brook-ideas

The “X-Factor” in Analog Playback

Robert Brook runs a blog called The Broken Record, with a subtitle explaining that his blog is:

A GUIDE FOR THE DEDICATED ANALOG AUDIOPHILE

We know of none better, outside of our own humble attempt to enlighten that portion of the audiophile community who love hearing music reproduced with higher fidelity — and are willing to go the extra mile and pay the extra dollar to make that happen.

The “X-FACTOR” in ANALOG PLAYBACK

Robert closes his story with some ideas that I have been advancing for years, ideas that, implemented with the seriousness and rigor required, are practically guaranteed to help anyone find more joy in the music they love.

Systems that have this X-factor are a rare thing indeed. The time and effort they require is far beyond what most of us are willing to put into this hobby, and even then, we need to be blessed with a good ear to boot.

But such a system is well worth striving for. And while not cheap, money only gets us so far in building it. Rather, we need to have a clear understanding of what we’re aiming for. We need to know what a system with this X-factor actually sounds like. Which means we need to be able to hear it in the first place.

Robert is a case study in what it takes to make the kind of dramatic progress in this hobby that he has achieved.

He also has written at some length about what motivated him to devote so much time and energy to the improvement of the playback quality of his favorite recordings. For some of us this is very familiar ground. It has been my experience that only the unrestrained love of the sound of music can be the driver of real success in audio.

Music does the driving, sure, of course it does, but the vast majority of music lovers never cared much about sound, which is no doubt why Spotify has been so successful. I hope to be able to find the time to write about an experiment I carried out not long ago comparing the sound of a track I heard on SiriusXM versus the same track called up on my phone with Spotify. The differences I heard really knocked me back on my heels.

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Your Shootout Questions Answered – Part One

Hot Stamper Pressing of the Music of The Rolling Stones Available Now

Robert Brook wrote to me recently with some questions.

Hi Tom,

I read your recent post about Sticky Fingers and the European TML reissues you included in shootouts.

It raised a question for me that I’ve been wanting to ask you for a while now.

The fact that the UK TML earned an A+ to A++ grade and that, with just a one copy sample, you wouldn’t consider that pressing to have shootout winning potential, suggests to me that the US pressings you favor will grade at A++ or higher.

In other words, if you put a shootout together of [redacted stamper] pressings and whatever else you like, does every copy in the shootout grade at least A++ / A++? Are the right stampers that reliable?

I guess I’ve always assumed that even if you put together a shootout with this or any other title, and even if you only include pressings that have won or placed high in the past, at least a couple of them would end up graded no higher than A+ or A+ to A++.

And if that is correct, wouldn’t it be worth buying more UK TML’s to see if any emerge that could win a shootout?

With Revolver, for instance, why not just do shootouts with [redacted numbers] if those are the ones that win the shootouts? Why even bother with [later pressings]?

Robert,

All good questions! I could go on for days with this kind of inside baseball stuff. I’ve been living it full time for more than twenty years, and it obviously interests you because you are actually trying to hone your shootout skills and figure out how many of what pressings you need to get one going, etc., etc.

Not many others are doing what you are doing in a serious way, so how helpful anyone will find this information is hard to know. Under the circumstances, I should have kept my answers shorter rather than longer but I could not resist going into more detail than might have been advisable. Feel free to skim if you like.

Why not put more TML pressings into shootouts?

If they had pressed plenty of them and they’d ended up sitting in record bins all over town for twenty bucks a pop, we could get a bunch in and see if we could figure which stampers, if any, are able to reach the Super Hot stamper level.

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Robert Brook Has a Question for the Audiophile Community

Are Hot Stampers for real, or are they for the birds?

(That’s a question I see asked a lot by audiophiles. You will have no trouble guessing what the answer tends to be.)

Below you will find some of the text from an email exchange I had with Robert, one of hundreds we’ve sent to each other as we found ourselves winding through the thicket of records and audiophile equipment.

It’s one we are constantly struggling to understand, in my case even after 40 years.

In this email he recounts a personal story about a yoga friend, exploring his reaction to an incident that occurred with a fellow yoga practioner and some of the psychological lessons he learned from it. What he learned, he has now come to realize, helped him see more clearly some of the things that are going on in analog audio, especially when it comes to the credibility of yours truly.

He also points out that I am not always as tactful as I should be, and I don’t doubt for a minute that he is right about that. Not my strong suit. I’m more in favor of the “tough love” approach, but after rereading some of my old emails, it’s often shocking — even to me — how blunt I can be. I’ll try to do better.

Please to enjoy Robert’s story.

TOM PORT and Why More Audiophiles Don’t Take His Advice

A GUIDE FOR THE DEDICATED ANALOG AUDIOPHILE

Robert has approached the various problems he’s encountered methodically and carefully along these three fronts:

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Julie Is Her Name – Now on Youtube

Hot Stamper Pressings of Pop and Jazz Vocals Available Now

One of our good customers has a blog which he calls

A GUIDE FOR THE DEDICATED ANALOG AUDIOPHILE

In the video below, Robert discusses how Tubey Magical his system is when playing an All Tube Chain recording from 1955, this without the benefit of any tubes in his system whatsoever. Quite the trick!

Everything was fine until he decided to track down a clean, quiet, good-sounding copy of Julie Is Her Name for a friend. As the saying goes, no good deed goes unpunished, and after buying scores of copies of Julie London’s records off the internet ourselves, we know firsthand how painful it is to have one noisy record after another arrive on our doorstep.

JULIE IS HER NAME: Worth the Effort!

 

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Your Shootout Questions Answered – Part Two

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Beatles Available Now

Robert Brook wrote to me recently with some questions about shootouts.

I answered most of them in Part One of this commentary. Here are the questions he posed that remain to be answered.

[I]f you put a shootout together of [redacted stamper] pressings and whatever else you like, does every copy in the shootout grade at least A++ / A++? Are the right stampers that reliable?

I guess I’ve always assumed that even if you put together a shootout with this or any other title, and even if you only include pressings that have won or placed high in the past, at least a couple of them would end up graded no higher than A+ or A+ to A++.

And if that is correct, wouldn’t it be worth buying more UK TML’s to see if any emerge that could win a shootout?

With Revolver, for instance, why not just do shootouts with [the best stampers] if those are the ones that win the shootouts? Why even bother with [later pressings]?

Robert,

First Question

If I may paraphrase, you’re asking, “do the right stampers always get good grades?”

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Robert Brook Discusses His Evolving Understanding of Bass

More from Robert Brook

Robert Brook has a blog which he calls

A GUIDE FOR THE DEDICATED ANALOG AUDIOPHILE

Below you will find a link to Robert’s story about the famous Charlie Mingus record you see pictured.

He had a number of different pressings, each of which showed him some qualities that the others lacked. Ultimately you have to pick one to play, and he did.

“GETTING” BASS with Charles Mingus’ BLUES & ROOTS

Robert went from a $20,000 speaker with one eight inch woofer to the Legacy III’s, a speaker costing less than half as much, with three ten inch woofers, to the Legacy Focus, a speaker quite a bit less than $20k, with three twelve inch woofers.

Robert learned something about his Parsifals by playing a speaker that could do so much more down low:

But I’ve learned since that, for all their strengths, the Parsifal had at least one fatal flaw – they made just about every record sound good.

Adding:

Making every record sound good is, it turns out, not a good quality to have in a speaker, nor in any other piece of equipment you use. At least it’s not if you want the best possible sound from your analog system.

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Curiosity and the Pursuit of Perfect Sound

One of our good customers has started a blog which he calls

A GUIDE FOR THE DEDICATED ANALOG AUDIOPHILE

He invited a friend and colleague to talk about his own personal journey through the twin worlds of audio and records, and we expect you will find his story excellent reading.

This bit caught my eye:

On my new stereo, my modern pressings and reissues sound better than they did on my old stereo. But what’s improved more, FAR more, is the sound of my vintage vinyl. Not just my Hot Stampers, but many of my other vintage records as well. Here is a sampling of the titles where I’ve been able to make a direct comparison between an early (like, pre-CD-era) pressing and a recent (vinyl resurgence) pressing: Led Zeppelin 2, Willie Nelson’s Stardust, Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, E. Fitzgerald’s Clap Hands Here Comes Charlie, Carmen, played by Ruggerio Ricci, Santana Abraxas, Carole King’s Tapestry, Blood, Sweat, and Tears, and Mingus Ah Um.

Good company to say the least!

Please to enjoy.