audiophile-transparency

I Was Wrong about a Half-Speed Mastered Record – Not for the First Time, But I Hope for the Last

dixiedregsdd

Hot Stamper Pressings of Jazz Rock Fusion Albums Available Now

A classic case of live and learn.

I’d always preferred the famously rare Half-Speed to the domestic copies I had auditioned back in the day, the day being the 80s and 90s. That’s all changed now of course.

Now, with changes to the stereo and better cleaning techniques and all the rest, that Half-Speed’s weaknesses are hard to ignore.

Where is the rock ’em, sock ’em bottom end that the best originals have?

Gone without a trace.

Yes, the smeary, veiled quality of the typical original pressing is gone too, which is why I used to like the DD Labs version better. It’s simply another case of a reasonably good Half-Speed beating a bad domestic pressing, and in turn being beaten (soundly) by The Real Thing, the kind of record we like to call a Hot Stamper.

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The Power of the Orchestra – Remastered by the Brain Trust at Chesky

Hot Stamper Pressings of Pictures at an Exhibition Available Now

Sonic Grade: F

Lifeless, compressed and thin sounding, here you will find practically none of the weight and whomp that turn the best Living Stereo pressings into the powerful listening experiences we know them to be.

We know that because we’ve played them by the hundreds on big speakers at loud levels.

It’s clean and transparent, I’ll give it that, which is no doubt why so many audiophiles have been fooled into thinking it actually sounds better than the original.

But of course there is no original. There are thousands of them, and they all sound different. (A concept we embraced many years ago and have never found any reason to doubt.)

The commentary reproduced below, from way back when, discusses a pair of records that proves our case in the clearest possible way.

We sold a 2-pack of Hot Stamper pressings, one with a good side one and one with a good side two. Why? Because the other sides were terrible! If you have a bad original, perhaps the Chesky will be better.

Our advice is not to own a bad original, or this poorly-mastered Chesky reissue, but instead we advise that you make the effort to find a good original, or two or three, as many as it takes to get two good sides.

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Can You Believe I Actually Used to Like this CBS Half-Speed?

More of the Music of Boston

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Boston

Sonic Grade: D

Lack of weight down low — or as we like to call it, lack of whomp factor [1] — is the main reason Half-Speed mastered records so often come up short when played against their real-time-mastered competition. The highs can be good, the mids can be good, but the bottom end is almost always lacking, which is exactly the problem here.

You can be sure that Boston would not have wanted, nor would they have ever been willing to accept, the kind of anemic sound that the CBS Half-Speed delivers.

The CBS is cut clean from a good tape, so it easily beats the bad domestic pressings, of which there are many.

But it doesn’t rock.

What good is a Boston record that doesn’t rock? It’s a contradiction in terms; they’re a rock band.

The band, as well as their amazingly well recorded debut album, have no other reason to exist.

Transparency is a nice quality, but when it comes at the expense of the energy and power of the music, especially down low, then it comes at too high a price, especially for those of us who have full-range systems and like to play them loud.

We talk about the shortcomings of transparent audiophile records here:

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Sticky Fingers Is a MoFi Disaster to Beat Them All – Now With Video

More of the Music of The Rolling Stones

If you click on the video you can read some of the silly comments people are making about this awful pressing, which happens to be one of the worst sounding versions of Sticky Fingers ever committed to vinyl.

When you stop to consider how awful most pressings are compared to the only version that has ever sounded good to us, the right original domestic LP,  that’s really saying something.

The MoFi pressing of this album is a joke. It’s so compressed, lifeless, and lacking in low end weight and power that it would hardly interfere with even the most polite conversation at a wine tasting. I consider it one of the worst sounding versions ot the album ever made.