bri-str

Records with bright string tone.

This MoFi Makes My Head Hurt

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Richard Strauss Available Now

Is the painting on the cover that of a man whose head is suffering from the ridiculously shrill string tone of this MoFi?

Doubtful. Impossible actually. But that’s exactly how my head feels when I play one of these awful MoFi classical LPs.

Their rock, pop and jazz remasters were hit and miss in the old days, with some real winners hidden amongst the junk, but their classical releases that I’ve played, without exception, was a dog.

Want a good way to know you’re dealing with bad records and collector mentality?

When you find one of these records in your local used record store, it is almost guaranteed to be pristine.

Good records get played. MoFi’s classical releases, like plenty of other classical records audiophiles found attractive, got collected and spent most of their days sitting on a shelf, out to pasture so to speak.

(more…)

The RCA Later Label Pressings from the 70s Fall Short Yet Again

Hot Stamper Pressings Featuring the Violin Available Now

Many of the later RCA pressings we’ve played recently have left a lot to be desired.

We’re on record as telling audiophiles that it’s never a good idea to judge records by their labels, so when it came time to do a shootout for this famous Heifetz recording from 1963, LSC 2652, it was only fitting that we force ourselves to clean and play every pressing we had on the shelf, including the White Dogs and Red Seal reissues.

The White Dog did fine (2+ for the Bruch on side one, 1.5+ for the Mozart on side two).

The Red Seal had all the hallmarks of the transistory sound RCA apparently preferred in the 70s.

There are Red Seal pressings with excellent sound — some of them have won shootouts — but this one had too many similarities to the awful Classic Record classical titles produced in the 90s. You know the ones I’m talking about. They have bright, screechy string tone that no self-respecting audiophile with even passable equipment should find tolerable.

(The fact that many of them remain on the TAS list speaks volumes about the self-identified experts’ ability to distinguish a good record from a bad one. More on that subject below.)

More of the Same

Below you will find links to other records we’ve played that had the same problems as this RCA and are best avoided by audiophiles looking for high quality pressings to play.

There is no shortage of other records that we’ve run into over the years with these kinds of obvious shortcomings.

(more…)

This Mercury Is Not a Good Way to Enjoy Tchaikovsky’s 4th

More of the Music of Tchaikovsky Available Now

The pressings we’ve played of SR 90279 over the years tended to have crude and shrill sound. The string tone was bright and steely.

In our most recent shootout for the work, since we happened to have one in stock, we figured we would give the Mercury one more chance, just in case we had finally stumbled on some good stampers or that other improvements to our playback would allow the hidden virtues of the recording to be revealed. (Yes, thankfully that is still happening. So is the reverse; some records don’t do as well in shootouts as they used to, a reality every audiophile has to be on the alert for, a subject we discuss here.)

It probably lasted less than five minutes on the table.

It was simply too unpleasant to be played on the revealing modern equipment we use.

It seems that many early Mercury recordings suffer from these shortcomings. My guess would be at least half, maybe even closer to two out of three.

Waking Up

If your system is dull, dull, deadly dull, the way some audiophile systems tend to be, this record has the hyped-up, bright and aggressive sound to bring it to life in no time. (If you’re a fan of MoFi pressings from the 70s and 80s, you definitely have a much smoother top end than we do. Most of the records they made in those years are way too bright and full of the kind of phony detail that some systems need to wake them up. I should know; I had one of those systems myself, but of course I didn’t know it at the time and would have gone to the mat to deny the accusation.)

There are scores of commentaries on the site detailing the huge improvements in audio available to the discerning (and well-healed) audiophile. It’s the reason Hot Stampers can and do sound dramatically better than their Heavy Vinyl or audiophile counterparts: because your stereo is now good enough to show you the difference.

With a too-forgiving system, you will most likely continue to be fooled by bad records, just as I and all my audio buds were fooled thirty and forty years ago. Audio has improved immensely in that time. If you’re still playing Heavy Vinyl and audiophile pressings, there’s a world of sound you clearly don’t know you’re missing.

My advice is to get better equipment and spend as much time as you can learning to tweak and tune it. That will allow you to be better at recognizing bad records when you play them.

The Heavy Vinyl Route

If more vintage Mercurys had sound as bad as this one, we would happily admit that going the Heavy Vinyl route might make sense.

And there certainly are a lot of bad vintage pressings — we should know, we’ve played them by the hundreds — but the number of bad modern Heavy Vinyl pressings would give them a run for their money and then some.

Beyond this Tchaicovsky title, there are plenty of others we’ve run into over the years with too many sonic shortcomings. As a public service, here are about 60 of them, broken down by label.

(more…)

Our Old Prediction for LSC 2563 Came True

Hot Stamper Pressings that Feature the Violin

Many years ago we wrote:

This is a very old review and it’s doubtful we would not prefer the right Shaded Dog pressing these days.

That turned out to be the case, as we had two late-label 70s Red Seal pressings in the shootout we just did and only one of them was even passable.

A few things about the new pressings and the old commentary caught my eye.

First off, 3s is a fairly low number. The Shaded Dogs that win the shootout must be lower, which means they are either 1s or 2s. Not much to choose from there!

Secondly, the commentary you see below goes into great detail regarding what each piece found on the pressing was doing right and wrong.

It makes us sound like we knew what we were talking about when it came to this specific Red Seal pressing of the album we had played.

I assure you that we did not.

On the web I come across lots of reviews for audiophile pressings in which the writers go on for page after page about how much better the new Heavy Vinyl pressing is compared to the old record the reviewer owns.

This is no longer hard for me to understand. They are simply as lost as I used to be.

(more…)

This Living Stereo from 1958 Didn’t Make the Grade

Hot Stamper Pressings of Living Stereo Records Available Now

Our notes for this copy of LSC 2177 read “blary, bright, not nearly as good as Anserment’s recordings,” which are the ones we compared it to, both the complete ballet and the highlights.

In other words, it just sounded like an old record.

If you are looking for a top quality pressing with a performance to match, we recommend two:

  1. The complete ballet on three discs with Anserment conducting, and/or
  2. The highlights, on a single disc, again with Ansermet conducting.

This Shaded Dog might be passable on an old school audio system, but it was unpleasant when played on the high quality modern equipment we use.

There are quite a number of other vintage classical releases that we’ve run into over the years with similar shortcomings. For fans of vintage Living Stereo pressings, here are some to avoid.

(more…)

And to Think I Used to Like this Strauss Record

Hot Stamper Mercury Pressings Available Now

I used to like this Strauss Family Album back in the old days. Picked them up whenever I saw them, usually for ten bucks or less. They’re fairly common. It’s not exactly HiFi a la Espanola.

Now when we play this Mercury, it doesn’t sound so good. We traded what we had in stock back to stores or gave them away as freebies to our good customers.

A lot of records that I used to like because they were cleaner and brighter — later Red Seal Living Stereos, some OJC jazz, some reissues of rock — sounded much better when my system was darker and less revealing.

Side one of this copy has steely strings, the kiss of death on this kind of music.

Side two is passable, a low grade Hot Stamper. If you see this album for five bucks, pick it up and give it a listen. More than that and you should probably pass.

(more…)

Dreamer Tells You What You Need to Know About this MoFi

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Supertramp Available Now

This commentary was written about 2000, when the Speakers Corner pressing had just come out. We liked it back then, but I doubt we would care much for it now.

Listen to the vocals at the end of Dreamer.

If they are too bright, the bells at the end of the song sound super-extended and harmonically clear and clean.

But at what price? Now the vocals are too bright. Which is more important, good vocals or good bells?

There has to be balance. This is something audiophiles — and audiophile labels, who should obviously know better — seem to have difficulty appreciating.

We used to get these MoFis in on a regular basis, and they usually sound as phony and wrong as can be. They’re the perfect example of a hyped-up audiophile record that appeals to people with lifeless stereos, the kind that need amped-up records to get them to come to life.

I’ve been telling people for years that the MoFi was junk, and that they should get rid of their copy and replace it with a tonally correct version, easily done since there is a very good sounding Speakers Corner 180g reissue currently in print which does not suffer from the ridiculously boosted top end and bloated bass that characterizes the typical MoFi COTC pressing.

Brighter and more detailed is rarely better. Most of the time it’s just brighter. Not many Half-Speed mastered audiophile records are dull. They’re bright because the audiophiles who bought them preferred that sound. I did too, a couple of decades ago [make that four decades ago].

Hopefully we’ve all learned our lesson by now, expensive and embarrassing as such lessons so often turn out to be.

If your system is dull, dull, deadly dull, the way many of our older systems tended to be, this record has the hyped-up sound to bring it to life in a hurry.

There are scores of commentaries on the site about the huge improvements in audio available to the discerning (and well-healed) audiophile. It’s the reason Hot Stampers can and do sound dramatically better than their Heavy Vinyl or audiophile counterparts: because your stereo is good enough to show you the difference.

(more…)

Rhapsodies – Classic Records Reviewed

More of the music of Franz Liszt (1811-1880)

The lower strings are wonderful on the original — wall to wall, with that rosiny texture we love. I wrote at the time — this is twenty or so years ago — that the Classic pressing took that rich, dark sound and brightened it up, ruining it in the process.

Cellos and double basses just don’t sound like that. On the best pressings of LSC 2471, their timbre is Right On The Money. Of course, that’s the real thing, not some audiophile rebutchering. 

Now if you’re a Classic Records fan, and you like that brighter, more detailed, more aggressive sound, the original is probably not the record for you.

We don’t like that sound and we don’t like most Classic Records. They may be clean and clear but where is the RCA Living Stereo Magic that made people swoon over these recordings in the first place?

Bernie manages to clean that sound right off the record, and that’s just not our idea of hi-fidelity.

(more…)

The Planets – MoFi and UHQR Reviewed

Reviews and Commentaries for The Planets

Sonic Grade: Regular MoFi LP: F / UHQR: D

Years ago we auditioned an excellent sounding Decca Purple Label British import LP, the same performance, the same recording that Mobile Fidelity remastered (#510), but, thankfully, it sounded a whole lot better.

I just listened to both and a catalog of the faults of the MFSL pressing would be quite lengthy. I won’t waste your time listing them.

Although the recording is far from perfect, the Decca pressing shows it in its proper light. It finds the right balance between the multi-miked sound of the super disc List Mehta and a vintage recording from the Golden Age such as the famous Boult.

The sound is very dynamic and the brass has tremendous weight.

Not the MoFi. It’s thin and bright.

Their UHQR is somewhat better, not quite as thin and phony up top, but not really very good either.

Avoid them both.

Our Recommendation

Our favorite performance of The Planets can be found here.

Many of Solti’s recordings from the Seventies are not to our liking, for reasons we lay out here.

Our Pledge of Service to You, the Discriminating Audiophile 

We play mediocre-to-bad sounding pressings so that you don’t have to, a free service from your record-loving friends at Better Records.

(more…)