11-2021

Acoustic Sounds Was Selling This Ridiculously Bad “TAS List” Record Back in the Day

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Cat Stevens Available Now

This commentary was written circa 2001. 

I remember 15 years ago when Acoustic Sounds was selling the then in-print 25th Anniversary Island pressing (with 7U stampers as I recall) for $15, claiming that it was a TAS List record. If you’ve ever heard the pressing, you know it has no business going anywhere near a Super Disc List. It’s mediocre at best and has virtually none of the magic of the good originals.

NEWSFLASH: Just looked it up on Discogs, a site that did not exist when I wrote this commentary. My memory is apparently better than I thought it was. The 25th Anniversary Island Life Collection pressing came out in 1986.

    • Matrix / Runout (Runout side A, variant 1): ILPM 9154 A-1 ILPM•9154•A1
    • Matrix / Runout (Runout side B, variant 1): ILPM 9154 B-7U-1-1-3
    • Matrix / Runout (Runout side A, variant 2): ILPM 9154 A-8U-1- G10
    • Matrix / Runout (Runout side B, variant 2): ILPM 9154 B-7U-1-

By the way, I am not aware of any of these pressings from the 80s being especially good sounding. I remember playing some of them but I don’t remember liking any of them. They were cheap reissues that satisfied those looking for import vinyl, not audiophile quality sound.

I refused to sell it back in those days, for no other reason than the fact that it’s far from a Better Sounding Record. I don’t like misrepresenting records and I don’t like ripping off my customers. It’s bad for business.

That pressing was a fraud and I was having none of it.

Chad probably didn’t even know the difference.

When you don’t know much about records, you can say all sorts of things and not get called out for them. Audiophiles are a credulous bunch and always have been. They still believe the same nonsense that I foolishly fell for back in the 80s. (And I admit that even as late as 2006 I was still a fan of certain Heavy Vinyl pressings.)

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Question – Where Are All Your New Wave and Post Punk Titles?

Extreme Record Collecting: Confessions of an Analog Vinyl Snob

Extreme Record Collecting Part II: There’s Only One Way to Find Better Records

One of our good customers wrote us a letter recently

Hey Tom, 

Just a quick message to let you know that I really enjoyed reading those two recent pieces on the Dangerous Minds blog (“Extreme Record Collecting: Confessions of an Analog Vinyl Snob” and “Extreme Record Collecting Part II: There’s Only One Way to Find Better Records”).  As always, it is a total pleasure to read anything in which you are interviewed at length, as you articulate ideas about sound and music so much better and more eloquently than anybody else.

Very kind of you to say, we try! I did an interview with a colleague which you may enjoy: detail versus weight

Loved some of the nuggets I had never heard you speak about before (the lack of any hot stampers for Then Play On, the difficulty with the first CSN album, and your hilarious take on the live Fleetwood Mac album).  Hearing those kinds of insights from you gives me a total buzz for hours afterward! 

Awesome. We do a lot of that stuff on the blog. Do a search for any record and something will usually come up. Also we have a “never again” tag for some of the records that probably won’t go into shootouts now that I have retired.

The only point you offer in the whole interview with which I would quibble at all is your take on new wave and post-punk titles.  Your sense is that there wouldn’t be a market for $200 pressings of records by Nick Cave, Joy Division, et al., but I suspect the exact opposite is true.  I for one would leap at Hot Stampers by both of those artists, as well as many others from their time (Echo and the Bunnymen, The Cure, The Blue Nile, The Psychedelic Furs, Public Image Ltd., etc.), and I’m certain that there are many others like me.  What’s more, I suspect we would pay a lot more than $200 for each title.  Your point about the sound quality of some of those albums being less distinguished than records from previous eras could certainly be true.  Nonetheless, as we’ve talked about before, people don’t expect every record they buy from you to sound like Aja or Dark Side of the Moon.  Rather, they want the albums they love to sound the best they possibly can.

While not precisely analogous, I might mention your recent success with Hot Stampers of Beck’s Sea Change as indicative of the untapped market that awaits you.  By my count, at least three copies of that title (two White Hot Stampers and a Super Hot Stamper) recently flew off the shelves of Better Records.  I have no doubt that Sea Change is an exceptionally well recorded album and perhaps—as your write-ups indicated—an especially analog-sounding one.  But all of the records on your website have those qualities.  The copies of Sea Change went so fast because that title and that artist had never been available from your store before.

Having said all of that, I completely get your point about the time, money, and hard work that would be involved in introducing new titles to the Better Records inventory.  Given that you and your team are working full time as it is, and given that you are massively successful with the existing pool of titles, there doesn’t seem to be much of an incentive to change course for an unproven commodity.  Nonetheless, if you ever do decide to test the waters with some of these other artists, I would gladly share my two cents as far as artist/album selection goes, and I would gladly share my thousands of dollars for the shootout winners.

All good points. The reason it was easy for me to get Beck going was that I owned both Sea Change and Mutations and knew the sound was excellent. The R and D had already been done.

I have played albums by The Blue Nile, Psychedelic Furs and Public Image and found them all to be unacceptable, along with a host of others. Ultravox is a good sounding band, but who will buy them if we have trouble selling Roxy Music? We can hardly do Roxy Music these days for cryin’ out loud. One of the greatest bands ever.

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The Best of Earth Wind & Fire and the Neverending Search for Balance

More of the Music of Earth, Wind and Fire

More Recordings by George Massenburg

Another in our series of Home Audio Exercises. As is usually the case when plowing through a big pile of copies, we learned pretty quickly that what makes the sound work is having these two qualities in balance:

1) Richness / Smoothness 
2) Transparency

When the vocals are thin and pinched, as they often are, the resulting edginess and harshness in the midrange take all the fun out of the music. Every track has group vocals and choruses, and the best copies make all the singers sound like they are standing in a big room, shoulder to shoulder, belting it out live and in living color.

The good copies capture that energy and bring it into the mix with the full-bodied sound it no doubt had live in the studio. When the EQ or the vinyl goes awry and their voices (and brass) start to take on a lean or gritty quality, the party’s over.

But richness and fullness are not enough. They must be balanced with TRANSPARENCY.

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Letter of the Week – “All I can say is that it was a “Holy Shit!” moment for EVERYONE in the room.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now

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

Hey Tom, 

Thanks again!

Got the White Hot ELP s/t Friday afternoon as I was leaving for a weekend at the Capital Audio Fest in Bethesda Maryland but had no time to listen to it at home so brought it and the Led Zep 2 White Hot I bought from you a year or so back with me to the show with the intention of playing it on some of the crazy systems being demo’ed at the show.

The majority of participants demo their systems with Mofi and other heavy vinyl reissues. Rarely will you hear old vinyl.

Saturday night in the “main room” where VAC and Von Schweikert were partnering and demo-ing their million dollar system, there was a presentation by Greg Weaver (a friend of mine) and the theme was great sounding prog rock.

After a few records – all reissues, Greg turns to the 30 or so of us and asked what we wanted to hear next. The guy behind me shouts out “Zep 2 Robert Ludwig hot mix!” and of course he didn’t have it but that was my opening and I took it – “I have it upstairs and happy to bring it down!”

Greg of course said “sure!” so I ran up to my room and grabbed the Zep 2 AND the ELP I just got from you but never played.

The Zep 2 was a revelation to many – some people moved closer to take it all in, it was everything you would have expected and beyond, an unforgettable highlight for all! One guy had me pose with him holding the record after it was done, lol!

Greg was excited to see the ELP too and put it on next. He gave a little history about the band and its members and then dropped the needle.

All I can say is that it was a “Holy Shit!” moment for EVERYONE in the room. Maybe, no…without a doubt, the best record I and many there had ever heard in our lives, coming thru a million dollar system and utterly blowing our minds. What an INSANE sounding record!

No one in that room will ever forget it.

My complements to the chefs at Better Records for making this incredible experience possible.

Mike

Mike,

Wow, what a letter! Thanks for the demo. I can imagine it is quite a shock for these folks to hear a real record after so many Heavy Vinyl imposters. Hearing is believing, right?

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The More Mistakes the Better, Part Three

Advice on Making More Mistakes

It’s the secret to success – ours, yours and everybody else’s.

“The essence of success is that it is never necessary to think of a new idea oneself. It is far better to wait until somebody else does it, and then to copy him in every detail, except his mistakes.” ~Aubrey Menen

Indeed, if only that were possible. Our approach to Hot Stampers and how to find them is certainly a revolutionary new idea, and undoubtedly the only way of discovering records with proven superior sound quality.

But even if we were to publish all of our secrets — the stamper numbers and labels and countries of origin of all the best pressings we’ve ever played, every last one — that would still not be the answer, for the simple reason that no two records sound the same.

As long as that’s true, either we have to play a pile of records to find the best sounding ones, or you do. There is no other way to do it.

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Chabrier / Ansermet – The Best Espana on Record?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Chabrier Available Now

In 2021 we wrote:

Ansermet’s performance of Espana is still our favorite — nothing in our experience can touch it, musically or sonically.

UPDATE 2022

As of 2022 we slightly prefer the famous Argenta recording for Decca that’s on the TAS List, CS 6006.

Both are wonderful and both belong in any serious audiophile collection of orchestral music.

We created a special section for recordings of this quality. Classical and orchestral records that we’ve auditioned and found to have the best performances with the highest quality sound can be found here.

This has been a favorite recording of ours here at Better Records for a very long time, since at least the mid-’90s or thereabouts. We’ve mentioned how much we like the sound of Londons with catalog numbers ranging from about 6400 to 6500 or so (which are simply Decca recordings from the mid-’60s), and this one (CS 6438) is one of the best reasons to hold that view.

You get some of the Tubey Magic and golden age sound from Decca’s earlier days, coupled with the clarity and freedom from compression and tube smear of their later period. In other words, this record strikes the perfect sonic balance, retaining qualities from different periods that are normally at odds with each other. Here they work together wonderfully.

Further Reading