7-2022

Seventies EMI Classical LPs and Vintage Tube Playback

More of the Music of Sergei Prokofiev

What to listen for on this album?

That’s easy: The all-too-common 70s EMI harshness and shrillness.

We could never understand why audiophiles revered EMI the way they did back in the 70s. Harry Pearson loved many of their recordings, but I sure didn’t. 

The longer I stay in his hobby, the more clear it is to me that many of the records on the TAS list are better suited to the old school audio systems of the 60s and 70s rather than the modern systems we have today.

These kinds of records used to sound good on those older systems, and I should know, I had an old school stereo even into the 90s. Some of the records that sounded good to me back in the day don’t sound too good to me anymore.

For a more complete list of those kinds of records, not just the ones on the TAS List, click here. Note that some I liked, and some I did not back in the day.

I chalk it up — as I do most of the mistaken judgments audiophiles make about the sound of the records they play, my own judgments included — to five basic problem areas that create havoc when attempting to reproduce recorded music in the home:

  1. Equipment shortcomings,
  2. Untweaked setups,
  3. Bad electricity,
  4. Badly treated or untreated rooms, and
  5. Improper record cleaning

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If You Are At All Serious About Audio, You Cop to Your Mistakes

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Steely Dan Available Now

And to think I used to swear by this pressing of Katy Lied — specifically the 2000 Yen reissue, not the 1500 Yen original, which sounded dull, more like the average domestic original I was trying to better.

This one is brighter and cleaner, but at the cost of more distortion, more congestion and, now that I have a better understanding of records and their variations, an incorrect tonal balance. The Japanese tried to fix the smooth sound of the dubbed tape they were given and, in so doing, ruined what was good about the sound. 

Another example of just how wrong one can be — one, in this case, being me circa 1995.

Let’s Talk About Us

We happily admit to our mistakes because we know that all this audio stuff and especially the search for Hot Stampers is a matter of trial and error.

We do the trials; we run the experiments,

That’s the only way to avoid the kinds of errors most audiophiles make in their quest to find the best sounding pressings of their favorite albums,.

Being skeptical of every claim you have not tested for yourself is key to getting good results from this kind of work.

Of course, being human we can’t help but make our share of mistakes. More than our share; we’ve made them by the hundreds.

The difference is that we learn from them. We report the facts to the best of our ability for every shootout we do.

Every record gets a chance to show us what it’s made of, regardless of where it was made, who made it or why they made it. 

If we used to like it and now we don’t, that’s what you will read in our commentary. Our obligation is to only one person: you, the listener. (Even better: you, the customer. Buy something already and see what you have been missing.)

On every shootout we do now, if the notes are more than six months old, we toss them out. They mean nothing. Things have changed, radically, and that’s the way it should be.

With each passing year you should be hearing more of everything on your favorite LPs.

That’s the thrill of this hobby — those silly old records just keep getting better. I wish someone could figure out how to make digital get better. They’ve had forty years and it still leaves me wanting more. You too, I’m guessing.

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Obsession Is the Best Predictor of Audio Evolution

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Ambrosia Available Now

Ambrosia‘s debut is an album we admit to being obsessed with.

It is our contention that to reach the most advanced levels of audio, you have to do two things.

First, you must become obsessed with getting your favorite albums to sound their best, and,

Second, you must then turn your obsession with those albums into concrete action.

What kind of action?

Finding better sounding pressings and improving your stereo and room.

We wrote about it here. An excerpt:

As a budding audiophile, I went out of my way to acquire any piece of equipment that could make these records from the ’70s (the decade of my formative music-buying years) sound better than the gear I was then using. It’s the challenging recordings by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, as well as scores of other pop and rock artists like them, that drove my pursuit of higher quality audio, starting all the way back in high school.

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Letter of the Week – “Listening to my very first Hot Stamper purchase was by far the most significant event in my life as an audiophile.”

More Hot Stamper Testimonial Letters

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased back in 2017 [the bolding of the text has been added by us.]

Hey Tom, 

Listening to my very first Hot Stamper purchase was by far the most significant event in my life as an audiophile. I discovered the Better Records website way back in 2007, but being a hardcore skeptic I didn’t purchase anything until almost two years later. Although I agreed with the premise that different pressings have varying degrees of sound quality, I simply could not believe that any record could sound so much better to justify the prices. Frankly, I thought that the buyers of these records were folks with more money than sense.

What finally drove me to purchase my first Hot Stamper was my attempt to find a decent copy of Carole King’s Tapestry album. I had decided to try the Better Records approach and gathered half a dozen copies, as well as the Classic heavy vinyl reissue that I had read good things about. Talk about an exercise in futility. Despite a thorough cleaning with Disc Doctor, no copy sounded significantly better than any of the others. However, Better Records just happened to have a 1+ copy of Tapestry on sale for $75 at the time, so I decided to take the plunge and buy it, even though I still thought the price was outrageous.

What followed next absolutely stunned and amazed me. Although I was prepared to shoot out the Hot Stamper against my own copies, I knew within the first minute of play that it would be totally unnecessary. The Hot Stamper sounded like a completely different recording. I cannot stress this enough. Everything sounded much, much more lifelike and REAL, as if I was listening to the performance inside the recording studio, instead of sitting outside hearing it through the walls. Of particular note was the fact that I could hear the personality in Ms. King’s voice, with all the attendant subtle inflections and timbre; she sounded like a real person, not just a recording of one. The $75 price was suddenly transformed into a real bargain, and the skeptic in me died completely. (more…)

Question – “How would you describe the sound signature of your evaluation equipment?”

Our Advice to Help You Make More Audio Progress

The following letter came to us not long ago:

Hey Tom, 

I am trying to make sense of the information on your site and the asking prices for these ‘hot stampers.’

In order to better understand how you assess sound quality, can you let me know what equipment you use for this purpose (what turntable, arm, cartridge, amps, speakers)?

How would you describe the sound signature of your evaluation equipment?

Bas

Bas,

Thanks for contacting us. We wrote a commentary about it, linked here:

As for our sound signature, we’ve labored mightily over the last forty years to build the biggest, most dynamic, most powerful system, limited by only those colorations we don’t know how to rid ourselves of. Here are some thoughts on what we went through in order to achieve our current level of fidelity:

Having done all that work over the course of decades, we feel we are in a good position to offer our readers:

Even the ones that never asked for it!

A lot of the basics about our Hot Stampers can be found at the top of every page under:

Our customers tend to be very enthusiastic about our Hot Stampers, as you can see by the letters they write us:

Any questions, feel free to write me.  Of course, writing is one thing, but

Best, TP

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Observations on RCA’s Chamber Recordings

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Hot Stamper Pressings of Living Stereo Titles Available Now

What do the best copies of this album sound like?

The sound is RICH and TRANSPARENT, and unlike a lot of RCA’s chamber recordings, not dry.

The tonality is also Right On The Money.

The performers are present and the transients of their instruments are not in the least bit smeared.

A case of good tube mastering?

On the best pressings, absolutely.

(More on the subject of tubes in audio here.)

Classical Shootouts

RCA is justly famous for its chamber recordings, which tend to be somewhat rare for some reason. Let’s be honest: we did not conduct this shootout with a dozen copies of the album. (It would take us at least twenty-five years to find that many clean pressings.)

What we had were quite a few other Heifetz RCA chamber recordings, as well as some favorites by the Quartetto Italiano and I Musici that we are very fond of and know well.

After thirty two years in business selling vintage vinyl, by now we’ve played scores if not hundreds of good violin recordings. We have no problem recognizing good violin sound (as well as correct violin tone, not exactly the same thing) when we hear it. In the past our top Hot Stamper classical pressings would go directly to our best customers, customers who want classical recordings that actually sound good. not just the kind of Golden Age Recordings that are supposed to. Now that we are able to do classical shootouts on a regular basis, we hope to have enough superb sounding classical recordings for all of our audiophile customers.

I’ve commented often over the years of the benefits to be gained from listening to classical music regularly. Once a week is a good rule of thumb I would say. I love rock and roll, jazz and all the rest of it, but there is something about classical music that restores a certain balance in your musical life that can’t be accomplished by other means. It grounds your listening experience to something perhaps less immediately gratifying but deeper and more enriching over time. Once habituated, the effect on one’s mood is not hard to recognize.

Orchestral Music Is Hard to Record, Master and Press, Apparently

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If I Could Only Remember My Name – What? No Classic Records Pressing on the TAS Super Disc List?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of David Crosby Available Now

We applaud TAS’s decision not to add the Classic pressing of this title to the list, the way they foolishly have with so many other Classic pressings that have no business being on anything called a Super Disc list.

As you may have read elsewhere on the site, records like this are the reward for owning the right stereo equipment and having it properly tweaked. There is no way in the world I could have played this album 20 years ago remotely as well as I can now. It only makes me appreciate the music even more.

You Don’t Have to Be High to Hear It

When you drop the needle on this record, all barriers between you and the musicians are removed. You’ll feel as though you’re sitting at the studio console while Crosby and his no-doubt-stoned-out-of-their-minds Bay Area pals (mostly Jefferson Airplaners and Grateful Deads, see list below) are laying down this emotionally powerful, heartfelt music.

The overall sound is warm, sweet, rich, and full-bodied… that’s some real ANALOG Tubey Magic, baby! And the best part is, you don’t have to be high to hear it. You just need a good stereo and the right pressing.

Barncard’s Masterpiece

We all owe a debt of gratitude to the superbly talented recording engineer on this project, Stephen Barncard (American Beauty, Deja Vu, Tarkio, etc.). This album is without a doubt his masterpiece. It fully deserves its standing as one of the Ten or Twenty Best Sounding Rock Recordings of All Time.

Here are some Hot Stamper pressings of TAS list titles that actually have audiophile sound quality, guaranteed. And if for some reason you disagree with us about how good they sound, we will be happy to give you your money back.

Here are some others that we do not think qualify as Super Discs.

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