Robert Ludwig, Engineer – Rev/Com

Fly Like An Eagle on Capitol Heavy Vinyl

Hot Stamper Pressings of Classic Rock Albums Available Now

This Capitol Records Limited Edition 180 gram LP from the series that Robert Ludwig mastered is the worst sounding version of the album I have ever heard, bar none. It was cut with the azimuth off, which smears all the high frequency transients.

How anybody could put up with that crappy sounding LP is beyond me, but I have never read a single word complaining about the sound.

Granted, the MoFi has a bit more going on up top, but the blurry bass and lack of presence fail to bring the music to life the way a properly-mastered, properly-pressed copy will. 

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On Tarkio, Do All the Robert Ludwig Mastered Copies Have Hot Stampers?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Hippie Folk Rock Albums Available Now

UPDATE 2023

This commentary describes some observations we made after doing a shootout for Tarkio a few years back.

It’s one of those very special recordings that deserves credit for helping us dramatically improve the quality of our playback.

I learned a lot about unhyped, unprocessed, Tubey Magical sound from Tarkio and treasure the music it contains to this day.

Even though all the original Pink Label pressings are mastered by the great Robert Ludwig, they have a marked tendency to be dull, thick and opaque.

On too many of the original pressings we’ve played, even after a good cleaning the top end and upper midrange are a bit rolled off, causing the sound to be smoother than it should be. And of course the way we discover that fact is simplicity itself: the best pressings do not suffer from rolled-off sound.

Analog that is “super-smooth” is the kind of sound that is simply the reverse of the brighter, edgier quality that many CDs suffer from. But both of them are wrong. As Goldilocks will tell you, ideally there will always be a pressing with the correct tonality, neither smooth nor bright, and the way we know that is by playing a bunch of copies and finding the ones in the pile with that tonally correct sound.

We can’t predict which ones will have it, but we sure can hear which ones do.

But finding it without a pile of copies is very hard, almost impossible. How “tonally correct” is any given copy compared to “perfectly tonally correct?” You need plenty of copies to know that, as well as a tonally neutral system capable of playing them properly.

If you like your audiophile pressings to sound super smooth, smooth as mud, there is a guy that offers exactly what you are looking for. His name is Pete Hutchison. He has built a lucrative business for himself making all his records sound like they are being played back through 50s tube electronics.

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Our Tarkio Four Plus Shootout Winner from 2012

Hot Stamper Pressings of Hippie Folk Rock Albums Available Now

UPDATE 2026

Here is our 2012 review for this amazing sounding breakthrough pressing of Tarkio.

It’s records like these that are the payoff for all the money, time and effort you’ve put into your system.

This White Hot Stamper side one of our beloved Tarkio, Brewer and Shipley’s Folk Rock Masterpiece, is without a doubt the BEST SOUND we have ever heard on any pressing bar none. This side sets a standard that no other copy on any side could touch. True, we awarded a Triple Plus grade to an amazing side two copy, but this side one is still the better of the two. We could easily have called it Four Pluses but chose to go with the simpler A+++ and this explanation.

However you frame it, this side is OFF THE CHARTS in a big way. It’s amazingly rich, yet clear and transparent as any we played — what a combination!

This, like Dark Side and so many other White Hot Stamper records we offer to the discriminating audiophile, is ANALOG at its finest. To our knowledge there hasn’t been a single record mastered in the last thirty years with this kind of sound, and we know whereof we speak: we’ve played them by the hundreds.

A Desert Island Disc for me with wonderfully NATURAL sound. This copy had the ULTIMATE Side One (A+++) and a very competitive Side Two (A++), making it the King of our Shootout. If you love this record as much as you should, this is the copy to own. I would love to keep it for my desert island, but we know there is surely a deserving soul out there who will treasure it as much as I do, and probably play it a lot more often, so if you know the album at all this is your chance at greatness. (And I still haven’t found a desert island I’m all that partial to anyway.)

Not Really One Toke Over the Line

Please don’t assume that this album has much in the way of uptempo country rockers like One Toke Over the Line, Flying Burrito Brothers style. Nothing could be further from the truth. Practically every other song on the album is better, almost all of them are taken at a slower pace, with none of them having the “poppy” arrangement of that carefully calculated Top Forty hit. The rest of the music on the album, the music you probably don’t know, is much better than the music that you do know if what you know is that song.

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Upper Midrange on The Nightfly

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Donald Fagen Available Now

We just finished a big shootout for Donald Fagen’s first solo effort, released just two years after Gaucho and the end of Steely Dan and we gotta tell you, there are a lot of weak sounding copies out there. We should know — we played them. 

Robert Ludwig cut all the originals we played. Are you going to tell me that every copy with RL in the dead wax sounds the same as every other copy with those initials? The question answers itself.

What to Listen For

The upper mids on certain tracks of both sides have a tendency to be brighter than we would have liked.

Ruby Baby on side one can be that way, and the title track on side two has some of the wannabe hit single radio EQ that makes it less likely to please, so to speak.

Other records with a tendency to have boosted upper mids can be found here.

On a good copy the first track of each side should be all you need to hear.

Here are hundreds other titles with specific advice on what to listen for on some of the albums we’ve played in shootouts.

If you know how to do shootouts, you know how to find good sounding records.

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Shouldn’t a Digital Recording Sound the Same on CD and Vinyl?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Dire Straits Available Now

UPDATE 2026

These comments are taken from a reddit thread that Geoff Edgers and I were on years ago talking about Hot Stampers. I would add that the audience seemed to have very little experience with high-end audio. Based on the comments I read, most of them, like most audiophiles, especially audiophile record collectors, thought I was selling snake oil.

(Doesn’t it strike you as odd that no one ever seems to bring up the fact that we make a point of explaing to you exactly how to find your own snake oil?)

Someone asked a question about vinyl for digital recordings. Discussing the difference I typically hear between CDs and vinyl pressings, I offered the opinions you see below. (We might have been talking about Brothers in Arms; I honestly don’t remember and don’t think it matters anyway.)

For those of you newer to the blog, please keep in mind that, unlike a great many fans of analog, I actually like the sound of the hundreds of CDs I own and make a point to play them regularly for enjoyment. Properly mastered CDs can sound shockingly good.

In my experience, a good CD will wipe the floor with the vast majority of Heavy Vinyl records being made today. If you are buying modern remastered records, I highly recommend you stop and instead make the effort to find a good CD player and buy vintage — and even some of the better gold — CDs.

My comments:

Well, a too-short version would be something like:

On the vinyl and on the CD the tonality should be identical.

If it is not you have problems and you need to do some work to find them and fix them.

Assuming correct tonality, the CD should be big, lively and clear, assuming you have a good CD player and a good CD.

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Our History with Led Zeppelin’s Rock Classic from 1990 – 2010

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now

UPDATE 2026

In 2010 we wrote the overview below about what we thought we knew about Zep II. We have since amended the text in a few places and added some links. Please to enjoy.

This is undoubtedly one of the best, maybe THE best hard rock recording of all time, but you need a good pressing if you’re going to unleash anything approaching its full potential. We just conducted a shootout and heard MUCH more bad sound than good. You name it — imports, reissues, originals — we’ve played ’em, and most of them were TERRIBLE.

Especially the non-RL originals. That’s some of the worst sound we’ve ever heard.

If you see a “J” stamper, run for your life.

The best copies of Zep II have the kind of rock and roll firepower that’s guaranteed to bring any system to its knees. I can tell you with no sense of shame whatsoever that I do not have a system powerful enough to play this record at the levels I was listening to it at in one of our shootouts a while back. When the big bass comes in, hell yeah it distorts. It would have distorted worse at any concert the band ever played. Did people walk out, or ask the band to turn down the volume? No way. The volume IS the sound.

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Listening in Depth to Houses of the Holy

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now

You really get an understanding of just how much of a production genius Jimmy Page was when you listen to a copy of Houses on high quality modern equipment, the kind that simply did not exist when the record came out in 1973.

To take just one example, listen to how clearly the multi-tracked guitars can be heard in the different layers and areas of the soundstage. On some songs you will have no trouble picking out three, four and even more guitars playing, each with its own unique character. The clarity of the better copies allows you to recognize — perhaps for the first time — the special contribution each is making to the finished song.

Side One

The Song Remains the Same
The Rain Song

Check out the guitars — the sound should be warm, sweet and delicate. There are some dead quiet passages in this song that are almost always going to have some surface noise. Most copies start out a bit noisy but almost always get quieter as the music goes along.

Over the Hills and Far Away

This is a great test track for side one. It starts with lovely acoustic guitars before the Monster Zep Rock Chords come crashing in. If both parts of the song sound correct and balanced, you more than likely have a winner. And the bigger the dynamic contrast between the parts the better.

Turn your volume up good and high in order to get the full effect, then stand back and let the boys have at it.

The Crunge (more…)

Letter of the Week – “The kind of sound my CD ‘audiophile’ friends can only dream about.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of Hippie Folk Rock Albums Available Now

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

Hey Tom, 

Recently bought a Tarkio Hot Stamper and what a great album it is. This record has truly great ANALOG sound. The kind of sound my CD “audiophile” friends can only dream about. This recording is a lot of fun to listen to. There is much more to it than the songs that had airplay.

Anyway, another great find from the better records crew.

Jim S

Jim,

Thanks for your letter. This is one my favorite records too. I have it on tape and that tape has been played at least 500 times.

Along with Crosby, Stills and Nash’s debut, Tarkio represents the pinnacle of what we affectionately call Hippie Folk Rock.

On the best copies, the Tubey Magical acoustic guitar reproduction is some of the best we have ever heard, right up there with another record Stephen Barncard recorded, If Only I Could Remember My Name. As you may have read elsewhere on the site, the guy is a genius.

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Piano Works of Debussy & Ravel – This Is How to Make a Good Audiophile Record

Hot Stamper Pressings Engineered by Robert Ludwig Available Now

A lovely solo piano recording from Athena, which is certainly not a label we have ever associated with good sound. Just the opposite in fact.

But they did a great job on this album (or at least I thought so many years ago when I last played it. For purposes of this commentary, let’s assume the sound still holds up).

This is how to make a good audiophile record.

Yes, there is such a thing. They may be rare but they do exist. We have a few of them for sale as a matter of fact.

Take a good tape, hire someone who knows his way around a normal-speed cutting lathe (with 5800+ credits on Discogs, I would hope he knows what he’s doing) as well as classical music (he cut a huge number of records for Nonesuch back in the day), press it on good vinyl and let the audiophiles of the world enjoy it.

The Connoisseur Society original may in fact be better, but where are you going to find one?

Robert, Bernie and Doug – An Honest Comparison

In another listing for an audiophile record that Robert Ludwig cut, we noted:

I suspect that if Ludwig hadn’t stopped cutting records years ago, we would not be complaining nearly as much about the questionable sound of the modern Heavy Vinyl pressings currently inundating the market.

Bernie and Doug really started letting the record lovers of the world down, beginning as far back as the 90s. See here and here.

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Houses of the Holy on Classic Records and 156 Other Records No Audiophile Should Want Anything to Do With

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now

Houses of the Holy is another one of the very bad records Michael Fremer put on his 2009 Top LP list, while passing over one of Classic’s better titles, the first Led Zeppelin album.

(We don’t like it as much as we used to, but it is still a good record if you get a good pressing of it, something that can never be guaranteed of course. We link to our review of it below.)

Michael Fremer’s web site used to be called called musicangle (now defunct). On this site you would have been able to find a feature called “157 In-Print LPs You Should Own!”

Surprisingly it seems that the link still works. If I had made a list this misguided, it surely would have turned into a “I’m sorry,  I didn’t know what I was talking about” commentary. I would have felt an obligation to correct the record, out of sheer embarrassment at the very least.

But this guy apparently never learns. As far as he’s concerned, what worked in 1982 ain’t broke and don’t need fixing.

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