3/3

3s Can Have Amazingly Good Sound, or 3s Can Have Mediocre Sound

Hot Stamper Pressings of Living Stereo Recordings Available Now

But how can you tell which 3s copies sound amazing and which 3s copies don’t?

Below you will see the stamper sheet for a shootout we did not long ago.

A lot of our stamper sheets look like this one, close to half I would guess.

As you can see, the stampers and the sound are all over the map. This is not the least bit unusual in our experience. It’s simply the nature of records — they tend to come off the press with very different sound depending on factors that no one seems to understand very well, not even us!

Note that the album you see pictured is not the record we did the shootout for.

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Living Stereo Sound Like This Is Hard to Beat

Hot Stamper Pressings of Soundtrack Recordings Available Now

Here is the kind of Living Stereo sound we just can’t get enough of.

We certainly never suspected that this old TAS list warhorse from 1962 could sound the way this early pressing did when it landed on our turntable recently. We’ve been auditioning copies of Hatari for close to forty years. Now it sound like this? Amazing.

Until we played this Shootout Winning copy, we’d never heard the phenomenal amounts of ambience that surrounds the big room full of musicians assembled here, ambience which is clearly audible on the drums which play such an important part in Mancini’s arrangements.

If you’re a fan of big drums in a big room, this is the record for you.

Hearing this album sound the way this copy did was a real thrill, as our notes should make clear:

The notes for side one read:

Track Two

Spacious and Rich

Extended top end

Deep, note-like bass

Track One

Transparent, wide and spacious

Powerful brass, not hot

The notes for track three on side two read:

Lively, jumping out

Present and spacious

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This Is the Most Amazing Record the Dregs Ever Made

dixiedregsHot Stamper Pressings of Jazz Rock Fusion Albums Available Now

This is the band’s Masterpiece as well as a personal favorite of yours truly.

It’s also a clear case of one and done, at least when it comes to vinyl. (The live album, Bring ‘Em Back Alive, shown below, is only available on CD, but it comes highly recommended as well. I listen to it regularly.)

If you want to hear what happens when five virtuoso instrumentalists manage to combine their talent for Jazz, Rock, Classical and Country (thanks god there aren’t any vocals) into a potent mix that defies classification and breaks all the rules, this is the one. It reminds me of Ellington’s famous line that there are only two kinds of music: good music and bad music. This is the kind of music you may have trouble describing, but one thing’s for sure — it’s good. In fact it’s really good.

This is the most AMAZING album the Dregs ever recorded, and now this wild amalgamation of rock, jazz, country, prog and classical music has the kind of sound I always dreamed it could have. It’s rich and smooth like good ANALOG should be. It’s also got plenty of energy and rock and roll drive, which is precisely where the famous half-speed falls apart.

Few audiophiles know this music, and that’s a shame. This record is just a delight from beginning to end.

I’m apparently not the only one who noticed how good the album is. In 1980 Dregs of the Earth received a Grammy nomination for Best Rock Instrumental Performance.

The notes for our recent shootout winner are shown below:

More amazing finds like this one can be found here.

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What the Shootout Winning Copies of A Hard Day’s Night Really Get Right

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Beatles Available Now

I wrote this bit of commentary about twenty years ago:

When comparing pressings of this record, the copies that get their voices to sound both present and warm, smooth, and sweet, especially during the harmonies, are always the best.  All the other instruments seem to fall in line when the vocals are correct. This is an old truism — it’s all about the midrange — but in the case of A Hard Day’s Night, it really is true.

Now that we are putting our unredacted (!) shootout notes on the blog for everyone to see, here are the actual notes for the shootout winning pressing we just played (6/2025), notes that back up what we said so many years ago 100%.

What’s does this amazing side one sound like?

  • Very full guitars and vocals for this
  • Less glare
  • More midrange energy
  • Breathy and full vocals
  • Pretty rich and focussed
  • The fullest, most present and breathy vocals

And this amazing side two?

  • Much fuller vocals and drums
  • Great energy
  • Most “tubey” yet
  • Gets very big
  • Fullest and warmest yet
  • Not edgy

Both sides had qualities that did much to set them apart, coupled with fewer of the shortcomings we found in practically all the other pressings we played.

Less glary and less edgy are critical to the better pressings, simply because few copies are not glary and edgy in the midrange to some degree.

But the real keys to the shootout winners are vocals that are full, present, warm and breathy.

For The Beatles in 1964, nothing else about the sound of their recordings could possibly compete with those four qualities.

We could add two more. Energy would probably be the next most important one, followed by Tubey Magic.

That brings the total of most important qualities to a grand total six.

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It’s the Rare Yellow Submarine that Sounds Anything Like This One

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Beatles Available Now

Here is how we described our best copy of Yellow Submarine from the last shootout:

Boasting two KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sides, this vintage UK copy could not be beat.

Without a doubt the hardest single side of any Beatles album to find with good sound is side two of Yellow Submarine, and here’s a copy that is as good as it gets.

The only place to find the all-time classic “Hey Bulldog,” as well as “All Together Now” and “It’s All Too Much.” In addition, “All You Need Is Love” debuted in a true stereo mix on this album.

My favorite lines from the notes for the notoriously difficult-to-get-to-sound right side two:

  • Big and clear and 3-D for this
  • Nice string texture — sweet and rich for once

You do the best you can with what you have to work with, and normally side two of this album does not give you much to work with, as most copies are thin sounding and have screechy strings.

One or two out of ten copies — and of course we are only talking about the real vintage UK pressings, nothing else is worth bothering with — will get the strings right on side two. That makes side two a good test for string tone in our book, especially for those of you who don’t have any of our Hot Stamper orchestral pressings.

This is a very difficult album to find good sound for; many pressings are almost unbearably gritty and harsh. Fortunately, these two sides have no such problems. The overall tonality is rich and full-bodied, and there’s plenty of presence and energy as well.

A Tough Title to Play

Side two of this recording, the orchestral side, ranks high on our difficulty of reproduction scale. Do not attempt to play it using any but the best equipment.

It took us a long time to get to the point where we could clean the record properly, twenty years or so, and about the same amount of time to get the stereo to the level it needed to be, involving many of the revolutionary changes in audio we discuss at great length on the blog.

As we’ve said before about these kinds of recordings, they are designed to bring an audio system to its knees. If you have the kind of big system that a record like this demands, when you drop the needle on the best of our Hot Stamper pressings, you are going to hear some amazing sound.

This is a record that’s going to demand a lot from the home audio enthusiast, and we want to make sure that you feel you’re up to the challenge. If you don’t mind putting in a little hard work, here’s a record that will reward your time and effort many times over, and probably teach you a thing or two about tweaking your gear in the process (especially your VTA adjustment, just to pick an obvious area most audiophiles neglect).

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Our Shootout Winner Needed to Solve Some Common Problems with Mercury Recordings

Hot Stamper Pressings Featuring the Violin Available Now

We described our shootout winning copy of Szeryng Plays the Music of Fritz Kreisler this way:

With INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound from first note to last, this Plum Label Mercury stereo pressing (the first copy to ever hit the site) is doing everything right.

The violin is so sweet and present, so rich, natural and real, you will forget you’re listening to a record at all.

This recording is not your typical dry, bright, nasaly, upper-midrangy Merc – the sound is rich and smooth like a good London, with a big stage and lovely transparency.

As is sometimes the nature of the beast with these early pressings, there are marks that play, but if you can tough those out, this copy is going to blow your mind.

Here are the notes that back up what we said above:

Notice that on side one, track four, we mention “not strident,” and the second track we note it’s “not too dry.”

Side has a note to the effect that it’s “kinda rich” and “not too bright.”

This tells you that practically all the other copies had these kinds of problems, something that anyone with a good selection of Mercury violin recordings is sure to know.

Our job is to find the pressings that not strident, not dry, not bright, and richer than others.

When you buy a top copy of an album from us, you don’t hear those problems because they are mostly not there.

What you hear is a side one that is:

  • Much fuller and 3-D, with a
  • Sweet and lively violin, one with
  • The most space

On side two you hear more of the same, and that’s a good thing:

  • 3-D and alive violin
  • Kinda rich
  • More dynamic and jumping out
  • Not too bright

Probably not the best solo violin recording we’ve ever sold, but certainly one of the best.

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This Original British Tarkus Had the Sound Most Audiophiles Can Only Dream Of

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Emerson, Lake and Palmer Available Now

To be clear, audiophiles who buy a shootout winning White Hot Stamper pressing from us don’t have to dream, but practically everyone else does, because copies that sound as good as this one are few and far between.

It’s an amazing find, the kind of record we live for here at Better Records.

We described the sound of our most recent shootout winning copy this way:

This original UK Island pressing was doing everything right, earning killer Triple Plus (A+++) grades from top to bottom.

Our recent monster shootout produced this incredible sounding British pressing on Island (the only way we offer the title) and it is stone guaranteed to rock your world.

Eddie Offord‘s trademark Tubey Magic, energy, resolution, whomp factor and dynamics are all over this phenomenal recording, and this pressing captured it all.

Here are the notes that back up everything we said, and more. We can’t put all the qualities we rave about into every listing. Who would believe us?

No other copy offered this kind of sound. It’s what we used to call AGAIG — As Good As It Gets.

3+/3+ records like this one go in our Top Shelf section, which currently holds 32 titles.

Records with at least one 3+ side go in this section, and there are 143 of those as of today, almost five times as many.

Eddie Is The Man

Tarkus is clearly a Demo Disc for big speakers that can play at loud levels.

The organ captured here by Eddie Offord (of Yes engineering fame, we’re his biggest fans) and then transferred so well onto our Hot Stamper pressings will rattle the foundation of your house if you’re not careful. This music really needs that kind of megawatt reproduction to make sense. It’s Big Bombastic Prog that wants desperately to rock your world. At moderate levels it just sounds overblown and silly. At loud levels it actually will rock your world.

All but the best Brit pressings have a tendency to be a bit turgid and many of them lack the bottom end weight that music like this absolutely must have to work its magic. There are some good domestic copies — not in a league with the best Brits at all — but most of them have sub-generation sound that robs the instruments of their immediacy and texture (much the same way that Heavy Vinyl does, truth be told).

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Debussy & Ravel – A Tale of Two Top Copies

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Claude Debussy Available Now

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Maurice Ravel Available Now

In 2024 we did a shootout for this recording of quartets, LSC 2413, our first in 19 years.

For the shootout winning pressing, we wrote the following:

Juilliard String Quartet’s performance of these wonderful classical works appears on the site for only the second time ever, here with INSANELY GOOD Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades on both sides of this original Shaded Dog pressing.

Having just played some killer copies of Death and the Maiden, we’re tempted to say that this Debussy record has the potential for even better sound — it’s richer and sweeter, but every bit as real and immediate as any chamber recording we know of.

Here are the notes for the actual record we played. Side one really blew our minds, earning a grade of at least 3+.

The second place finisher may not have been quite as good on side one, but it was still so good that it had no problem earning the full three pluses. It had the same stampers as the copy above by the way.

Side two however lacked the space of the very best pressings we played, and we marked it down one half plus for that shortcoming. Although it was “so tubey and 3-D” it did not have “all the space but not hot at all and natural and sweet.”

It’s very unlikely that the person who bought this copy would feel there was any problem with side two. We had two killer side two’s to play against each other back to back, and that’s about the only way these kinds of very subtle differences can be recognized, assuming you have a system that can resolve the space of the recording at an extremely high level to begin with.

The big rooms with high ceilings that systems like those require are not usually found in listening rooms that have not been custom built.

More on this wonderful record:

The Living Stereo sound here is Tubey Magical, lively and clear, with the kind of transparency that puts living, breathing musicians right in your listening room in the way that only the best vintage vinyl pressings can.

Lewis Layton engineered this recording (along with Ed Begley) and he nailed it, perfectly capturing the rich, textured sheen on the strings, the hallmark of Living Stereo sound in the 50s and 60s.

He recorded both the Schubert (LSC 2378) mentioned above and this wonderful Debussy/Ravel record for RCA in 1960 — it would be quite the understatement to say he had a gift for recordings of this kind.

Another superb recording from the 60s, brought to you by your vinyl-loving friends at Better Records.

It’s an exceptional Living Stereo all analog recording from 1960 – nothing else sounds like it.

When you’ve played as many Living Stereo titles as we have (250+ and counting), you’re bound to run into this kind of Demo Disc sound from time to time – it’s what makes record collecting fun.

It’s an amazing find, the kind of record we live for here at Better Records.

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Lee Konitz With Warne Marsh Is Yet Another Amazing Sounding Budget Reissue

Hot Stamper Pressings of Jazz Recordings Featuring the Saxophone Available Now

Here is how we described this wonderful reissue of the 1955 recording of Lee Konitz with Warne Marsh:

Incredible MONO sound throughout this reissue copy of Lee Konitz with Warne Marsh (only the second to hit the site in years).

Exceptionally spacious and three-dimensional, as well as relaxed and full-bodied – this pressing was a big step up over every other copy we played.

If you want to hear the Tubey Magic, size and energy of this wonderful session from 1955 – originally recorded by Tom Dowd and expertly remastered by George Piros – this pressing will definitely let you do that.

I hope these notes are able to speak for themselves. If you have trouble reading them, please drop me a line and I will translate them for you.

The horns are breathy and clear, yet full and rich as can be. There may be a good reason that this pressing sounds as good as it does: it was remastered by one of the greatest mastering engineers of all time, George Piros.

Tom Dowd is the original recording engineer, and this one album should be all the proof you need that when it comes to jazz in mono, the guy is hard to beat. Rock in stereo, there the record is quite a bit more spotty (see, or better yet, listen to Cream, The Young Rascals, Delaney and Bonnie and too many others to list).

UPDATE 2025

The listening panel for this record listened to it with the mono switch in as well as with the mono switch out on the EAR 324p phono stage we use.

Somewhat surprisingly, the sound got worse on this mono pressing playing with the mono switch activated.

That’s not supposed to be the way works, but in the world of records, when has that ever counted for anything?

Just another reminder to always stay skeptical. Never believe anything anybody tells you about audio. Test everything for yourself, and that includes our Hot Stamper pressings. Play them against the best other pressings you can find. We will happily take back any record that doesn’t trounce anything you have to play head to head with our records.

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Why Do So Few Living Stereo Pressings Sound as Good as This One?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Orchestral Spectaculars Available Now

We introduced our most recent shootout winning copy of The Reiner Sound from 1958 this way:

The Reiner Sound returns to the site for the first time in years, here with big, bold, dynamic Triple Plus (A+++) Living Stereo sound throughout this original Shaded Dog pressing.

These are just a few of the things we had to say about this amazing copy in our notes: “fully extended up top”…”sweet and rich”…”supremely dynamic and spacious!!!” (side one)…”massive and tubey and 3D”…”like no other” (side two)…”explosive finish.”

These sides are doing everything right – they’re rich, clear, undistorted, open, spacious, and have depth and transparency to rival the best recordings you may have heard.

This record will have you asking why so few Living Stereo pressings actually do what this one does.

The more critical listeners among you will recognize that this is a very special copy indeed.

Everyone else will just enjoy the hell out of it.

And here are the notes to prove it!

Side one was at least 3+.

  • Lots of tape hiss
  • The top end really extends
  • Sweet and spacious dynamic peaks, and rich
  • Supremely dynamic and spacious

Side two was right up there with it:

  • Massive and tubey and three-dimensional
  • Very full and dynamic
  • The explosive finish is like no other

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