Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Dire Straits Available Now
One of our erstwhile customers asked me a question not long ago:
Hey Tom,
Some audiophile guy professes to me that he prefers his Japan and German pressings of Dire Straits’ 1st LP over the UK press. How can I tell him in a kind way that he is wrong?
Dear Sir,
You can’t, in a kind way or any other way.
You have to play the two pressings for him, on his stereo or yours, and that’s simply not possible unless he lives near you, which is rarely the case, audiophiles being fairly thin on the ground in my experience.
Explaining doesn’t work. Only hearing works.
All forums — whatever their benefits — cannot overcome this problem.
Next time someone posts an opinion about a record, ask yourself “What does his system sound like?”
If you don’t know the answer, why on earth would you put any stock in his opinion? For all you know his system sucks and his critical listening skills are non-existent. He might have a pair of JBL 100s in the basement and a Dual turntable (or the modern equivalent of same).
He may hate the records whose sound you love and love the records whose sound you hate.
I Look Forward to Being Proven Wrong
Along those lines, I had a new customer tell me that this record was one of the better Heavy Vinyl reissues he had heard recently. Rather than just paint every Heavy Vinyl pressing with the broad brush of disgust I normally reach for when doing reviews for them, I thought maybe I should actually give this one a listen.
It might change my mind. It might help me see the light. Maybe I could even learn a thing or two instead of being so relentlessly negative about modern reissues. They can’t all be as bad as I say, can they?
So I took his advice and ordered one right then and there.
For thirty bucks, I learned a lesson worth a great deal more than the money I sunk into such a worthless piece of vinyl on the say-so of someone whose stereo I had never heard, which is this: never believe a word you read about audio or records, no matter who says it, or where you read it, except under very specific circumstances.
What circumstances, exactly?
To my mind there is only one circumstance when it makes sense to believe what somebody — anybody — tells you about the sound of a record: If that advice comes with a 100% money back guarantee of the purchase price if you are not happy with the sound.
It can’t get any more simple than that, now can it?
Do any of these guys ever put their money where their mouths are? Not a one of them ever has to the best of my knowledge, and why would they? Plenty of downside, but not a trace of upside. To quote Don Felder, Don Henley, Glenn Frey and J.D. Souther from Victim of Love, “I could be wrong, but I’m not.”
Of course we do things very differently here at Better Records. Yes, we have strong opinions. Lots of them.
But we back those opinions up with a full money back guarantee. The upside for us is huge — a satisfied customer, our favorite kind — and the downside is practically nil — whatever record someone returns just goes back up on the site, sells to someone else and we never see it again.
Voila, another satisfied customer!
I don’t know how Chad Kassem would react to you trying to return his awful Stand Up or his mediocre-at-best Tea for the Tillerman, but I doubt he would take too kindly to the idea.
And speaking of not being wrong, we actually go out of way to point out when we are.
Better to be a scout rather than a warrior.
There are way too many warriors on audiophile forums as it is, don’t you think?
(more…)
…the 7 Hot Stampers records i have bought from Better Records in the past, (albums I know well all my life, and that I have already had many versions, incl. OG’s 1st, and “audiophile” versions) are some of the best sounding records in my collection.
They have helped improve my listening skills enormously; not just “listening”, but 100% enjoy and appreciate the music. Seeking out for my “own” hot stampers now, is what really makes this hobby so interesting! (for example: Roxy Music Avalon, after buying and comparing 5 copies, incl. UK 1st Arun cut, I now have “my” best sounding one, and indeed it is a reissue (vintage, not modern “audiophile”)¨! Denis Blackham (BilBo) did a very good job on this one…
I replied:
Yes, the Bilbo cutting of Avalon can be very good, something we know from having played them by the dozens.
It has been many years, more than a decade I should think, since a Bilbo cutting won a shootout. Still, they can be very good, probably falling somewhere in the 1.5+ to 2+ range, but if you want to, you can certainly do a lot better, which is the kind of thing you learn when you have piles and piles of clean British pressings to play.
We stopped buying the Bilbo pressings many years ago, and they no longer show up in our stamper sheets these days. Why spend the money for them when something better is just as easy to find?
Nevertheless, Bilbo is a great mastering engineer and his work is worth seeking out, even though he did not knock Avalon out of the park.
On another note:
If modern engineers are so good at their jobs, as so many on this thread keep implying, where are the records they’ve made that can compete with Bilbo’s cuttings from the old days?
Please name them. I know of none, and I am hoping someone will take pity on a poor fool such as myself and help enlighten me.
Based on the vitriol I am reading, the consensus is that my benighted ravings are shameful and outlandish.
If anyone needs a clue, it’s pretty obvious I do.
Please help me understand what I have been missing for the last few decades, decades in which I was playing tens of thousands of records, listening to them critically and posting my thoughts about them in the
50006000 listings found on my blog. (If indeed I am wrong about all this, I’m sure wrong a lot!)