12-2019

What Causes Lifeless and Pointless Sound?

More of the Music of Chuck Mangione

We did a shootout for this album in 2012 and had a hard time finding much energy in the music. That is, until we stumbled upon a few good copies, which showed us just how well recorded the album was and how enjoyable the music could be on the right pressing.

It’s shocking just how lifeless and pointless Feels So Good can sound on some copies.

After only a few minutes the band seems to be having a hard time staying awake.

But the same performance is captured on every pressing, so how can the band sound so inspired here and so uninspired elsewhere?

It’s one of the mysteries of recorded media, one which still takes us by surprise on a regular basis, every week in fact.

This idea that most pressings do a poor job of communicating the music still has not seeped into the consciousness of the audiophile public. Here at Better Records, we’ve been diligently working to change that for close to twenty years, one Hot Stamper at a time.

The copies that are present, clear, open, transparent and energetic, with a solid rhythmic line driving the music, are a hundred times more enjoyable than the typical pressing that can be found practically unplayed (gee, I wonder why?) sitting in most record collections.

By the way, if you know Feels So Good only through the radio, you may be surprised to find that it’s close to ten minutes long, not the three minutes you’re familiar with. The band stretches out quite a bit and the solos are fairly inventive, as AMG noted.

This very side two has that problem to a fair degree; it’s a bit too murky and veiled to be as much fun as side one. But so few copies were any good at all that it still earned an A+ grade. If you turn it up it helps it quite a bit. Still, it lack extension high and low compared to this side one. (more…)

Bayou Country – Our Shootout Winner from 2012

More of the Music of Creedence Clearwater Revival

This is the first White Hot Stamper copy of Bayou Country to ever hit the site. We were shocked at how good this one sounds — on both sides — compared to the copies we’ve heard over the years.

Man, the average copy of this album is an unmitigated disaster. Let’s start with the vocals. I’m not sure who’s idea it was to have John Fogerty’s vocals sound as if they were recorded via telephone, but every copy we played had an edgy quality to Fogerty’s voice.

Furthermore, most copies are badly congested and far from transparent. After dropping the needle on the first few copies and hearing the muddy music and gritty vocals, we nearly gave up, but I’m glad we stuck to it long enough to find a few copies that did a good job conveying this classic music.

Keep On Chooglin’

After playing a handful of copies we started to identify what qualities we could hope for in a Hot Stamper pressing. It was only then that we decided to take John Fogerty’s advice and, uh, keep on chooglin.’

We realized that the vocals are never going to sound amazing, but they don’t need to sound irritating either. We realized the stunning transparency was not in the cards, but that on the better copies you can actually pick out the various musicians and make sense of their contributions. And while you’re just not going to get note-like bass from this album, you can certainly find copies that offer SOME definition to the bottom end. If you’ve got a big stack of copies and an excellent cleaning regiment, you just might be able to find a copy that performed reasonably well in all of these areas.

And in the end, that’s exactly what we managed to do. It wasn’t easy, and you won’t be using this record of these to demo your stereo, but if you love this music as much as we do then we imagine you’ll enjoy hearing Bayou Country sound this good.

Side one was incredibly tubey magical with lots of energy and surprising clarity, which you can really hear on the clean guitar transients. The sound is big and open with real weight to the bottom. The top end has natural extension instead of the brightened up sound you might be familiar with for this album.

Born On The Bayou and Bootleg both sound great — I guarantee you’ve never heard ’em sound any better or your money back.

Side two earned A++ honors with excellent presence and energy. It’s a very transparent side two; you can even pick out the piano in Good Golly Miss Molly, which is hardly even audible on most pressings. The vocals are neither edgy nor gritty, and the top end is smoother than what you get on the typical copy.

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