5-2021

For Arcana, Speed Is Key

Hot Stamper Pressings on Decca and London Available Now

This is a recording that allows your speakers to disappear completely like practically no other. A powerful Test Disc as well. Use this one to check your speed and staging, subtle changes in your equipment can have a big effect on recordings like this

Incredible sound for this CRAZY 20th Century music, featuring wild and wacky works which rely almost exclusively on percussion (not one, not two, but three bass drums!). My favorite piece here may be Ionisation, which uses real sirens (the Old School ones cranked by hand) as part of Varese’s uniquely specialized instrumental array.

But the main reason audiophiles will LOVE this album is not the music, but the SOUND. Ionisation has amazing depth, soundstaging, dynamics, three-dimensionality and absolutely dead-on tonality — it’s hard to imagine a recording that allows your speakers to disappear more completely than this one.

It also makes a superb test disc. Subtle changes in your equipment can have a big effect on recordings like this.

The instrumental palette is large and colorful, giving the critical listener plenty to work with.

And this copy is perfect for testing because is is nearly FLAWLESS in its sound. No other copy could touch it. Many copies are not especially transparent, spacious or three-dimensional, and lack extension on both ends of the frequency spectrum.

The SPEED of the percussion is also critical to its proper reproduction.

No two pieces of electronics will get this record to sound the same, and some will fail miserably.

If vintage tube gear is your idea of the ultimate in sound, this record may help you to better understand where its shortcomings lie.

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Listening in Depth to Waiting For The Sun

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Doors Available Now

Presenting another entry in our extensive listening in depth series with advice on what to listen for as you critically evaluate your copy of Waiting For The Sun.

Here are some albums on our site you can buy with similar track by track breakdowns. 

My favorite of the first three Doors album, this one is imbued with more mystery and lyricism than previous efforts. The album shows them maturing as a band, having smoked large amounts of pot and preparing themselves for the wild ride of their next opus, the ambitious Soft Parade.

Actually, as I listen to this album it reminds me more and more of that one. Now that it sounds as good as The Soft Parade, I find I’ve gained a new respect for Waiting for the Sun.

Side One

Hello, I Love You
Love Street
Not To Touch The Earth

Listen to the hard rockin’ duel between the keyboards (left channel) and the guitar (right channel) in the middle of the song. Morrison is screaming is head off and Densmore is really slamming the drums. There’s a HUGE amount of information in the grooves there, and only the best copies will be open and spacious enough to not get a bit congested.

Summer’s Almost Gone

On a Hot Stamper pressing, this song is Tubey Magical analog at its best — warm, sweet, rich, and full-bodied.

Wintertime Love
The Unknown Soldier

Side Two

Spanish Caravan
My Wild Love
We Could Be So Good Together

This song is a bit midrangy on every last copy we’ve played. On a Hot Stamper copy, it can still sound quite wonderful, just a little boosted in the midrange.

Yes, The River Knows

This song is the best test for transparency and bass definition on side two. You should be able to hear the bassist really pulling on the strings and sliding his fingers up and down the fretboard.

Five to One

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Why M&K Direct to Disc Recordings Rarely Sound Right to Us

 Hot Stamper Pressings of Direct-to-Disc Recordings Available Now

This album was recorded on location. The only other M&K Direct to Disc recording that I like was also recorded on location.

Most of the M&K Direct to Discs were recorded in the showroom of the stereo store that Miller and Kreisel owned, which, like any showroom, was carpeted and draped.

This is why almost all their records sound “dead.” This was their intention, of course. They wanted the sound to be “live” in your living room.

I prefer to hear the kind of ambience that would be found in a real location, and so I have never been much of a fan of their label.

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Letter of the Week – “…just pure delight with those New Orleans horns.”

More Singer Songwriter Albums

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Randy Newman

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

Hey Tom,   

Another big surprise here; I almost cancelled ordering this before it shipped, as I have an old pressing that to me sounded White Hot Stamper material, impossible to improve on, and I intended just to shoot it out for kicks/education.

But this was a revelation, there was SO MUCH room for improvement. The whole thing as artistic edifice came alive with your pressing, conveying much more on an emotional and intellectual level than I’d picked up on before. And sound-wise it was so juicy in parts, just pure delight with those New Orleans horns.

I might have listened to this record a couple of times a year previously, whereas now it’s become a bible of soul and panache.

Dear Sir,

Thanks very much for your letter.  Allow me to give a short refresher on some Hot Stamper basics that bear repeating:

There can be no hot stamper designation without a shootout for the album having been done.

Good sounding records like the one you owned and was happy with are just good sounding records, not Hot Stampers.

Shootouts will sometimes be a revelation, as was the case here, White Hots especially. 

How high is up?

You can’t know how good a record can sound until you play a bunch of copies and discover the one that shows you just how high “up” really is.

We’ve been doing shootouts for this album for well over a decade. We understand on a purely practical level exactly what the best copies can be expected to do, and how good the best copies can sound. If you haven’t played scores of copies of the album, how could you possibly know any of these things?

Such a great album. Glad to hear you are enjoying it as much as we did.

Best, TP

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