axiom

Better Records’ Record Collecting Axiom Number One

Handy Tips and Tricks for Collecting Better Sounding Records

In an old commentary we wrote for Carole King’s Tapestry album, we took shots at both the CBS Half-Speed mastered audiophile pressing and the Classic Heavy Vinyl audiophile pressing, noting that both fell far short of the standard set by the Hot Stamper copies we had come across years ago

This finding (and scores of others just like it) prompted us to promulgate the first two axioms of audiophile record collecting.

Better Records Record Collecting Axiom Number One

The better your stereo gets, the fewer Heavy Vinyl and Half-Speed mastered pressings you will choose to play, or own for that matter.

This assumes a fact not in evidence: that audiophiles get rid of their bad sounding records.

It has been my experience that the reverse is actually more often the case. Most audiophiles seem to like to hang on to their audiophile pressings, even the bad sounding ones. Why they do this I cannot for the life of me understand.

To me a bad sounding audiophile record is a record not worth playing. It should either be given away or sold, with any proceeds from the sale applied to the purchase of good records — you know, like the ones found on this site.

Click here to read Better Records’ record collecting axiom number two.

We Get Letters

Quite a number of our customers have written us about our Hot Stamper pressings of Tapestry, and their letters can be found here.

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Better Records’ Record Collecting Axiom Number Two

Thinking Critically About Records Is Key to Understanding Them

In an old commentary for a shootout we did for Carole King’s Tapestry album, we took to task both the CBS Half-Speed mastered audiophile pressing and the Classic Heavy Vinyl audiophile pressing, noting that both fell far short of the standard set by the Hot Stamper copies we’d discovered over the years.

This finding (and scores of others just like it) prompted us to promulgate the following axioms of audiophile record collecting. (Axiom Number One can be found here.)

Which leads us to Better Records Record Collecting Axiom Number Two

No two records sound the same.

If that weren’t true we’d be out of business. It is in fact the very foundation of our business. We wrote a commentary with that idea firmly in mind under the heading identical stampers + new vinyl = different sound?, which goes into that subject in more detail.

And it’s equally true for Half-Speeds — they’re records, right? — so we have a few entries in our we was wrong. section about those rare copies that actually have sounded good to us over the years.

For example, the chances of there being exceptionally good sounding CBS Half-Speed mastered pressings of Tapestry may be vanishingly small, but we can’t say the chances are zero.

There could be some, but considering how bad the idea of Half-Speed mastering is, would they have much chance of beating our Hot Stampers?

As a practical matter I would have to say the chances are zero.

They can’t beat the right early pressings, properly cleaned. They can beat lots of pressings with the wrong stampers.

There might be some copies that sound better than the mediocre Classic Records pressing, which is tonally fine but suffers from the basic issues most of Bernie Grundman’s remastered records suffer from.

Further Reading