Ravel / Daphnis & Chloe – Suite No. 2 and more / Ansermet

More of the Music of Maurice Ravel

  • An incredible Decca pressing of these amazing orchestral works with a Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side one mated to a superb Double Plus (A++) side two
  • Both of these sides are clear, full-bodied and present, with plenty of space around the players, the unmistakable sonic hallmark of the properly mastered, properly pressed vintage analog LP
  • The presentation of the Suisse Romande is wide, tall, spacious, rich and tubey, exactly the way we want to hear them
  • When you hear how good this record sounds, you may have a hard time believing that it’s a budget reissue from the early-70s (1971 in this case), but that’s precisely what it is
  • Here is a link to more records like this one containing some of our Favorite Performances with Top Quality Sound

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Everything But The Beer / Arthur Fiedler Conducts A Boston Pops Concert

More Classical and Orchestral Recordings

More Living Stereo Recordings

  • These original Shaded Dog pressings boast big, bold, and dynamic Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) Living Stereo sound from first note to last – just shy of our Shootout Winner (side four actually won the shootout)
  • Compared to practically every other copy we played — on all four sides mind you — these sides are richer, fuller, and livelier. They’re also more open and transparent, with notably improved clarity, less smear, and better bass
  • The rich, textured sheen of the strings that Living Stereo made possible in the 50s and early 60s is clearly evident throughout these pieces, something that the Heavy Vinyl crowd will never experience, because that sound just does not exist on modern records
  • We have been trying to do this title for at least ten years – clean originals are hard to find and that is a reality that will not be going away anytime soon

Much of what’s good about Golden Age recordings is here, with these sides having the sound of a huge hall and that Three-Dimensional quality that the best vintage recordings convey so well.

We constantly knock Heavy Vinyl here at Better Records for the simple reason that we play vintage recordings such as these by the score every month and can hear what they do. Unfortunately the huge hall and the 3-D soundstaging they effortlessly reproduce cannot be found on any Heavy Vinyl pressing we know of.

Such qualities allow this record to sound — in some ways, to be sure not all — like live music. 

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Billy Joel – Turnstiles

More Billy Joel 

More Rock and Pop

  • This outstanding copy of Turnstiles (only the second to hit the site after many, many years) boasts two solid Double Plus (A++) or BETTER sides – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • ANALOG at its Tubey Magical finest – you’ll never play a CD (or any other digitally sourced material) that sounds as good as this record as long as you live
  • More than half of the songs on Songs in the Attic come from this very album: “Say Goodbye to Hollywood,” “Miami 2017,” “Summer, Highland Falls,” “Say Goodbye to Hollywood” and “I’ve Loved These Days” – songs that Joel felt were unfairly overlooked and felt deserved a wider audience
  • 4 1/2 stars: “A whirlwind tour of pop styles, from Sinatra to Springsteen. There’s little question that the cinematic sprawl of Born to Run had an effect on Turnstiles, since it has a similar widescreen feel, even if it clocks in at only eight songs. The key to the record’s success is variety… It remains one of his most accomplished and satisfying records.”

We were favorably impressed with just how good the sound can be on a great pressing like this. We’ve played a ton of copies of this one over the years but most copies left us unmoved. Here you get real weight to the piano — essential for any Billy Joel album — and big, punchy drums.

Note that the orchestra was recorded at the famed Columbia 30th Street studios.

What To Listen For

On side two “Prelude/Angry Young Man” are key test tracks. The biggest, richest copies with the most space were the ones that consistently brought out the best in the songs and individual performances of the players.

“Summer, Highland Falls” is a great test — listen for breathy vocals, a full piano, a clear snare drum once it comes in and, most importantly, an energetic performance. You will need all four to score well in one of our shootouts.

Note that the first track on side one has a tendency to be a bit brighter than those that follow.

Heavy Vinyl

Mobile Fidelity did a version of this album not long ago but we couldn’t begin to tell you how it sounds. We simply cannot devote the resources required to audition all the reissues coming out these days, especially considering how second-rate most of them are. If you’ve picked one of the new pressings up, we guarantee our Hot Stamper will beat it soundly or your money back.

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We Were Way Off the Mark with Stand Up in 2006

Hot Stamper Pressings of Jethro Tull Albums Available Now

Years ago we wrote:

This Island Pink Label Original British pressing has ABSOLUTELY AMAZING SOUND! We mention that there was a Sunray pressing that may have been even better, but I didn’t have this copy in hand to compare the Sunray to, so I can’t be sure that pressing was any better.

This one sounds as good as any I’ve ever heard. 

It’s amazingly dynamic and powerful, yet full of tubey magic. I played almost ten different pressings of this record today (11/08/06): every domestic label variation and a handful of imports. This copy is clearly the best of the batch.

A textbook case of live and learn.

My stereo was dramatically less revealing back then and also I did not know how to clean records properly. Those two facts, combined with the underdeveloped or yet-to-be-developed listening skills that go with them, allowed me to arrive at the wrong conclusion.

In 2006 we simply had not done our homework well enough. I had been an audiophile for at least 31 years by then, and a legitimate audiophile record dealer for 19.

Sure, by 2006 my staff and I had auditioned plenty of the pressings that we thought were the most likely to sound good: the original and later domestic pressings, the early and later British LPs: in other words, the usual suspects.

The result? We were roughly in the same position as the vast majority of audiophiles. We had auditioned a sizable number pressings of the album and thought we knew enough about the sound of the album to pick a clear winner. We thought the best pink label Island pressings had the goods that no other copies could or would have.

But of course, like most audiophiles who judge records with an insufficiently large sample size, we turned out to be completely wrong.

Logic hadn’t worked. None of the originals would end up winning another shootout once we’d discovered the right reissues.

But in 2006, we hadn’t stumbled upon the best pressings because we hadn’t put enough effort into the only approach that actually works.

What approach is that? It’s trial and error. Trial and error would eventually put us on the path to success. We had simply not conducted enough trials and made enough errors by 2006 to find out what we know now.

We needed a breakthrough, and we hadn’t gotten it yet.

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And to Think I Used to Like this Strauss Record

Hot Stamper Mercury Pressings Available Now

I used to like this Strauss Family Album back in the old days. Picked them up whenever I saw them, usually for ten bucks or less. They’re fairly common. It’s not exactly HiFi a la Espanola.

Now when we play this Mercury, it doesn’t sound so good. We traded what we had in stock back to stores or gave them away as freebies to our good customers.

A lot of records that I used to like because they were cleaner and brighter — later Red Seal Living Stereos, some OJC jazz, some reissues of rock — sounded much better when my system was darker and less revealing.

Side one of this copy has steely strings, the kiss of death on this kind of music.

Side two is passable, a low grade Hot Stamper. If you see this album for five bucks, pick it up and give it a listen. More than that and you should probably pass.

Many Mercury records simply do not sound good, and this appears to be one of them. The sound is  shrill, and that is just not acceptable on today’s highly-tweaked stereos.

Some of the early Mercs seem better suited to the old school audio systems of the 60s and 70s than the modern systems of today.

Some of these records used to sound good on those older systems, and I should know. I had an Old School stereo and some of the records I used to think sounded good back in the day don’t sound too good to me anymore.

For a more complete list of those records, click here.

How Did We Figure All of This Out?

There are more than 2000 Hot Stamper reviews on this blog. Do you know how we learned so much about so many records?

Simple. We ran thousands and thousands of record experiments under carefully controlled conditions, and we continue to run scores of them week in and week out to this very day.

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Chico Hamilton – El Chico

More Chico Hamilton

More Jazz Recordings of Interest

  • El Chico makes its Hot Stamper debut with solid Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER throughout this original Impulse Stereo pressing – exceptionally QUIET vinyl, the kind we would not expect to find on Impulse in 1965
  • These sides, recorded brilliantly by one of our favorite engineers, Bob Simpson, are big, full-bodied and present, with plenty of Tubey Magic and set on a huge, three-dimensional soundstage
  • The record features the amazing Gabor Szabo, Japanese altoist Sadao Watanabe, bassist Al Stinson, guest trombonist Jimmy Cheatham, and the Latin percussion of Willie Bobo and Victor Pantoja

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Tchaikovsky / The Nutcracker Ballet in Two Acts (Complete) / Ansermet

More of the music of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)

More Orchestral Music Conducted by Ernest Ansermet

  • Tchaikovsky’s complete classical masterpiece returns to the site for the first time in nearly two-years with INSANELY GOOD Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound on all FOUR sides of these original London pressings
  • It’s also fairly quiet at Mint Minus Minus, a grade that even our most well-cared-for vintage classical titles have trouble playing at
  • If you have never experienced a vintage top quality pressing of a Wilkinson-engineered Decca Tree recording from Victoria Hall, this is your chance to hear sound that puts practically anything else to shame
  • A record like this lets you get lost in the world of its music, and what could be more important in a recording than that?
  • This is our favorite performance of The Nutcracker, perhaps the most famous ballet ever written, and one that belongs in every right-thinking audiophile’s collection
  • Enchanting music and sound combine on this copy to make one seriously good Demo Disc, if what you are trying to demonstrate is how relaxed and involved vintage analog can make you feel
  • If you’re a fan of brilliant orchestral showpieces, this London Box Set from 1959 belongs in your collection.

There is certainly no shortage of Audio Spectaculars available on the site. A record such as this, so rich, natural and effortless, has distinctly different qualities that we feel are every bit as vital to the critical audiophile’s enjoyment of Tchaikovsky’s music.

Ansermet breathes life into this ballet as only he can and the Decca engineering team led by Kenneth Wilkinson do him proud. (more…)

Revisiting the Analog Vs. Digital Debate with Donald Fagen

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Steely Dan Available Now

Many years ago we did a big shootout for this album. Afterwards we asked this question:

Do all the pressings of The Nightfly sound like CDs?

The average copy of this digitally recorded, mixed and mastered LP sounds just the way you would expect it to: like a CD.

It’s anemic, two-dimensional, opaque, thin, bright, harsh, with little extreme top and the kind of bass that’s all “note” with no real weight, solidity or harmonic structure. Sounds like a CD, right? (That’s the way many of my CDs sound, which is why I rarely listen to them these days.)

But what if I told you that the best copies of The Nightfly can actually sound like a real honest-to-goodness ANALOG recording, with practically none of the nasty shortcomings listed above? You may not believe it, but it’s true.

How do I know it’s true?

The same way I came to learn practically everything I believe about the sound of equipment and records. I heard it for myself. (Keeping in mind that I am sure to be wrong about some things. Not to worry. When I find out which things those are, I will post them in this section of the blog where they can join the other 175+ entries.)

I heard a copy sound so natural and correct that I would never have guessed it was digital. On my honor, that’s the truth. The best copies of The Nightfly can actually be shockingly analog.

Simply put, the question before the house is: Can this record sound analog? We’ll be taking the affirmative.

The problem with the typical copy of this record is gritty, grainy, grungy sound — not the kind that’s on the master tape, the kind that’s added during the mastering and pressing of the record. When that crap goes away, as it so clearly does on a copy we played recently, it lets you see just how good sounding this record can be. And that means really good sounding.

On most copies, the CD-like opacity and grunge would naturally be attributed to the digital recording process. That’s the conventional wisdom, so those with a small data sample (in most cases the size of that sample will be one) could be forgiven for reaching such a conclusion. Based on our findings it turns out to be false.

The bad pressings do indeed sound more like CDs. The best pressings do not.

If you like having your biases confirmed, then by all means, keep your digital-sounding copy and pretend you know why The Nightfly sounds bad on vinyl.

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Dorati and Mercury Did Not Produce a Good Sounding Eroica

More of the Music of Ludwig van Beethoven

The sound of this 1959 Mercury recording was unacceptable. SR 90011 was crude and shrill. It seems that many early Mercury recordings suffer from these shortcomings.

Our favorite Beethoven 3rd for sound and performance is the one Solti recorded for Decca in 1959.

1959 just happens to be one of the truly great years for quality analog recordings, as can be seen from this amazing group of albums, all was recorded or released that year.

This Mercury might be passable on an old school system, but it was too unpleasant to be played on the high quality modern equipment we use.

There are quite a number of others that we’ve run into over the years with similar shortcomings. Here they are, broken down by label.

  • London/Decca records with weak sound or performances
  • Mercury records with weak sound or performances
  • RCA records with weak sound or performances

Have You Noticed…

If you’re a fan of Mercury Living Presence records — and what right-thinking audiophile wouldn’t be? — have you noticed that many of them, this one for example, don’t sound very 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 pressings and just ignore the problems with the sound?

There is plenty of 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 most of them are downright awful.

It seems as if the audiophile public has bought completely into the hype for these modern Heavy Vinyl pressings. Audiophiles have too often made the mistake of approaching these records without the slightest trace of skepticism. 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.

I would say Mercury’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 be a lot of dogs in their catalog. This is definitely one of them.

To see the 50+ Living Presence classical titles we’ve reviewed to date, click here.

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Steve Miller Band – Book of Dreams

More Steve Miller Band

  • This original pressing was doing everything right, with both sides earning KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades on both sides
  • Present and lively with full-bodied tonality and plenty of three-dimensional studio space, only the better originals have the potential to give you this kind of sound
  • “Jet Airliner,” “Swingtown,” “Jungle Love” and “Sacrifice” all sound the way they should – big and rockin’
  • 4 stars: “It is here, on this 1977 blockbuster, that Steve Miller shored up his ‘Space Cowboy’ moniker and cosmic person …a highlight of the ’70s classic rock era and one of Miller’s finest releases.”

When you hear a copy that sounds like this, you don’t need a pair of golden ears to know it’s right.

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