Label Advice

Alice Cooper – Is This the Warner Bros. House Sound?

More of the Music of Alice Cooper

Reviews and Commentaries for Warner Bros. Records

This White Hot Stamper copy had the two best sides back to back we heard in our shootout, with a Triple Plus side two that really brought this music to life.

Which is not easy to do, given that the average copy of this album is a sonic mess —

There are a lot of green label Warner Bros. records from the 70s that sound like that, one might even call it their “house sound.”

When you play the later pressings, it’s obvious that they’ve gone overboard in cleaning up the murk, leaving a sound that is lean, flat and modern — in other words, unmusical, inappropriate and just plain wrong.

Finding the right balance of fullness and clarity, especially on this album, may not be easy, but it can be done. This side two was far and away the best we heard and proves that the album can sound good. (more…)

For the Best Kinks Sound, Stick with the Tri-Color Mono Pressings

More of the Music of The Kinks

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of The Kinks

This Pink and Green Reprise original MONO pressing is lively, balanced and vibrant, with a healthy dose of the Tubey Magical Richness The Kinks’ recordings need in order to sound the way we want them to, which is less irritatingly bright, thin and harsh.

“Tired of Waiting For You” is the big hit here, and like most Kinks albums from back in the day, they put the hit at the end of the side, so you had better make sure whatever copy you find has not been played much or it will be full of Inner Groove Distortion.

Inner Groove Distortion caused by the non-anti-skate-equipped turntables of the day is a chronic problem with rock and pop records from this era. We check all our records for Inner Groove Damage (IGD) as a matter of course when condition checking the surface quality of the vinyl.

The Poster Boy for Inner Groove Distortion is the song “Thank You” on this album from 1969. That record got played a lot back in the day, on the only turntables that we had available to us at the time, crappy ones.

My first “audiophile” table was the extremely plasticky Garrard 40B. I think I bought mine in 1973  and I probably paid about $69 for it. As I recall, this was their entry level model. If any table had been cheaper I would have bought it, which shows you what my starving-college-student budget must have been. Sounded just fine to me, though. What did I know about sound in 1973?

By 1976 I would have some of the best audiophile electronics in the world and the massive speakers you see below. That’s some head-spinning progress if you ask me. Once I had heard how good all my favorite albums were sounding, I got very motivated. For real progress to occur, you must let music do the driving.

The mystery is why it took me until 2007 to get my system, room, electricity and tweaks to a level advanced enough that the shortcomings of the Modern Heavy Vinyl Record became obvious.

Actually, it’s not really all that mysterious. Audio is hard. It took me decades to learn how to do it right, and if you work hard at it, you can expect it to take you decades too. [1]

Consider taking our moderately helpful advice concerning the pressings that tend to win shootouts.

In our experience, this record sounds best this way:

We admit that we have not played many early British pressings of Kinks albums in mono, stereo or any other way.

As you can well imagine, few of them have survived the turntables of the day and are in audiophile playing condition.

[1] When I got started in audio in the early- to mid- ’70s, the following important elements of the modern stereo system did not exist:

  • Stand-alone phono stages.
  • Modern cabling and power cords.
  • Vibration controlling platforms for turntables and equipment.
  • Synchronous Drive Systems for turntable motors.
  • Carbon fiber mats for massive turntable platters.
  • Highly adjustable tonearms (for VTA, etc.) with extremely delicate adjustments and precision bearings.
  • Modern record cleaning machines and fluids.
  • And there wasn’t much in the way of innovative room treatments like the Hallographs we use.

A lot of things had to change in order for us to reproduce records at the level we needed to in order to do our record shootouts, and be confident about our findings, and we pursued every one of them about as far as time and money allowed. For a more complete discussion of these issues, please click here.

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Holst – Can You Imagine Sound this Bad from a TAS List Super Disc?

More of the music of Gustav Holst (1874-1934)

Reviews and Commentaries for The Planets

We can, we played it.

Or, to be more correct, we played them. Two pressings, each with one good side and one very bad side.

This 2-pack from many years ago (ten perhaps), described below, boasts White Hot Stamper sound on side two for the Mehta Planets. Yes, it IS possible. Side two shows you what this record is actually capable of — big WHOMP, no SMEAR, super SPACIOUS, DYNAMIC, with an EXTENDED top.

It beat every London pressing we threw at it, coming out on top for our shootout. Folks, we 100% guarantee that whatever pressing you have of this performance, this copy will trounce it.

But side one of this London original British pressing was awful. We wrote it off as NFG after about a minute; that’s all we could take of the bright, hard-sounding brass of War.

If you collect Super Discs based on their catalog numbers and labels and preferred countries of manufacture, you are in big trouble when it comes time to play the damn things.

That approach doesn’t work for sound and never did.

If your stereo is any good, this is not news to you. The proof? The first disc in this 2-pack is Dutch. It earned a Super Hot grade in our blind test, beating every British copy we played against it save one. Side two however was recessed, dark and lifeless. Another NFG side, but the perfect complement to our White Hot British side two!

Hot Stampers are the only way to get this problematical recording to come to life, to convey the real power of Holst’s music. The typical copy of this record is dull, two-dimensional, smeary, veiled, opaque and compressed. If you were never impressed with the sound of HP’s favorite — a member of the Top Twelve TAS Super Disc List — this might just be the copy that will change your mind.

Our best Hot Stampers (depending on how hot they are) can show you an entirely different recording: rich, spacious, sweet, dynamic, full of ambience and orchestral detail — in short, a world of sound (no pun intended) barely hinted at by the standard import pressing.

If you would like a better sounding pressing of the work, with an even more impressive performance, our favorite recording of The Planets can be found here.

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Peter, Paul & Mary – Gold Versus Green

More of the Muisc of Peter, Paul and Mary

Hot Stamper Pressings of Folk Rock Records Available Now

In previous shootouts we felt strongly that the best Gold Label copies had the lock on Tubey Magic, while the best Green Label pressings could be counted on to offer superior clarity.

That was quite a few years ago, and as we never tire of saying, things have changed.

Now the Gold Label pressings have the ideal combination of Tubey Magic and clarity.

In fact, based on our recent shootout we would state categorically that the best originals are clearly better in every way, with the most vocal presence, the most harmonic resolution, the most space, the most warmth and intimacy, the most natural string tone on both the guitars and bass — in sum, the most of everything that allows a Hot Stamper vintage LP to be the most sublime musical experience available to any audiophile fortunate enough to own it.

Steve Hoffman’s famous phrase is key here: we want to hear The Breath Of Life. If these three gifted singers don’t sound like living, breathing human beings standing across from you — left, right and center — toss your copy and buy this one, because that’s exactly what they sound like here.

The TUBEY MAGIC of the midrange is practically off the scale. Until you hear it like this you really can’t even imagine it. It’s a bit shocking to hear each and every nuance of their singing reproduced so faithfully, sounding so much like live music.

This is high-rez ’60s style; not phony and forced like so much of what passes for audiophile sound these days, but relaxed and real, as if the recording were doing its best to get out of the way of the music, not call attention to itself. This, to us, is the goal, the prize we must constantly strive to keep our eyes on. Find the music, leave the rest.

The Mids Are Key

Peter, Paul & Mary records live and die by the quality of their midrange. These are not big-budget, high-concept multi-track recordings. They’re simple, innocent folk songs featuring exquisite vocal harmonies, with straightforward guitar and double bass accompaniment (and a few more instruments thrown in for good measure at this later stage of the game).

If Peter, Paul and Mary’s voices aren’t silky sweet and delicate, while at the same time full-bodied and present, let’s face it, you might as well start looking for another record to play.

The best copies convey the surprisingly moving artistry, taste and energy of the group’s performance in the studio all those years ago. When Peter, Paul and Mary start to sing good and loud on some of these tracks, not only can you really hear them belting it out, you FEEL it too. (more…)

Letter of the Week – Uncleaned Ah Um Originals vs. Cleaned Reissues

More of the Music of Charles Mingus

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Charles Mingus

The letter below sheds some light on a vitally important mastering issue: specifically, the answer to the question, Which are better sounding, originals or reissues?

The letter finishes this way.

Incidentally, just a couple of days ago I conducted my own shootout between the Red Label “Mingus Ah Um” I bought from you a few weeks back and my pristine, Six Eye White Label Promo original. To my surprise, you were absolutely right about the greater clarity of the former (starting with the snare drum on the first track).

If I had to choose between them when selecting half a dozen “desert island” LPs (and “Mingus Ah Um” would definitely be one), the Red Label version would be the pick. Much obliged for the edification.

We of course could not agree more. We wrote back:

Once you hear the sound of “old school mastering” and get to know it, you can recognize it for what it does right and what it too often does wrong. Then, and only then, can you appreciate what is really happening when switching from newer to older pressings, what is being gained and what is being lost.

It’s the kind of Home Audio Exercise we constantly talk about on the site. And there’s a good reason for that.

As we never tire of saying, hearing is believing.

Update 2022

We do not want to give the wrong impression about Ah Um. At least one of the original stereo pressings, properly cleaned, assuming we have a few to play, will win the shootout every time.

Which one will win we never know. But one of them will.

No Red Label pressing from the 70s will beat a top quality Six-Eye.

But if you have an original and it is not cleaned right, which is almost always going to be the case, since most cleaning fluids and machines these days do not do a very good job of making your records sound the way they should, then our Red Label reissue can beat your copy. Which is what our letter writer found to be true.

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Kind of Blue on Six-Eye, 360 Black Print, 360 White Print, ’70s Red Label – Which Is the Best?

Reviews and Commentaries for Kind of Blue

Hot Stampers of Miles’s Albums Available Now

Is the ’50s original always better, is the ’70s reissue always better, is the ’60s 360 pressing always better?

The answer is “no” to all three.

Why? Because no pressing is always better. All pressings are unique and should only be judged on their merits, and you do that by playing them, not by looking at their labels. For us this truth is practically axiomatic. It is in fact the premise of our entire business. Over the course of the 28 years we have been selling records we have never found any compelling evidence to invalidate it.

The day that someone can accurately predict the sound quality of a specific record by looking at the label or cover is a day I do not expect to come, ever.

A Larger Point

But there is a larger point to be made. Let’s assume that the best original Six Eye Columbia pressings can be the best — the most Tubey Magical, the most involving, the most real. You just happen to have a clean pressing, and you absolutely love it.

But is it the best? How could you possibly know that?

Unless you have done a comparison with many copies under controlled conditions, you simply cannot know where on the sonic curve your copy should be placed.

Perhaps you have a mediocre original. Or a mediocre 360 Label copy. Since you haven’t done a massive shootout you simply have no way of knowing just how good sounding the album can be.

If that’s the case, even stipulating that the best early pressings are potentially the best sounding, that lowly ’70s Red Label copy that got tossed back into the record pond could very well have turned out to be the best sounding pressing you ever heard.

But bad audiophile record collector thinking prevents the very possibility of such an outcome. A record never auditioned cannot win a shootout, even a simple head to head competition against the copy you already have in your collection. The result? Your Kind of Blue never gets any better. You’re stuck, at what level nobody knows, especially you.

Our advice is to turn off your mind, relax and float downstream, letting your ears, not your eyes, become your one and only trusted guide to the best sounding pressings.

And please consider us a trustworthy second in line, a source for the best sounding titles that you do not have time to shoot out for yourself.

Judy Collins / Judy Collins #3 – Gold Versus Red Label in 2007

More of the Music of Judy Collins

This commentary was written in 2007, and our system was not as revealing back then as it is now. Also we had not discovered the Walker Record Cleaning Fluids.

We tend to prefer the Gold Label Elektra pressings on this album now, but we like to keep an open mind, so that if a Red Label pressing wins a shootout, we don’t have to say we was wrong again.

As for other records we may have been wrong about, you can find some of them here under the heading: Live and Learn.

This is a Minty Elektra Red Label LP with two AMAZING sounding sides! Typical copies are dull and thin sounding, making Judy Blue Eyes’ beautiful voice sound honky and weak like she has a head cold. This copy is the remedy!

It has rich, full-bodied sound with the sweetest highs and tons of ambience, especially around the guitars and bass. Most importantly, there is virtually NO STRAIN on the her vocals, which is extremely rare.

Out of the three labels we listened to for this shootout, nothing could compare to this Red Label.

The Gold Labels could have some sweet, musical qualities, but they were consistently dull and lifeless.

Out of the multiple Butterfly Labels we listened to, we could not find one that didn’t sound like a bad cassette.

This Red Label was by far the best sounding copy of Judy Collins #3 we’ve EVER HEARD!

The Doors – What Happens When the Gold Label Doesn’t Have the Best Sound on Both Sides?

More of the Music of The Doors

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of The Doors

It gets marked the sonic grade it earned.

If a Big Red E label pressing sounded better to us on side two, if it somehow managed to sound better than any of our Gold Label originals, then it would earn the top grade on side two.

Here is how we described a killer copy we had not long ago:

With a Triple Plus (A+++) shootout winning side two and a Double Plus (A++) side one, this copy is practically as good as it gets. The sound on this Gold Label pressing is incredibly powerful — big, rich, full-bodied, present and lively. It’s HUGE, RICH, and FULL-BODIED, exactly the way it should be.

But note that side two was clearly not as good as side one. Even the best early pressings cannot be relied on to get both sides right. The pressing above is proof. We discuss the issue in the commentary below.

What are the sonic qualities by which a Pop or Rock record — any Pop or Rock record — should be judged?

Pretty much the ones we discuss in most of our Hot Stamper listings: energy, vocal presence, frequency extension (on both ends), transparency, spaciousness, harmonic textures (freedom from smear is key), rhythmic drive, tonal correctness, fullness, richness, three-dimensionality, and on and on down the list.

When we can hear a good many of the qualities mentioned above on the side we’re playing, we provisionally award it a Hot Stamper grade. This grade is often revised over the course of the shootout, as we come to more fully appreciate just how good some of the other copies are.

Once we’ve been through all our side ones, we then play the best of the best against each other and arrive at a winner. Other copies have their grades raised or lowered depending on how they sounded relative to the shootout winner.

Repeat the process for the other side and the shootout is officially over. All that’s left is to see how the sides of each pressing match up.

That’s why the most common grade for a White Hot Stamper pressing is Triple Plus (A+++) on one side and Double Plus (A++) on the other.

Finding the two best sounding sides from a shootout on the same LP does happen, but it sure doesn’t happen as often as we would like (!) There are just too many variables in the mastering and pressing processes to ensure that level of consistency.

But some pressings pull it off, triumphing over all comers and winning the shootout for both sides. These very special Triple Triple pressings have their own section, separate from our White Hot Stamper pressings. If you want the ultimate in audiophile sound for any particular title, this is where you will find it.

At the time of this writing there were about four times as many records with one White Hot side as there were records with White Hot Stamper sound on each side.

Record shootouts may not be rocket science, but they’re a science of a kind, one with strict protocols we’ve developed over the course of many years to ensure that the sonic grades we assign to our Hot Stampers are as accurate as we can make them.

The result of all our work speaks for itself. We guarantee you have never heard this music sound better than it does on our Hot Stamper pressing — or your money back.

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Sly and The Family Stone – Three Labels, But Only One Ever Wins Shootouts

More of the Music of Sly and the Family Stone

More Hot Stamper Pressings that Sound Better on the Right Reissue

There are three Epic labels for this record. The originals are yellow, the first reissue is orange, and the last reissue is bluish black. I can tell you that only one of those labels produced the best sounding copies in our shootout.

Beyond that you will have to buy a sample of each and do your own shootout. Finding clean copies was quite difficult; it took us a long time to get enough to play, and, as we said, most pressings are dreadful. Those of you who like to read our commentaries and play along at home are going to have a rough time with this title. We sure did.

But the results are worth it, because we LOVE this music! Music just doesn’t get any better. If this album doesn’t lift your spirits, I can’t imagine what would. And note that many of the best songs here are exclusive to this greatest hits and cannot be found on any other album. That makes it a Must Own in our book.

Further Reading

If you’re searching for the perfect sound, you came to the right place.

What Do You Mean by “Boxy” Sound?

More of the Music of Tchaikovsky

Album Reviews for the Music of Tchaikovsky

Many Golden Age classical records simply do not have very good sound, and this is one of them.

We’ve never heard a good sounding copy of LSC 2216, and we’ve played quite a number of them over the decades that we’ve been in the business of selling them. (LSC 1901, with Monteux conducting, is no better.)

A copy came in a while back so I figured it was time to give it a spin and see if there was any reason to change my opinion. Hey, maybe this one had Hot Stampers!

Can’t say it wouldn’t be possible. Unlikely, yes, impossible, no.

So here’s what I heard. No real top above 6k, hardly any bottom, but with a very wide stage – the textbook definition of “boxy sound.” (Dry and thin too, on a vintage RCA pressing no less!)

If you are a fan of Living Stereo pressings, have you noticed that many of them – this one for example – don’t sound good?

If you’re an audiophile with good equipment, you should have. But did you? Or did you buy into the hype surrounding these rare LSC pressings and just ignore the problems with the sound?

Hype, Hype and More Hype

There is an abundance of audiophile collector hype surrounding the hundreds of Heavy Vinyl pressings currently in print. I read a lot about how wonderful their sound is, but when I actually play them, I rarely find them to be any better than mediocre, and many of them are awful.

Music Matters made this garbage remaster. Did anyone notice how awful it sounded? I could list a hundred more that range from bad to worse — and I have! Take your pick: there are more than 150 entries in our Heavy Vinyl disasters section, each one worse sounding than the next.

Audiophiles seem to have approached these records naively instead of skeptically.

(But wait a minute. Who am I to talk? I did the same thing when I first got into audio and record collecting in the Seventies.)

How could so many be fooled so badly? Surely some of these people have good enough equipment to allow them to hear how bad these records sound.

Maybe not this guy, or the “In Groove” guy, but there has to be at least some group of audiophiles, however small their number might be, with decent equipment and two working ears out there, right? (Excluding our customers of course, they have to know what is going on to spend the kind of money they spend on our records. And then write us all those enthusiastic letters.)

I would say RCA’s track record during the ’50s and ’60s is a pretty good one, offering potentially excellent sound for roughly one out of every three titles or so.

But that means that odds are there would have to be a lot of dogs in their catalog. This is definitely one of them.

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