Top Artists – Yes

Yes – The Yes Album

More of the Music of Yes

  • You haven’t begun to hear the weight, energy and space of Yes’s brilliant third album until you’ve played one of our killer Hot Stamper copies
  • On the right system, at the right volume (very loud), this very record is an immersive experience like practically no other (also particularly on side two)
  • A Top 100 Album and the band’s best sounding record if you ask us (although Fragile can sound absolutely amazing too, just not as smooth and rich)
  • “Organist Tony Kaye, guitarist Steve Howe and bass player Chris Squire play as though of one mind, complementing each other’s work as a knowledgeable band should.”
  • This Prog Rock Masterpiece from 1971 is one that we feel belongs in every audiophile’s collection
  • The Yes Album (along with Fragile and Close to the Edge) is also one of those albums that helped us dramatically improve our playback quality

Drop the needle on this bad boy and you will find yourself on a Yes journey the likes of which you have never known. And that’s what I’m in this audiophile game for. The Heavy Vinyl crowd can have their dead-as-a-doornail, wake-me-when-it’s-over pressings that play quietly. I couldn’t sit through one with a gun to my head.

With the amazing Eddie Offord at the board, as well as the best batch of songs ever to appear on a single Yes album, they produced both their sonic and musical masterpiece — good news for audiophiles with Big Speakers who like to play their records loud.

These guys — and by that I mean this particular iteration of the band, the actual players that were involved in the making of this album — came together for the first time and created the sound of Yes on this very album, rather aptly titled when you think about it. (more…)

Just Say No to The Yes Album on Rhino

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Yes Available Now

You can find this one in our audiophile record hall of shame, along with almost 300 others that, in our opinion, make a mockery of the term “audiophile record.”

Is it the worst version ever?

Hard to imagine it would have much competition. The CD I own is dramatically better sounding, and it can probably be had for ten bucks or less. (Make sure Joe Gastwirt had nothing to do with whatever version you buy. His stuff is usually no-noised garbage.)

That notorious hack Ron McMaster strikes again.

Rhino Records bills their releases as pressed on “180 gram High Performance Vinyl.” However, if they are using performance to refer to sound quality, we have found the performance of their vinyl to be quite low, lower than the average copy one might stumble upon in the used record bins.

The CD versions of most of the LP titles they released early on are far better sounding than the lifeless, flat, pinched, so-called audiophile pressings they produced starting around 2000.

The mastering engineer for this junk title actually has the nerve to feature his name in the ads for the records. He should be run out of town, not promoted as a keeper of the faith and defender of the virtues of “vinyl.” If this is what vinyl sounds like I’d would have switched to CD years ago.

And the amazing thing is, as bad as these records are, there are people who like them. I’ve read postings on the internet from people who say the sound on these records is just fine. It’s sad.

Their Grateful Dead titles sound as bad as the cheapest Super Saver reissue copies I have ever heard. And those are terrible!

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Letter of the Week – “I have never heard this album sound so big with such deep and solid bass!”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Yes Available Now

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

Hey Tom, 

BTW, Close to the edge is amazing. I have never heard this album sound so big with such deep and solid bass! It is really a “tell all” about my setup as you stated in your write up. Jon’s vocal’s can be a bit bright in the title track when turned up loud, so I know where to focus my attention on my setup.

There are are so many things that make playback of the record tricky, your room, electricity, equipment, everything. The better you can play that record, good and loud, the more progress you are making! Thanks again and I am sure I will write again soon.

Rob,

Thanks, looking forward to it.

TP

P.S.

We talk a lot about these kinds of challenging records all over the site. This commentary goes into the subject in more detail.

Here is another typical excerpt you may see on listings of records that present a challenge to the audiophile regardless of how advanced he or she may be:

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Letter of the Week – “I’m stunned, flabbergasted, and amazed.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Yes Available Now

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

Hey Tom,  

Got my albums today, and I’m stunned, flabbergasted, and amazed.

I purchased a “Hot Stamper” Yes Fragile, and immediately spun Side B. For the first two minutes, listening to “Long Distance Runaround,” I sat there with jaw slack, repeatedly shouting expletives. My son finally came downstairs to see what was going on. I simply couldn’t believe my ears. I have never, ever, heard as good a recorded rendition – and I’ve heard (and owned) numerous copies over the years.I literally heard stuff I’ve never heard before – for example, in the last chorus of “Heart of the Sunrise”, I could for the first time ever clearly hear Wakeman’s Minimoog layered on top of Anderson’s vocal. I knew it was there in the front part (“Sharp…Distance”) but never knew it was there on the “How can the wind with its arms…” part. Amazing.

I’ve been doing the audiophile thing for 20 years now – exclusively analog. And for the last many years, I’ve read your website, but remained skeptical. This is my first purchase! But it most certainly won’t be my last. My only lament is that I lack the funds to buy all of the albums that I now realize I MUST have! So, THANK YOU – for your dedication to finding and making available high quality recordings; and for bringing such incredible music into my home space!!! I look forward to doing much business with you in the future!   (more…)

Yes – 90125

More Yes

  • A vintage Atco import pressing that was giving us the big and bold sound we were looking for, earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades or close to them from top to bottom – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • This side one is spacious, solid and dynamic with huge bass and analog richness that’s hard to find on this album, and side two is not far behind in all those areas
  • There’s an abundance of life and energy here, and the vocals sound just right (particularly on side one)
  • 4 1/2 stars: “A stunning self-reinvention by a band that many had given up for dead, 90125 is the album that introduced a whole new generation of listeners to Yes… there’s nary a duff track on the album.”

I’m pleased to report that we can now add 90125 to our small list of 80s albums that can sound excellent on the right pressing. Drop the needle on “Owner Of A Lonely Heart” and we bet you’ll agree!

So many copies we played were full of that digital grit and grain that we hear on so many records from the era. This one is an entirely different story. It has wonderful analog qualities, with more richness and smoothness than most pressings.

The recording itself is outstanding: punchy and lively with an especially beefy bottom end, the kind a good rock record needs. But you would never know it by playing the average pressing you might pick up for five bucks at your local used record store. The typical copy of this record is pretty average sounding. Let’s face it: every mastering mistake that can be made will be made sooner or later with mass-produced vinyl like this.

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The Yes Album – What a Recording!

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Yes Available Now

At its best, this album is a Big Speaker Prog-Rock opus with tremendous power and dynamic range, but it takes a special pressing to really bring the album to life. 

These guys — and by that I mean this particular iteration of the band, the actual players that were involved in the making of this album — came together for the first time and created the sound of Yes on this very album, rather aptly titled when you think about it.

With the amazing Eddie Offord at the board, as well as the best batch of songs ever to appear on a single Yes album, they produced both their sonic and musical masterpiece — good news for audiophiles with Big Speakers!

Drop the needle on a top copy and you will find yourself on a Yes journey the likes of which you have never known.

And that’s what I’m in this audiophile game for.

The Heavy Vinyl crowd can have their dead-as-a-doornail, wake-me-when-it’s-over pressings that are typically cheap to buy and tend to play quietly.  Here’s one I couldn’t sit through with a gun to my head.

The amount of effort that went into the recording of this album is comparable to that expended by the engineers and producers of bands like Supertramp, ELP, The Who, Jethro Tull, Ambrosia, Pink Floyd and far too many others to list.

It seems that no effort or cost was spared in making the home listening experience as compelling as the recording technology of the day permitted. Tubey Magical British Prog Rock just doesn’t get any better.

Obsession

Yes, we admit to being obsessed with The Yes Album.

It is our belief that to reach the most advanced levels of audio,you have to do two things:

  1. You must become obsessed with getting your favorite albums to sound their best, and,
  2. You must then turn your obsession into concrete action.

What kind of action?

Finding better sounding pressings and improving your stereo and room.

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Letter of the Week – “You can’t hear the speakers; the sound fills the entire room, including the back walls.”

More Customer Letters Comparing Our Hot Stamper Pressings to Their Heavy Vinyl

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

Hey Tom, 

A good friend of mine came over today to take a look at my cartridge setup now that it is properly burned in. I was still getting some brightness in the right channel and we found that the cartridge was not seating properly in the groove. A few adjustments and now perfection!

My litmus test, Yes Close to the Edge now sounds absolutely unbelievable! You can’t hear the speakers; the sound fills the entire room, including the back walls.

As you stated, everyone should own a copy of this record to determine if their setup is correct.

I went through several of my hot stampers and I feel like I am in audio heaven now.

Morning Has Broken also sounds amazing; Piano definition, Cat’s voice, etc.

nother 3D sound extravaganza!

Finally, I had a chance to compare Led Zeppelin 4 (your hot stamper vs. my 200g Classic).

Before the cartridge tweaking I was hard pressed to tell the difference.

Now that the stylus is properly seated in the groove, with the Hot Stamper I can hear more detail in Jimmy’s guitar, more airiness in Robert’s voice and just an overall more listenable experience.

The entire soundstage is about 3 feet higher than the Classic version.

Well, I am spoiled again and loving it!

Thanks again,
Rob

Rob,

Glad to hear your turntable is working better. As you say, differences between Hot Stampers and Heavy Vinyl pressings are not much more obvious, and that’s a good thing. We think audiophiles should learn to do all these sorts of things for themselves, and have written about it at some length: Tuning and tweaking are essential to improving your critical listening skills.

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Yes, We’re Getting Awfully Close To The Edge…

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Yes Available Now

On the difficulty of reproduction scale, this record ranks well above most of the albums we play, in the top few percent without a doubt.

You need lots of Tubey Magic and freedom from distortion, the kind of distortion-free sound I rarely hear on any but the most heavily tweaked systems — the kind of systems that guys like me have been slaving over for more than forty years.

If you’re a weekend warrior when it comes to working on your stereo, this is not the record for you.

It took a long time to get to the point where we could clean the record properly, twenty years or so, and about the same amount of time to get the stereo to the level it needed to be, involving, you guessed it, many of the revolutionary changes in audio we tout so obsessively.

It’s also not easy to find a pressing with the low end whomp factor, midrange energy and overall dynamic power that this music needs, and it takes one helluva stereo to play one too.

If you have the kind of big system that a record like this demands, when you drop the needle on the best of our Hot Stamper pressings, you are going to hear some astonishingly good sound.

Unless your system is firing on all cylinders, even our Hottest Stamper copies can be difficult. Your electricity has got to be cooking, you’ve got to be using the right room treatments, and ideally you should be using a demagnetizer such as the Talisman on the record itself, your cables (power, interconnect and speaker) as well as the individual drivers of your speakers.

This is a record that’s going to demand a lot from the listener, and we want to make sure that you’re up to the challenge. If you don’t mind putting in the hard work, here’s a record that will reward you many times over, and probably teach you a thing or two about tweaking your gear in the process.

We’d started and abandoned this shootout multiple times before breaking through in 2008. The typical copy was just too painful to listen to, and the better pressings weren’t sounding the way we’d hoped they would.

Where was the Tubey Magical analog sound with the HUGE whomp factor that we’d been hearing on the best copies of Fragile and The Yes Album?

We just could not find that sound on Close to the Edge.

As futile as our previous attempts were, we decided in 2008 that we would take another stab at it. After all, there had been quite a few changes around here that had the stereo working really well —  the addition of the Odyssey Record Cleaning Machine and Prelude Record Cleaning System to our cleaning process, the Talisman Magnetic Optimizer, the third pair of Hallographs we added years back, tons of smaller tweaks, and a few other tricks that we’re going to leave hidden up our sleeves for now.

The Planets Align

Think about it: This is a highly COMPLEX recording, with HUGE organs, light-speed changes, lots of multi-tracking, and what amounts to an OVERLOAD of musical information. Can you imagine how irritating that would sound on a third-rate copy? We didn’t have to imagine it — we lived through it!

But that’s exactly what made the shootout so rewarding. We had finally gotten the sound we were searching for from Close To The Edge, although it was anything but easy. The toughest peaks to climb are the ones you feel the best standing at the top of, and I have no doubt that many of you will be able to get there, just as we did, as long as you’re willing to work for it. (We humbly suggest you follow our lead.)

We put a lot of time and energy into getting everything just right for our shootouts, and to hear the album sound amazing you’re going to have to do the same. If it doesn’t all come together and our Hot Stamper Close to the Edge leaves you cold, feel free to send it back for a full refund. That’s always our policy, but we wanted to stress it in regards to this album, because it is VERY difficult to reproduce. (Big speakers are pretty much a must on this one as well.)

And it should be noted that there is distortion on the tape. It’s on every LP copy and it’s on the CD too. There are cacophonous passages that have what sounds like board overload, mic preamp overload, tape saturation or some combination of all three.

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Close to the Edge – A MoFi Winner, Or Was It? We’ll Never Really Know

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Yes Available Now

Sonic Grade: Side One: B to B+ / Side Two: C

Many, many years ago (2005?) we wrote the commentary you see below. We can’t say if we would still agree with the sentiments expressed, so take what you read with a grain of salt, and remember that no two records sound the same. If your copy is better or worse on either side, it will not come as a surprise to us here at Better Records.

This is a great MOFI! (On side one anyway.) I have to admit I was partly wrong about this pressing. I used to think it was mud. Either the copy I have here is much better than the copy I played years ago, or my stereo has changed. I’m going to guess that it’s the stereo that has changed. I used to like the original American copies of this album and now I hear that they are upper midrangy and aggressive. [*] So my stereo must have been too forgiving in that area, which in turn would have made this MOFI sound too dull. [**]

Side one is as good as I’ve ever heard it outside of the best British originals. [We don’t even buy those anymore. Maybe that’s the problem with this comparison.] Since almost none of those have survived in clean enough condition to be played on modern audiophile turntables, there isn’t much of an alternative to this pressing.

And it should be noted that there is distortion on the tape. It’s on every LP copy and it’s on the CD too. There are cacophonous passages that have what sounds like board overload, mike preamp overload, tape saturation or something of the kind.

Eddie Offord, the recording engineer, is famous for complaining that the boys in the band were totally out of control when it came to adding layer upon layer and track upon track to their recordings, running the risk of creating such a dense mix that nothing would be heard above the din. He was always fighting a losing battle trying to rein them in. Although he did his best, it appears his efforts failed in some of the musical passages on this album.

So here’s a MOFI I like, but I only really like side one. Side two, although it’s decent enough, errs a little on the smooth, dull side. I have copies in which the guitars have wonderfully extended harmonics and sweeter tone. Some of them are even domestic pressings! On the MOFI there is a “blunting” of the acoustic guitar transients.

[*] Some pressings are indeed bright and aggressive, but that just shows how little I knew about the album in 2005. The later domestic pressings, and even some of the 4 digit catalog pressings, can indeed sound that way. Eventually I would figure out what the good stampers were and then I would no longer be as ignorant as I so clearly was when I wrote this. As for more stuff we’ve gotten wrong, you can find some of it here, under the heading: live and learn.

[**] My stereo was indeed too dark and forgiving back in those days. The way I know that is that records that are too bright and upper-midrangy to play now played just fine twenty years ago.

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Yes – Close To The Edge

More of the Music of Yes

  • Close To The Edge returns to the site for only the second time in fourteen months, here with KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close it throughout his vintage copy
  • An incredibly complex recording, with huge organs, light-speed changes and an abundance of multi-tracked parts – these early pressings are the only ones that can make sense of this challenging music
  • On such a dynamic recording, with so many quiet passages, finding reasonably quiet surfaces is a dubious proposition for even the most committed audiophile, as is the case here, sad to say
  • But on the bright side, once you hear just how amazing sounding side one of this copy is, you might be inclined, as we were, to stop counting ticks and pops and just be swept away by the music
  • If any pressing will let you do that, it’s this one!
  • 5 stars: “Close to the Edge comprised just three tracks, the epic ‘And You and I’ and ‘Siberian Khatru,’ plus a side-long title track that represented the musical, lyrical, and sonic culmination of all that Yes had worked toward over the past five years.”
  • This album is a Must Own from 1972, one that deserves a place in any audiophile’s collection
  • Close to the Edge is an album with one set of very special stampers that have consistently been winning shootout after shootout for years now

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