Top Producers – Jimmy Iovine

We Would Never Choose a Different Sound for Tom Petty than the One He Chose for Himself

Advice on Developing Your Critical Listening Skills

One of our good customers wrote to us about the trouble he has been having getting Bella Donna to sound less “cold, steely, sharp, harsh and edgy.”

I believe this comment was originally left on Robert Brook’s blog. I thought it merited a serious response, mostly a defense of why it’s important that some records must sound the way they do whether we like that sound or not.

Peter’s post:

I am sure I do not judge records like you do. I regard listening as relaxation – while your opinion leaders Tom Port and also Robert Brooks never stop to emphasize that the “real men” never lean back and always keep searching for the next 1 percent in sound quality. That’s too fatiguing for me, I am just too lazy.

Peter, a few thoughts:

I should right off the bat that we have never looked for, nor found, a 1% improvement. We’ve found 10%, 20%, 30%, and we’ve found it many, many times over. The difference between the way our system sounds now and the way it did even five or ten years ago is huge.

Look at Robert Brook and how far he has come in five years. He would say his system now is two or three times better. 200% or 300% better. That’s what it feels like when you make the big breakthroughs. Sometimes you can go years without a breakthrough, but then you make one and find out just how much farther you could go.

I do have a special allergy for sharp, edgy, metallic, electronically distorted, or grainy sound. This means that – when e.g., the vocals sound natural and breathy and the music sounds fresh, energetic and lively I am already very happy – and prepared to sacrifice other ” goodies” like ultimate detail, space and air or the very low notes. All ’n all, I am very happy with most of my BR purchases.

There are a few BR purchases that I cannot get to sound “right.”  The most striking example is Stevie Nicks “Bella Donna.”

I have tried many things. I have changed the turntable, tonearm, cartridge, phono pre-amp, cabling and VTA. Whatever I try, her voice and the lead guitar continue to sound cold, steely/sharp, harsh and edgy. Stevie’s voice on this record is SO different from her voice on “Rumours” that she seems to be another person (my copy of “Rumours” is not a BR pressing but a very nice sounding first “Los Angeles” pressing).

Bella Donna is the key to the problem in my view. What you have in Bella Donna is the kind of recorded sound that, when played back on your system, you find not to your taste. You want the sound of Rumours, but Bella Donna will never have that sound.

Shelly Yakus and Jimmy Iovine make edgy, lively records. Stevie Nicks wanted that sound for her first solo album and that is what she got. The album went to Number One on the Billboard chart and has been certified 4x Platinum by the RIAA. Audiophiles were not the intended audience. People liked the sound of the hits they heard on the radio, so they went out and bought her record. They were no doubt very pleased with their purchase.

The lively, edgy sound is also the one Tom Petty wanted for his records, which was an equally wise move on his part because the records he made with their help sold in the millions too. Here is an excellent example of what I am talking about. I have no problem admitting that I couldn’t play his records right until about 2014 or so, this after being in audio for forty years.

Tom Petty likes clear and lively, not rich and smooth. Our best copies get that sound right. We would never choose a different sound for Tom Petty than the one he chose for himself.

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The Pretenders – Get Close

More of the Music of The Pretenders

  • With two INSANELY GOOD Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sides, you’ll have a hard time finding a copy that sounds remotely as good as this vintage import pressing – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • These sides are energetic, clear and full-bodied, with Chrissie Hynde’s vocals front and center where they belong
  • If all you know are audiophile or domestic pressings, you should be prepared for a mind-blowing experience with this copy
  • However, the sound of the album is more aggressive than some audiophiles might like, so fair warning: you will not be demonstrating your stereo with this one, no matter how much better sounding than other copies it may be
  • “Hynde’s voice is in great form throughout, and when she gets her dander up, she still has plenty to say and good ways to say it; ‘How Much Did You Get for Your Soul?’ is a gleefully venomous attack on the musically unscrupulous; ‘Don’t Get Me Wrong’ is a superb pop tune and a deserved hit single; and the Motown-flavored ‘I Remember You’ and the moody ‘Chill Factor’ suggest she’d been learning a lot from her old soul singles.”

Get Close has long been a personal favorite of mine. Side one starts off with a bang with “My Baby,” one of the best tracks this band ever recorded. Of course at this point it’s hard to call The Pretenders a band as it is pretty much Chrissie Hynde’s show. She continues to mature as a songwriter, and the arrangements and production value are excellent as well, with heavy hitters such as Steve Lillywhite, Bob Clearmountain and Jimmy Iovine involved.

We have a category on the site entitled women who rock. No other woman on earth can rock the way Chrissie Hynde can, and this album, along with Learning to Crawl, is all the proof anyone needs.

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Tom Petty – Hard Promises

More of the Music of Tom Petty

  • A Hard Promises like you’ve never heard, with solid Double Plus (A++) grades from top to bottom – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Recorded at Sound City, home to some of the greatest analog sound ever recorded, this 1981 Backstreet pressing still has plenty of analog magic in its grooves
  • 4 1/2 stars: “…filled with great songwriting, something that’s as difficult to achieve as a distinctive sound… ‘The Waiting’ became the best-known song on the record, but there’s no discounting ‘A Woman in Love,’ ‘Nightwatchman,’ ‘Kings Road,’ and ‘The Criminal Kind,’ album tracks that would become fan favorites… it has a tremendous set of songs and a unified sound that makes it one of Petty’s finest records.”
  • If you’re a fan of Tom Petty and his hard-rockin’ bandmates, this is a classic from 1981 that belongs in your collection

The album tends to be bright, thin, edgy, pinched and gritty — radio friendly, maybe, but not especially audiophile friendly.

We hate that sound but we are happy to report that some copies manage to avoid it, and this is one of them.

Is that richer, fuller sound the sound of what’s on the master tape or did the mastering engineer “fix” it?

We’ll never know, obviously. How could we?

What we do know is the sound of the pressings we actually have to play, and this one is killer.

Recorded by Shelly Yakus at Sound City, Van Nuys and at Cherokee Studios, Hollywood, CA, this vintage Backstreet pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records can barely BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing signs of coming back. If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to “see” the performers, and feeling as if you are sitting in the studio with the band, this is the record for you. It’s what vintage all analog recordings are known for — this sound.

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Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – Long After Dark

More Tom Petty

  • With solid Double Plus (A++) grades from top to bottom, this vintage pressing is doing just about everything right
  • Both sides are rich and full-bodied with tight bass, and brimming with Petty’s unique brand of straight ahead rock and roll, best exemplified by the radio smash “You Got Lucky”
  • Rolling Stone raves, “Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers play a finely crafted brand of meat-and-potatoes rock. They shudder to a stop for the occasional ballad or showy guitar figure, but the next surging chorus is never far away. They’ve been honing that sound for five albums now, and Petty has gradually hoisted himself into the company of such masterful travelers of Route 66 as Seger and Springsteen. …overall, Long after Dark is Petty’s most accomplished record.”

Long After Dark boasts the monster rocker You Got Lucky and very good sound considering that the album was recorded in 1982, not an especially good year (or decade) to be recording rock music.

Finding The Best Sound

Energy and rock and roll rhythmic drive are of course paramount.

Many copies were brighter than ideal, which is nothing new for Petty’s body of work but nonetheless far from the sound we find most pleasing.

Some copies in our shootout were dark and small; we took serious points off for both of these shortcomings.

The climaxes of the songs should be as uncompressed and uncongested as possible to earn our higher grades. When the music gets loud it should stay tonally correct and undistorted, and not all copies can do that, not at the serious levels we like to play our records.

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Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers – Southern Accents

More of the Music of Tom Petty

  • A Southern Accents like you’ve never heard, with INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it on both sides of this early MCA pressing
  • We guarantee there is dramatically more space, richness, vocal presence, and performance energy on this copy than others you’ve heard, and that’s especially true if you made the mistake of buying whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing is currently on the market
  • “Southern Accents is an ambitious album, attempting to incorporate touches of psychedelia, soul, and country into a loose concept about the modern South… ‘Rebels’ and ‘Spike’ are fine rockers, and ‘Don’t Come Around Here No More’ and ‘Make It Better (Forget About Me)’ expand The Heartbreakers’ sound nicely.”
  • If you’re a fan of Tom Petty and his bandmates, this classic from 1985 surely belongs in your collection.

If you’ve tried to find a good sounding copy of this album you could easily be forgiven for throwing in the towel — we almost did ourselves, and more than once. We’ve cleaned and played a pile of copies over the years, and now we are glad to report that this one sounds like a completely different album — it’s rich, smooth, and sweet, a big step up over the typical gritty, grainy copy.

Credit must obviously go to the man behind the console, Shelly Yakus, someone who we freely admit, now with a sense of embarrassment, had never been one of our favorite engineers. After hearing a White Hot Stamper pressing of Damn the Torpedoes and a killer copy of Crack the Sky’s Animal Notes, as well as amazing sounding pressings of Moondance (his first official lead engineering gig) and Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus, we realize that we have seriously underestimated the man.

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Dire Straits / Making Movies – Forget the Dubby Domestic Pressings

More Dire Straits

  • A vintage UK pressing that was doing practically everything right, earning INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them on both sides – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • Here are just a few of the things we had to say about this killer copy in our notes: “breathy vox”…”rich and weighty”…”jumping out of the speakers”…”great size and energy”…”3D and rich guitar”…”lots of bass when it kicks in”
  • Guaranteed to be a huge improvement over anything you’ve heard, this Brit is big, punchy, and full-bodied with remarkable presence – Mark Knopfler’s leads really soar
  • “Romeo and Juliet” comes to life the way you want it to here, and the song “Solid Rock” lives up to its title
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Making Movies is helped by a new wave-tinged pop production, which actually helps Knopfler’s jazzy inclinations take hold … ranks among the band’s finest work.”

The music really comes together, especially if you’ve been playing a sub-generation domestic pressing, which is the only kind Warners made as far as we know. (The first album is the same way of course.) Here you will find richer mids, sweeter highs, more energy and some real punch down low. (more…)

Patti Smith Group – Easter

More New Wave

More Women Who Rock

  • Here is an outstanding copy of Easter (one of only a handful to hit the site in three years) with solid Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER from top to bottom
  • Side two was sonically very close to our Shootout Winner – you will be shocked at how big and powerful the sound is
  • Forget whatever dead-as-a-doornail Heavy Vinyl record they’re making these days – if you want to hear the Tubey Magic, size and energy of Smith’s breakthrough from 1978, this is the way to go
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Easter, produced by Bruce Springsteen associate Jimmy Iovine, was Smith’s most commercial-sounding effort yet and, due to the inclusion of Springsteen’s ‘Because the Night’ (with Smith’s revised lyrics), a Top Ten hit, it became her biggest seller, staying in the charts more than five months and getting into the Top 20 LPs. But Smith hadn’t so much sold out as she had learned to use her poetic gifts within an album rock context.”

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In 2014, This Was the Best Sounding Tom Petty Record We’d Ever Played

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Tom Petty Available Now

UPDATE 2026

This commentary was written in 2014 after having played (and finally been able to reproduce) a killer copy of Damn the Torpedoes.

Damn the Torpedoes is the best sounding Tom Petty album we have ever played.

Credit must go to Shelly Yakus, someone who we freely admit, now with a sense of embarrassment, has never been one of our favorite engineers.

After hearing this beyond-White Hot Stamper side two and a killer copy of Animal Notes, we realized we’d seriously underestimated the man, and for that we can only apologize.

If your Damn the Torpedoes doesn’t sound good (and it probably doesn’t), you sure can’t blame him — the master tape is mind-boggling in its size, weight, power and rock n’ roll energy.

Our 2014 better than White Hot Stamper copy had the kind of sound we never expected to hear on Damn The Torpedoes, an album that’s typically bright, thin, pinched and transistory — radio friendly but not especially audiophile friendly.

Well folks, all that’s changed, and by “all” I don’t necessarily mean all to include the records themselves. This may very well be a record that sounded gritty and pinched before it was cleaned. And our stereo has come a long way in the last five or ten years, as I hope yours has too.

One sign that you’re making progress in this hobby is that at least some of the records you’ve played recently, records that had never sounded especially good to you before, are now sounding very good indeed.

In our case Damn the Torpedoes is one of those records. It’s the best sounding Tom Petty album we have ever played.

We wrote about another famous rock album that somehow got a whole lot better sounding here. An excerpt:

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Stevie Nicks – The Wild Heart

More Stevie Nicks

More Fleetwood Mac

  • You’ll find KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them on both sides of this original Modern Records pressing
  • The spacious size, vocal presence, bottom end weight and (relative) warmth throughout are exactly the sound you want for The Wild Heart
  • Features a host of stellar guest musicians, including Tom Petty, Mick Fleetwood, Steve Lukather (Toto), and even Prince, though he wasn’t credited on the album
  • 4 stars: “The Wild Heart sold to the faithful – it made the Top Ten, sold over a million copies, and spawned three Top 40 hits… if you loved Bella Donna, you would like The Wild Heart very much.”

It’s easy to spot the good-sounding copies. They’re big and rich, not thin nor harsh. They open up on the top end and go down deeper on the bottom. They’re smooth and full-bodied in the midrange. Stevie’s vocals are breathy and present. The energy of her performance drives the music the way you want it to.

In short, the best copies demonstrate the sound one could expect to hear on a good Tom Petty album. Nothing surprising there; this album, like Petty’s, was produced and engineered by the same team, Jimmy Iovine and Shelly Yakus. They’ve made some great records together, Damn the Torpedoes being the best of the batch for sonics.

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INXS – Kick

More Rock and Pop

  • With two killer Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) sides, this copy is practically as good as we have ever heard, right up there with our Shootout Winner
  • Surprisingly rich and full-bodied, the better copies really rock with big bass and punchy drums
  • The Big Rock sound comes courtesy of Chris Thomas‘s production and Bob Clearmountain‘s mix
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Kick is an impeccably crafted pop tour de force, the band succeeding at everything they try. Every track has at least a subtly different feel from what came before it; INXS freely incorporates tense guitar riffs, rock & roll anthems, swing-tinged pop/rock, string-laden balladry, danceable pop-funk, horn-driven 60s soul, 80s R&B, and even a bit of the new wave-ish sound they’d started out with.”

These Nearly White Hot Stamper pressings have top-quality sound that’s often surprisingly close to our White Hots, but they sell at substantial discounts to our Shootout Winners, making them a relative bargain in the world of Hot Stampers (“relative” meaning relative considering the prices we charge). We feel you get what you pay for here at Better Records, and if ever you don’t agree, please feel free to return the record for a full refund, no questions asked.

Vintage covers for this album are hard to find in exceptionally clean shape. Most of the will have at least some amount of ringwear, seam wear and edge wear. We guarantee that the cover we supply with this Hot Stamper is at least VG

For a recording from 1987, there is a surprising amount of Tubey Magical analog sound to be found here.

There is almost always a trace of hardness in the loudest vocal parts; that’s where the 1987 recording technology raises its head, but the better copies such as this one keep it to a bare minimum.

The copies that were the richest and had the biggest bottom end, without being smeary or dark from a lack of top tended to do the best in our shootout. The copies that lacked weight or lower midrange fullness were most often rejected; rhythmically driven Funk Rock simply doesn’t work without plenty of richness and bass.

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