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The Reiner Sound Is A Demo Disc for Energy, Dynamics and Top End

Hot Stamper Pressings of Living Stereo Recordings Available Now

This review was written in 2010.

I don’t think we have found a Reiner Sound as nice as this one since then. 

UPDATE 2024

It may have taken us more than a decade and cost us a lot of money to get a shootout going for a rare and expensive title such as LSC 2183, but all it took was one killer copy to make it worth all the time and trouble it took track it down.

And when a record sounds as good as our best copy did, with a grade of at least 3+ on side one, who cares how much trouble we went through to find it?

We live for records like these.

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Compromised Recordings – If It’s About the Music, the Choice Is Clear

Skeptical Thinking Is Key to Finding Better Sounding Records

UPDATE 2026

This commentary was written circa 2006. The Hot Stamper world was very different in those days. A few dozen had been done starting in 2004, and probably not nearly as well as they should have been, truth be told.

This was unexplored territory, a new world. At the time we had no way of knowing how much there was to learn and how much time and effort would go into learning it.

Thousands of shootouts later we have a pretty firm grip on how to go about finding the best sounding pressings of the greatest music ever pressed on vinyl. Those recordings, with sound that is dramatically superior to those that have come along since, are why this blog exists. (The blog also allows me to promote 100+ personal favorites that I think should be more popular with my fellow audiophiles.)

Our Story, Circa 2006

Years ago one of our good customers wrote to tell us how much he liked his Century Direct to Disc recording of the Glenn Miller big band, one of the few truly amazing sounding direct discs that offered music actually worth listening to. This was an actively touring big band, not a group of studio cats trying to make a record out of some charts somebody managed to cook up.

And you can read all about the killer copy we discovered a few years back here, complete with our shootout notes. (The notes can also be seen at the bottom of this post.)

Which brought me to the subject of Hot Stampers. (For those new to the idea, here are the short versions of what they are and how one goes about acquiring them.)

Hot Stamper pressings of jazz or popular music are almost always going to be multi-track, tape recordings with plenty of overdubbing and processing, about as far from purist live-in-the-studio performances recorded directly to disc as you can get.

They will invariably suffer a great many compromises, especially when compared to the approach of an audiophile label trying to eliminate all sources of distortion in the pursuit of higher fidelity. In the case of direct to disc recordings, this means the losses that result from the use of analog tape.

But when they do that, they almost always fail.

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“I was immersed. Thank you.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Beatles Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about a Hot Stamper pressing of Revolver he purchased recently: 

Dear Sir,

You know when everything is just right? The record, the equipment, the space between your ears. The speakers disappear, the room, even yourself? And the only thing left is the music?

It doesn’t happen that often these days, but it did for me listening to side one of your UK Revolver. I was immersed. Thank you.

Dear Sir, 

Fantastic to hear, we love when that happens, to us and to anybody else of course. It’s the same high that gamblers get from winning big, and it keeps us audiophiles going until the next time it call comes together that way.

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Back to the Stone Age with The Pines of Rome on Mobile Fidelity

Hot Stamper Pressings on Decca & London Available Now

An audiophile hall of shame pressing and another MoFi LP reviewed and found wanting.

MoFi’s version of this The Pines of Rome (#1-507) is one of the worst sounding classical records they ever produced, and that’s saying something, because practically all of their classical catalog is just awful — thin and bright, with sloppy bass and completely unnatural string tone.

As hard as it may be to believe, the MoFi of the Pines of Rome makes the typical Classic Records pressing sound good, shrill strings and all.

The UHQR is somewhat better, especially in the lower octaves, but it’s maybe a D+ or C-, not an audiophile record if we are using the term to mean what it no longer means —  a pressing with higher quality sound. (more…)

Getting the Wife On Board Is Key to Audiophile Happiness

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Rolling Stones Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently:

Hi Tom,

My wife and I had a sort of meditative / semi-religious experience the other night when we were a bit woozy just from a long day and we sat and listened to Can’t You Hear Me Knocking. It was almost transcendent.

I was playing her the record for the first time to show her the money wasn’t wasted. That convinced her.

Andrew

Dear Andrew,

A very good strategy. You have to actually hear the record to know what the value of it is. I Got the Blues would have been my first choice, but being woozy is a big help too no matter what track you play.

Best, TP

Andrew had earlier noted to my main man Fred (who runs the business now) how bad the MoFi Sticky Fingers sounded.

Anyway, I told [Fred] how worthwhile it was to finally have a good copy of Sticky Fingers. I have three other copies, including the MFSL (it’s embarrassing they even released the record to begin with.)

I was checking out the MFSL copy again and I think the thing that really caught my ears in the past was the bass on Can’t You Hear My Knocking during the last three minutes when they do the Santana breakdown. Then you kinda notice it as a dull thud on other songs also. But I think that was the worst offender, especially since everything drops out.

I was rereading the articles about your business to see what I could glean about how you clean the vinyl. I still can’t believe the criticism since A) they’ve never actually heard one of your records and B) you offer a no questions asked money back guarantee. That just screams legitimacy. A con man who offers a 100% refund. I don’t think so.

I think these remasters and half speed remasters are bullshit and cashing in. That’s the con. Those people wouldn’t be so pissed off if you didn’t win people over who actually take the time to listen. To me it’s like hearing the perfect balance and placement of a great remastered CD but with all the depth of vinyl.

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Reversed Polarity on Gaite Parisienne

Hot Stamper Pressings of Living Stereo Titles Available Now

UPDATE 2026

LSC 1817 is one of the pressings we discovered with reversed polarity. a very long time ago, 2005, before we got our EAR 324p phono stage that has a convenient switch for reversing polarity.

Superb sound! The top end of this record is PERFECTION. When you hear all the percussion instruments, — the tambourines, triangles, wood blocks and whatnot — they just sound so lovely.

The overall sound is rich and sweet, just like a good vintage RCA should sound. Some may find the sound colored, but I find it enchanting.

Side two, however, sounded fairly unpleasant when I first played it.

As I listened more and more, I came to the realization that the absolute phase was probably inverted. The orchestra, rather than being back behind the speakers where they belong, was coming AT me, a sure sign that something is funny. One way to think about it is the sound stage becomes convex instead of concave.

So I switched my headshell leads and sure enough everything got much better — the orchestra now had depth and the strings became less forward and shrill, and the horns took on more body and had less of that blary quality they sometimes do. (more…)

Three Ideas to Better Understand the Mysteries of Records

More Entries from Tom’s Audiophile Notebook

We think that sitting down to play a Hot Stamper pressing — one you find yourself through the shootout process, or one we find for you — is the only way to appreciate its superior sound quality.

A great sounding LP, played on a top quality system, is an immersive experience hard to recreate with anything other than a properly-pressed, properly-mastered vintage vinyl LP.

For those who want to dig deeper into the mysteries of vinyl, consider the three commentaries we’ve linked below:

The uses and abuses of rules of thumb

Some audiophiles use the following rules of thumb when targeting higher quality rock and pop records:

If it’s an English band, get the UK import pressing. If it’s an American band, the master tapes should be here in this country, so the original domestic pressing will be the best.

As rules of thumb the ones above are not actually all that bad. Most of the time they will turn out to be correct. They’re just wrong so often (Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, Peter Gabriel, The Eagles, Black Sabbath, etc.) that you must be very careful how stringently you rely on them.

Many audiophiles will never bother to test them, since such tests require money and time, often in very large amounts. He will more than likely be content to leave his prejudices intact rather than seek out disconfirming evidence. (Just ask John.)

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Paul McCartney’s Must Own Masterpiece

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Paul McCartney Available Now

The best tracks on McCartney’s first album have the quality of LIVE MUSIC in a way that not one out of a hundred rock records do. It sounds like it’s recorded live in the studio, but of course that’s impossible, because Paul plays practically all the instruments himself.

It just goes to show how good a multi-track studio recording can sound when it’s done well.

The recording also has an unprocessed quality which we’ve always found attractive, with some songs sounding more like demos than finished takes, about as far from Abbey Road as it would be possible to get.

In our experience, the real McCartney Magic is only found on the best domestic Apple pressings. We’ve never heard an import that did much for us, and the later CBS issues are hardly worth the vinyl they’re pressed on.

This album, like Unplugged and Band on the Run (and not a whole lot else) is SUPERB from start to finish. At the end of side two you want MORE. I wish I could say that about the rest of his discography.

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Doing Shootouts for Other Genres of Music

Record Collecting for Audiophiles from A to Z

Jack contacted us recently about doing shootouts for the kinds of records that we rarely do shootouts for:

Hello Tom,

I am thinking about opening an online record store based on the same hot stamper methodology as Better Records, only I focus on genres that you do not cover, such as rap, metal, punk, hardcore, post-punk, noise and other niche genres.

Thus I am trying to get a sense of what it would take to make this project work. Did you have a reputation in the audiophile community prior to starting Better Records that drove people to your store?

The other question I am wondering is about equipment. Do you think that one has to have extremely high-end equipment (e.g., $5000 tone arms and the like) to properly tell whether a record is a hot stamper?

Finally, do you think that your methodology could work on LPs released post-1990, when there are far fewer variants of an album available? Any insight you could offer would be much appreciated.

Regards, Jack

Jack,

You need to follow our approach to the letter. The basics of it can be found here.

For a deeper dive, here is where you will find more helpful advice on doing your own shootouts

This would be a good budget to start with:

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Is Mud Slide Slim in a Booth or Isn’t He?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of James Taylor Available Now

One thing we noticed this time around was that for some tracks James’ vocals are recorded in a booth and for others they are not. Listen to the first track — there is no ambience, no room around his voice whatsoever. He’s in a padded booth, and they sure padded the hell out of it. Now play Long Ago and Far Away on side two. No booth! Lots of studio space around the vocal. MUCH more natural acoustic.

We don’t have the luxury of playing every track on both sides for these shootouts. We pick two or three songs that have specific qualities we know to look for and play them on every copy. (Shootouts like this almost always involve at least a dozen pressings, sometimes more, and it’s impossible to keep them all straight with more copies than that.)

So here’s a potentially fun exercise — assuming you find this sort of thing fun — that we thought about doing but just don’t have the time to devote to at present, with so many other shootouts waiting in the wings. Take your own copy, assuming you have at least a decent one, and play each track listening for only one thing: does James sound like he is in a booth, or does he sound like he is in an open space in the studio? If you have the typical original WB pressing you will probably not be able to get very far and will be quickly tempted to give up, the frustration of a murky midrange being more than most of us audiophiles can bear.

But maybe you have a good copy; the possibility certainly exists. And if you find much success with this exercise we encourage you to drop us a line, we will be more than happy to print it.