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Albums mastered by Bernie Grundman.

Casino Royale Is Really a Mess on Classic Records Vinyl

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Burt Bacharach Available Now

Casino Royale under the sway of Bernie’s penchant for bright, gritty, sour, ambience-challenged sound? Not a good match. There is no reissue, and there will never be a reissue, that will sound as good as a properly-mastered, properly-pressed, properly-cleaned original.

And I hope it would go without saying that most copies cannot begin to do what a real Hot Stamper original can.

As is often the case, the Classic Heavy Vinyl Reissue is simply a disgrace.

Is it the worst version of the album ever made?

That’s hard to say. But it is the worst sounding version of the album we’ve ever played, and that should be good enough for any audiophile contemplating spending money on this Heavy Vinyl trash. Our advice: don’t do it.

Rob Wasserman – Duets

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Rob Wasserman Available Now

This rare and wonderful album from 1988 on the original MCA label offers outstanding sound throughout.

In-the-room vocal presence (Jennifer Warnes is stunning on Leonard Cohen’s Ballad Of The Runaway Horse) and tight, note-like bass are key to the best pressings.

4 1/2 stars: “Some amazing duets and a great lineup that includes Aaron Neville (v), Stephane Grappelli (violin), Dan Hicks (v, g), and so on. The jazz community missed this one.” [But the audiophile community loved it.]

Our old friend Bernie Grundman handled the mastering for Duets, back when he was still making good sounding records. Everything changed when he started working for Classic Records in the ’90s. Based on the scores we’ve played, the vast majority of his remastered pressings leave a lot to be desired. You can read more about them here.

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A Bad Pressing Tells You… What, Exactly?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Peter Gabriel Available Now

I wrote this commentary many years ago after a review I spotted online prompted me to crack open one of the Classic Records 200 gram Peter Gabriel titles and play it.

Let’s just say the results were less than pleasing to the ear.

Bernie Grundman had worked his “magic” again. As usual I was at a loss to understand how anyone could find his mastering in any way an improvement over the plain old pressings, even the domestic ones.

[UPDATE 2022: This is a foolish statement on my part, since the domestic pressings are by far the best sounding versions of the album. Live and learn, right?]

The Original Commentary

I had a discussion with a reviewer for an audiophile web magazine concerning his rave review for the Peter Gabriel records that Classic pressed.

I have just now played one, and it’s not as bad as I thought it would be. But of course it’s not very good either.

Not surprisingly, reviewers have a tendency not to notice these things. I’m not exactly sure how these people are qualified to review records when the most obvious tonal balance problems seem to go unnoticed.

The Classic is brighter and less rich.

Like a lot of the records that Bernie Grundman has cut in the modern era, the tonality is off. It is simply too lean.

This is not the right sound for this album.

That’s Bernie for you. After all these years, no amount of mischief he did for Classic — or any other label — surprises me.

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Heart Like A Wheel Is an Album Everyone Needs to Hear

More of the Music of Linda Ronstadt

Reviews and Commentaries for Heart Like a Wheel

We’ve recently compiled a list of records we think every audiophile should get to know better, along the lines of “the 1001 records you need to hear before you die,” but with less accent on morbidity and more on the joy these amazing audiophile-quality recordings can bring to your life.

The list is purposely wide-ranging. It includes some famous titles (Tumbleweed Connection, The Yes Album), but for the most part I have gone out of way to choose titles from talented artists that are less well known (Atlantic Crossing, Kiln House, Dad Loves His Work), which simply means that you won’t find Every Picture Tells a Story or Rumours or Sweet Baby James on this list because masterpieces of that caliber should already be in your collection and don’t need me to recommend them.

Which is not to say there aren’t some well known masterpieces on the list, because not every well known record is necessarily well known to audiophiles, and some records are just too good not to put on a list of records we think every audiophile ought to get to know better.

Out of the thousands of records we have auditioned and reviewed, there are a couple of hundred that have stood the test of time for us and we feel are deserving of a listen. Many of these will not be to your taste, but they were to mine.

Heart Like A Wheel

I’ve been playing HLAW since the year it came out, roughly 48 years by my calculation, and I can tell you it is no easy task to find this kind of smooth, sweet, analog sound on the album. Folks, we heard it for ourselves: the Heart Like A Wheel magic is here on practically every song.

A Must Own Pop Record

Linda’s Masterpiece, and a recording that should be part of any serious Popular Music Collection. Others that belong in that category can be found here.

The Hunter Is Awful on Import Vinyl (and Any Other Way)

More of the Music of Jennifer Warnes

More Records I Could Happily Live Without

Sonic Grade: F

A hall of shame pressing on import vinyl from 1992. Many years ago we wrote:

This is a SUPER RARE Private Music German Import LP. The last two copies of this record listed on eBay went for over $600! 

All of which was true. We left out, however, what an awful record The Hunter is in every way.

If you like your heavily processed big production pop to sound as unnatural as possible, this is the album for you.

Not one instrument sounds remotely like it should, and that is surely an insult to audiophiles of every stripe.

The problem was that so many self-identified audiophiles did not seem bothered by the execrable sound, certainly not to the extent that we were.

Oh, but it’s on vinyl! That should solve all the problems with the recording.

Yes, the CD was bad, but the vinyl was no better. I had them both and couldn’t stand either.

But FBR Is Killer on the Right Pressings

The only album we like of Ms Warnes is Famous Blue Raincoat.

It is her masterpiece, a core collection record, and a clear case of one and done.

When you have a good copy of Famous Blue Raincoat, you have all the Jennifer Warnes we think you will ever need.

Further Reading

Bernie Grundman’s Work for Classic Records in Four Words

Hot Stamper Pressings of Mercury Recordings Available Now

Hard, sour, colored and crude.

Oh, and airless. Make that five words.

It’s been quite a while since I played the Classic pressing of Balalaika Favorites, but I remember it as unpleasantly hard and sour.

Many of the later Mercury reissues — some pressed by Columbia, some not — had that sound, so I was already familiar with it when their pressing came out in 1998 as part of the just-plain-awful Mercury series they released.

I suspect I would hear it that way today. Bernie Grundman could cut the bass, the dynamics, and the energy onto the record.

Everything else was worse 99% of the time.

The fast transients of the plucked strings of the Balalaikas were way beyond the ability of his colored and crude cutting system.

In addition, harmonic extension and midrange delicacy were qualities that practically no Classic Records Heavy Vinyl pressing could claim to have.

Or, to be precise, they claimed to have them, and whether audiophiles really believed they did or not, Classic Records sure fooled a lot of them, along with the reviewers that vomited out the facile and reductive superficialities that pass these days for audio journalism.

The better your stereo gets, the worse those records sound, and they continue to fall further and further behind with each passing year.

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Does Bernie Ever Get Bored?

More of the Music of Linda Ronstadt

Years ago we wrote:

One thing we noted with interest while doing this shootout was how compressed the first track is. When the chorus comes in, and Linda seems to be singing louder — should be singing louder, with a substantial coterie of vocalists backing her up — the volume is actually lower. In the verse immediately following you can hear that not only is she singing louder, but the amount of dynamic contrast in her voice is greater. Go figure.

The compression also means that that song will never sound the way we would wish it to. But that doesn’t mean it won’t sound good. It means it will sound good in more of a radio-friendly way. On a good copy, one with relatively little grain and plenty of bass, the music can still be very enjoyable, and that includes a Number One Pop Hit like “You’re No Good.”

Do we still see things this way? Well, yes and no. It’s not exactly that we were wrong, but that better cleaning and better playback (all that revolutions in audio stuff) have now allowed us to hear that some copies are actually much more dynamic on this track than others. Quite dynamic in fact.

Think about it. Bernie Grundman is going to cut this record many, many times, maybe more times than he wants to. Is he always going to apply exactly the same amount of compression to each cutting, or is he going to experiment a bit and see what works better over time? Or maybe he just learned a thing or two as he went along.

Which is pretty much what we do when playing copy after copy. The best pressings show us precisely what it is they are doing when they actually work. We can’t know that in advance; we’re learning on the job so to speak.

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Glazunov / Violin Concerto – A Classic Records Winner

Hot Stamper Pressings with Jascha Heifetz Performing

Hot Stamper Pressings Featuring the Violin

This is a 180g Classic LP with very good sound, the best of the violin concertos Classic has released to date and one of the best Classic Records classical titles ever.

It’s one of the early 180 pressings which tend to be quieter than the later 200 gram pressings.

The Classic Records Liner Notes say:

Original pressings of this late Heifetz/Hendl/CSO performance tend to be edgy, which has been remedied on this reissue through cutting directly from the three-track masters by Bernie Grundman. Grundman has also tuned the balance between Heifetz and the Orchestra to better integrate the phenomenal bowing and intonation that Heifetz is famous for with the power of the Chicago Symphony. Another 10++ performance and recording – not to be missed! 

FURTHER READING

Classic Records – Classical (more…)

Crosby Stills & Nash – Classic Records Reviewed

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Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Crosby, Stills and Nash Available Now

Nice enough I suppose, but where is the Tubey Magical Midrange you hear on the best pressings?

The Classic Records 180g version of Crosby, Stills and Nash’s debut was a revelation when it came out years ago. Bernie actually cut it pretty darn right. However, his mastering chain cannot compete with the one used on the best vintage pressings. (Not the originals; the best vintage reissues.)

The evidence for this is overwhelming. There simply is no Bernie-Grundman-cut record that is the equal of the best pressings not cut on his current chain that I have heard over the years.*

His old cutting system, the one that cut Stardust and Blue and much of the Contemporary catalog, was KILLER. Wonder what happened to it?

Having said that, the Classic version gets you 70-75% of the way there and gives you quiet vinyl to boot, so it must be appreciated for what it is: a very good reissue, maybe even the best one Classic ever made. But not the real thing. Not even close. (more…)

George Cables – Cables’ Vision

UPDATE 2025

The rave review you see below is from 2020.

We got hold of some copies of this album this year in preparation for a new shootout and could not find the sound we thought we had heard back in 2020.

The record now sounds a little bright and rich, but too close to middling to devote the studio time to find the best pressing through the shootout process.

Please accept our apologies if you were not as excited by the album as we were years ago, yet another case of live and learn.

  • George Cables’ superb 1980 release finally arrives on the site with Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it throughout 
  • I’ve known about this Allen Sides Oceanway recording for decades – his stuff is smooth, punchy, solid, and alive with energy
  • 4 1/2 stars: “One of the most satisfying recordings to be released in 1980… this date features trumpeter Freddie Hubbard and saxophonist Ernie Watts in fiery form; the two horn players took time off from their much more commercial efforts for other labels. The solos overall are concise and make expert use of each note. Cables’ tunes are generally catchy and memorable while “Byrdlike” gives the virtuosos an up-tempo blues to romp through. This well-paced set is a gem that is highly recommended.”

This Contemporary pressing has wonderful sound. This should not be too surprising as it was recorded by one of our favorite engineers, Allen Sides, working out of his Oceanway studios. (Supposedly he is a big fan of vintage mics and the like. with many superb and valuable examples.)

On top of that the album was mastered by Bernie Grundman, who was at the time still cutting very good sounding records, this being 1980. Since then he has gone precipitously downhill, as we have noted on the site numerous times.

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