Skeptical Thinking Will Help You Identify Records with Better Sound
Chad Kassem, the man who founded Analogue Productions sometime in the 90s, claims that all his pressings are superior to those of his competitors, as well as all previous reissues, and — gasp! — even the originals, or perhaps it would be better to say especially the originals.
In doing so he makes claims that can be tested. Our commentary today will look at how he came to believe in the superiority of his product. Naturally we disagree with him about the quality of his records, and have been doing so since the early-90s.
But don’t these disagreements just boil down to one opinion differing with another, our opinion versus his?
As a matter of fact, no. It turns out there are ways to run experiments which are guaranteed to identify the record pressings that actually do have better sound. We at Better Records have spent more than twenty years developing and refining a great many of these methods. Given the necessary resources, these methods are sure to produce reliable data.
This is data backed by evidence. Testable data. Data derived from experiments that may not eliminate the value of opinions, but removes them from the position they occupy most often in the world of audio, front and center, and relegates them to the margins where they are more appropriate.
So let’s get back to the question we asked above: What do you get when you buy a record on the Analogue Productions label?
In the simplest terms, you get a record that meets with Chad’s approval.
Since Chad appears — at least to me — to have no critical listening skills to speak of, he must instead rely on the assurances of the engineers who work for him. Yes, they tell him, they succeeded in making him a record of the very highest quality. There are no conflicts of interest they say. We all love music and are just interested in making the best record we can. Unsurprisingly, we made he best version ever.
Their professional opinions are then backed up by those that review and sell these very same records.
Everyone operating in this circular chain gets paid to agree that Chad’s records are indeed of the highest quality, exactly what one would expect to hear frmo those who know how they were made. (Confirmation bias — hearing what you expect to hear — is surely the most powerful weapon in the arsenal of those who make and market audiophile records.)
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