.

Comparing it to my MoFi, I was shocked to hear the singers in the band so present and clear. Having only played MoFi’s remastered LP, I had never heard them sound like that.

The MoFi had them standing ten feet back.

The Brit put them front and center.

There was no question in my mind which presentation was right.

Around that time I was noticing that many Mobile Fidelity pressings seemed to be finding that same distant-midrange sound, and finding it on wildly different recordings. Recordings from different studios, by different engineers, in different eras.

The midrange suckout effect is easily reproducible in your very own listening room. Pull your speakers farther out into the room and farther apart and you can get that MoFi sound on every record you own. I’ve been hearing it in the various audiophile systems I’ve been exposed to for more than 40 years.

Nowadays I would place it under the general heading of My-Fi, not Hi-Fi. Our one goal for every tweak and upgrade we make is to increase the latter and reduce the former.

And note also that when you play your records too quietly, it creates an artificial sense of depth.

That’s one of the main reasons we play them loud; we want to hear the pressings that have real presence and immediacy, because they’re the ones that are most likely to win our shootouts.

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Bob Dylan and The Band – The Basement Tapes

More Bob Dylan

More of The Band

  • With seriously good Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER on all FOUR sides, this copy of The Basement Tapes is doing just about everything right
  • The recording may not be an audiophile dream come true, but this pressing is far better than most others we can ever recall playing, and lets the music come through in a way that we guarantee you have never heard before
  • 5 stars: “… the music here (including the Band’s) is astonishingly good. The party line on The Basement Tapes is that it is Americana, as Dylan and the Band pick up the weirdness inherent in old folk, country, and blues tunes, but it transcends mere historical arcana through its lively, humorous, full-bodied performances. Dylan never sounded as loose, nor was he ever as funny as he is here, and this positively revels in its weird, wild character… among the greatest American music ever made.”

This vintage Columbia Double LP pressing has some of the very best sound we’ve ever heard for this album.

Of course, given the nature of these recordings, you don’t get stunning sonics along the line of, say, Magical Mystery Tour or Dark Side Of The Moon, but at least you get to hear these great songs sound the way they were intended to, without the complications of bad mastering and pressing getting in the way.

Most of the copies we’ve heard wouldn’t be fit to list on the site at any price, but we felt strongly that this copy did justice to the music in a way that the typical pressing does not. While this may not be a Demo Disc, it’s MUCH better sounding than most copies we’ve come across. We’ve played a bunch of these over the years and most of them paled in comparison to this one.

This is of course a famous album, with The Band backing up Dylan (and adding some of their own material) in the famous Big Pink House which would later be the place where The Band’s 1st album was born. (more…)

The Band – The Last Waltz

More of The Band

More Roots Rock LPs

  • A vintage Palm Tree pressing with superb Double Plus (A++) sound or close to it on all SIX sides
  • Sides two through six are rich, dynamic and natural sounding with low end weight, midrange smoothness and powerful, punchy bass, and side one is not far behind in all those areas
  • Features an A-list of brilliant artists, including Van Morrison, Ringo Star, Joni Mitchell, and Muddy Waters, just to name a few
  • 4 stars: “It’s the Band’s ‘special guests’ who really make this set stand out — Muddy Waters’ ferocious version of ‘Mannish Boy’ would have been a wonder from a man half his age, Van Morrison sounds positively joyous on ‘Caravan,’ Neil Young and Joni Mitchell do well for their Canadian brethren, and Bob Dylan’s closing set finds him in admirably loose and rollicking form.”
  • If you’re a fan of The Band, and what audiophile wouldn’t be?, this triple album from 1978 belongs in your collection
  • The complete list of titles from 1978 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here.
  • If you are more interested in the live album The Band recorded in 1972, we may have one in stock

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