Top Engineers – Lee Herschberg

Frank Sinatra – Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim

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  • With KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it from start to finish, this original stereo pressing of Sinatra and Jobim’s sublime collaboration could not be beat
  • We concluded notes about this amazing side one with the following: “So tubey and present. Perfect.”
  • A Must Own for Sinatra fans, but one that has a marked tendency to be noisy, as many of the owners of the album loved it and played it to death
  • The presence and three-dimensional space of the recording have the power to transport the Chairman of the Board and his Brazilian buddy right into your listening room
  • This is a magical album from start to finish, one of a handful of a Must Own Sinatra releases, and my personal favorite of all his recordings
  • 4 1/2 stars: “After a few plays, the album begins to slowly work its way underneath a listener’s skin, and it emerges as one of his most rewarding albums of the ’60s.”
  • We’ve recently compiled a list of records we think every audiophile/music-lover should get to know better, along the lines of “the 1001 records you need to hear before you die,” with less of an accent on morbidity and more on the joy these amazing audiophile-quality recordings can bring to your life. This is a good example of a record audiophiles should make an effort to get to know better

This is, in our opinion, one of the two best sounding Sinatra album on Reprise (the other being September of My Years from 1965). The recording is so rich, sweet, and Tubey Magical, you would think it was prime Capitol period Sinatra — but it’s not, obviously; it just sounds that way.

If you like romantic music, you will be hard-pressed to find a better album than this one. The song “Quiet Nights Of Quiet Stars” perfectly encapsulates the mood of this album. My favorite track here is “Dindi.” Sinatra is the king of lost loves, and the song “Dindi” offers him another opportunity for regret. Nobody does it better than Frank. It’s a cliche to say he wears his heart on his sleeve, but the man made a career out of it. If the cliche fits…

Whatever you do, don’t waste your money on Kevin Gray’s mediocre cutting of the album. I gave it a C- years ago for sound, but these days I suspect it might get an F. A lot of his stuff does.

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James Taylor / Gorilla – A Soft Rock Favorite from 1975

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This is soft rock at its best, made up primarily of love songs, and helped immensely by the harmonically-gifted backing vocals of Graham Nash and David Crosby.

Rolling Stone notes that “With Gorilla, Taylor is well on his way to staking out new ground. What he’s hit upon is the unlikely mating of his familiar low-keyed, acoustic guitar-dominated style with L.A. harmony rock and the sweet, sexy school of rhythm and blues.”

If you are not a fan of the mellow James Taylor this is not the album for you. I just happen to be such a fan.

Taylor’s sixth album contains consistently engaging, well-produced, well-written, memorable, singable (or hummable) songs that hold up to this day. (more…)

Ry Cooder – MoFi Sure Added Plenty of Sparkle to These Acoustic Guitars

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Ry Cooder

More Records Better Suited to the Stereos of the 60s and 70s

This review is from many years ago. Hard to imagine I would not still agree with it though.

Sonic Grade: D

As you probably know, the MoFi of Jazz goes for big bucks nowadays — $500 and up. Is it worth it? 

Are you kidding? It’s a nice record as far as it goes, but it suffers from the same shortcomings as just about every Mobile Fidelity pressing we take the time to play these days (with some obvious exceptions of course).

We have a test pressing, and knowing that the MoFi is the standard against which many audiophiles would prefer to judge our Hot Stampers, we listened to it first before going about our comparison test.

Our MoFi copy is actually tonally correct, which was a bit of a surprise. (Yours of course could very well be otherwise.)

Right away we could hear exactly what people like about it, the same thing that has always impressed audiophiles about half-speed mastered records: their often outstanding transparency.

Jazz on MoFi has zero-distortion, utterly clear, spacious, see-through sound.

But listen past that and what do you hear?

Don’t those guitars seem to have that MoFi Tea-for-the-Tillerman “sparkly” quality you hate: all pluck and no body, all detail and no substance?

Nothing has any weight.

Nothing has any solidity.

Nothing has any real life.

It’s pretty, maybe, but it sure ain’t right.

It’s the kind of sound that shouts out to the world “Hey, look at me, I’m an audiophile record! See how I sound? So clear! So clean!”

Which isn’t bad for about two minutes, and then it’s positively insufferable.

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The Doobie Brothers – What to Listen For

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Hot Stamper Pressings of Rock Classics Available Now

This mass-produced stuff is pretty lame most of the time. Actually, that’s not really fair; the specialty audiophile limited edition pressings of most records are even worse, so the production numbers really don’t have much to do with the final product, now do they? They made millions of copies of this album, and heavy vinyl pressings are made in the thousands, but which would you rather play? I’ll take good old thin vinyl from the 70s over that heavy stuff any day of the week.

But I digress. Most copies — like most modern heavy vinyl pressings — simply lack energy. They’re flat and compressed and no matter how loud you turn them up the band never seems to be all that into the songs they’re playing.

Ah, but the good pressings show you a band that’s on fire, playing and singing their hearts out. Such are the vagaries of record production. Who can explain it or even understand it? All we know is what the finished product sounds like. The rest is guesswork, entertaining for idle minds and forum posters but of little value to those of us who take records seriously and want to hear the music we love with the best sound we can find.

Watch Out For

Tipped up top end, plain and simple. A little extra top and the guitars sparkle and Johnston’s voice gets a little hi-fi-ish. On the most ridiculously tipped-up copies, you could easily mistake such a pressing for a MoFi half-speed mastered LP. That sparkle used to thrill me forty years ago. Now it makes me roll our eyes — what the hell were they thinking, boosting the hell out of the top end like that?

And why can’t so many audiophiles today, still in thrall to that sound, recognize how unnatural it is and was? Simple answer: Vintage Audio equipment needs that extra kick. Most audiophiles have not taken advantage of the Revolutions in Audio of the last ten or so years and so must find records that give them the boost their bad audio systems need.

Those of us — and that includes many of you or you wouldn’t be spending all your money on Hot Stampers — have systems that find dramatically more information in the grooves of our records than we ever dreamed was there. We then get that information to go through our electronics and come out of our speakers with far more energy and far less distortion than we could back in the day.

Lee Herschberg, Engineer Extraordinaire

One of the top guys at Warners, Lee Herschberg recorded What Once Were Vices… (along with Donn Landee, who recorded their previous album and would take over the engineering duties on subsequent releases) as well as the first Doobie Brothers album.

You’ll also find his name in the credits for many of the best releases by Ry Cooder, Randy Newman, Gordon Lightfoot, and Frank Sinatra, albums we know to have outstanding sound (potentially anyway; if you’re on this site you know very well that you have to have an outstanding pressing to hear outstanding sound).

And of course we would be remiss if we didn’t mention the album most audiophiles know all too well, Rickie Lee Jones’ debut. Herschberg’s pop and rock engineering credits run for pages. Won the Grammy for Strangers in the Night in fact.

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Gordon Lightfoot – Dox Quixote

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  • This vintage Reprise pressing boasts very good Hot Stamper sound from first note to last – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • We guarantee there is more space, richness, presence, and performance energy on this copy than others you’ve heard or you get your money back – it’s as simple as that
  • “Lightfoot pays tribute to the many and varied places that make up his [Canadian] homeland. All in all, there’s not a bad cut here. It’s well worth your time.”

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The L.A. 4 – Pavane Pour Une Infante Défunte (45 RPM)

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  • This 45 RPM Japanese import copy is one of the BEST we have ever heard, with both sides earning KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Lee Herschberg recorded these sessions direct to disc – he’s the guy behind the most amazing piano trio recording I have ever heard, a little album called The Three
  • Transparency; absolute freedom from smear and distortion; clarity; presence; frequency extension high and low; correct tonality – everything you want in an audiophile recording is here!
  • This 45 RPM version is shorter than the original album, with five of the original’s seven tracks
  • And it sounded better than any of the Direct to Disc pressings we had on hand, which is exactly what happened when they mastered The Three at 45 RPM from the backup tapes – pretty wild, don’t you think?

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The L.A. 4 – Pavane Pour Une Infante Défunte (33 RPM)

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  • Boasting two seriously good Double Plus (A++) or BETTER sides, this East Wind 33 RPM Japanese import pressing will be very hard to beat – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • This is one of the better sounding versions with all 7 tracks we’ve played
  • Lee Herschberg recorded these sessions direct-to-disc – he’s the guy behind the most amazing piano trio recording I have ever heard, a little album called The Three
  • Both of these sides give you the richness, clarity, presence and resolution few copies can touch
  • This 33 RPM version features all seven of the original tracks – “C’est What” and “Corcovado” were omitted from the shorter 45 RPM pressing
  • And it was a solid step up sonically from a lot of the Direct to Disc pressings we had on hand, which is exactly what happened when they mastered The Three at 45 RPM from the backup tapes – pretty wild, don’t you think?

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Gordon Lightfoot – If You Could Read My Mind (aka Sit Down Stranger)

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  • With seriously good Double Plus (A++) sound from start to finish, this early pressing of Sit Down Young Stranger will be very hard to beat
  • Forget whatever dead-as-a-doornail Heavy Vinyl record they’re making these days – if you want to hear the Tubey Magic, intimacy, and freedom from audio coloration of this wonderful album from 1970, these early pressings are the only way to do it
  • An outstanding recording – Lightfoot’s best in our experience – with “Me and Bobby McGee” sounding about as good as we have ever heard it on this superb pressing
  • Originally released as Sit Down Young Stranger, it was reissued under its new title to capitalize on the success of the hit single “If You Could Read My Mind”
  • 4 1/2 stars: “The entire album is rich in the simple beauty of its folky melodies and personal lyrics… the music here is timeless, still feeling and sounding great many years after its release.”
  • This is an excellent title from 1970, which just happens to be a great year for Rock and Pop Music, maybe the greatest of them all

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The L.A. 4 / Going Home

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Reviews and Commentaries for Direct to Disc Recordings

  • A vintage East Wind 33 RPM Japanese import pressing with outstanding grades from start to finish
  • A top album in both rarity and demand – you’d be hard pressed to find another copy with this kind of transparency, clarity, presence, and sound (assuming you could find one)
  • This is one of the best sounding copies with all 7 tracks we have ever played
  • Lee Herschberg recorded these sessions direct to disc – he’s the guy behind the most amazing piano trio recording I have ever heard, a little album called The Three
  • The star of this record is Shelly Manne, who really plays up a storm
  • This 33 RPM version features all seven of the original tracks – “Greensleeves” and “Django” were omitted from the shorter 45 RPM pressing

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James Taylor – Gorilla

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  • Soulful JT at his best, an underappreciated album by the man who single-handedly created a new genre of music
  • “Mexico,” “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)” and “I Was A Fool To Care” are standouts – but, honestly, there simply are no weak tracks to be found on either side
  • Rolling Stone notes, “With Gorilla, Taylor is well on his way to staking out new ground. What he’s hit upon is the unlikely mating of his familiar low-keyed, acoustic guitar-dominated style with L.A. harmony rock and the sweet, sexy school of rhythm and blues.”
  • 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. Gorilla is a good example of a record audiophiles may not know well but might just benefit from getting to know better
  • If I were to compile a list of Must Own Rock and Pop Albums from 1975, this album would definitely be on it

This is soft rock at its best, made up primarily of love songs, and helped immensely by the harmonically-gifted backing vocals of Graham Nash and David Crosby.

To be honest, the recording of Gorilla itself cannot compete with the likes of Sweet Baby James or JT, both of which are Top 100 Titles. It can be a good sounding record, not a great one, certainly not in the same league as those two.

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