con-wis

Many audiophiles are inclined to believe the conventional wisdom they receive from other enthusiasts.

Some of it is right, some of it is wrong, but if you don’t know how to critically listen to records for yourself, you will never be able to tell which is which.

You’ll be stuck with the approaches most audiophiles use — guessing and assuming. Neither are a reliable method for getting at the truth.

How Not to Conduct a Proper Shootout for Aqualung

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Jethro Tull Available Now

UPDATE 2023

This commentary was probably written in 2010 or thereabouts, since that’s the date on Fremer’s Aqualung review, which, for those with much more tolerance for audiophile BS than I am able to muster, can be found here. I’ve made a few changes to the commentary below, but most of the original text is intact.

We recently put up a Hot Stamper Aqualung that just BLEW THE DOORS OFF the CLASSIC 200g pressing. Michael Fremer may think the new reissue is the ultimate pressing, but we sure don’t. 

The Aqualung shootout on his site is priceless. He has so many silly things to say about it, let’s not waste any more time and get right to them.

His Shootout Begins

He says he “… compared Classic’s new 200g reissue with: 1) an original UK Chrysalis 2) an original American Chrysalis/Warner Brothers, 3) an original French Pink Label Island, 4) The Mobile Fidelity ½ speed mastered edition and 5) DCC’s 180g issue mastered by the team of Hoffman and Gray.”

How many of each? One, right? (All the articles in front of the nouns are singular. Assuming MF is using good grammar, how many could there be?)

Mikey, that’s your first mistake.

When it comes to the domestic release, one is a wholly inadequate sample size for pressings that were pumped out by the millions and therefore mastered multiple times. Go to Discogs if you want to see just how many different stamper numbers can be found in the original Reprise pressings. Hint: it’s a lot. Some of them are known to us to be awful, some fall into the middle of the pack, and some we like. Figuring out which are which has taken us a lifetime of work and is well beyond the ability of any single person to decode for more than a few dozen records.

Maybe you got hold of a bad sounding “original American Chrysalis/Warner Brothers,” did you ever think of that? The record bins are full of them.

If you did get hold of a bad one — and all the evidence points in that direction — the time and effort you put into your shootout just went flying out the window, defenestrated as they say.

Shootouts using only a small number of pressings have very little value. Anybody who claims to know anything about records ought to know that.

This next line just floors me.

Now rather than make value judgments, let’s just compare without prejudice.

This guy may not be good for much, but he sure is good for a laugh.

Does he really expect us to believe that the comments that follow are not biased in any way, that they are The Truth, that he is able to measure “intimacy and warmth” and tell us precisely how much of each there is on any given pressing? Who in his right mind thinks like that?  (At this rate he may end up wandering about a park with snot running down his nose, greasy fingers smearing shabby clothes, but let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. Help is available; perhaps Stereophile has a mental health plan under which he could be covered.)

Soon enough he goes on to give his opinion as to the merits of each of the pressings noted above. I’m sorry, did I say opinion? I meant comparisons without prejudice. Sorry, my bad.

The Big Truth

And of course he is more than welcome to make any and all the comparisons he deems fit, each from that lovely sample size of one. And if he wants to add another sample (size = 1) to the mix by playing the DCC gold CD, he’s welcome to do that too, which he did. I’m guessing that his CD player is every bit as accurate as his front end (comprising turntable/ arm/ cartridge/ phono stage/ cables), which, if he were to ascribe a percentage to the accuracy of all the pieces that make up this chain, would have to be in the range of 100% or thereabouts. Or as the late John McLaughlin might say, on a scale of one to ten: ten, meaning Metaphysically Accurate.

No colorations. No imperfections. Pure Truth, and nothing but.

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Out To Lunch on Liberty UA – “The Worst. So Metallic.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of Blue Note Albums Available Now

In our review for the White Hot Stamper shootout winner of Out to Lunch we played in 2023, we wrote:

Out To Lunch is finally back on the site after a four year hiatus, here with INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound throughout this early pressing.

Dolphy’s debut for Blue Note is an absolute knockout musically, and the quality of the sound on this pressing was everything we could have hoped for.

Both of these sides are amazingly transparent, with stunning immediacy and exceptional clarity – thanks, RVG!

Bobby Hutcherson murders on the vibes on this album – hearing his stellar, groundbreaking work played back on a Top Shelf (3+/3+) copy through a high-end stereo is nothing less than a thrill.

Turn this one up good and loud and revel in the glory that is Out To Lunch, the man’s Masterpiece, and a Must Own jazz album from 1964.

However, if you made the mistake of buying a Black and Blue Liberty UA label pressing, the one that came out in 1970, what you heard bears absolutely no resemblance to the glorious sound we describe above.

Black & light blue label with Blue Note 70’s logo in a square on left, Liberty UA. Inc., Los Angeles, California text on bottom. Runout is etched apart from “VAN GELDER” and “STEREO” that is stamped.

Yes, it may have been mastered by RVG himself, but it sure doesn’t sound much like the better pressings of the album we played in our shootout.

You might think that if Rudy recorded it, he should have known how to master it, so why pay the big bucks for the originals when the man himself was still cutting Blue Note pressings as late as 1970.

Seems like a good rule of thumb to follow, but in this case, it turns out to be a badly mistaken one.

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Letter of the Week – “Tom likes forward-sounding records, mastered for FM broadcasts. Steve masters for home stereos.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Fleetwood Mac Available Now

One of our good customers played some Hot Stamper pressings for a friend of his and wrote to tell us about  the experience.

Dear Tom,

There’s some fascinating sociology here with how contentious your business model is. It really tweaks people.

I recently made a friend who’s always been a vinyl enthusiast. He’s got a fantastic collection. My friend has worked with Steve Hoffman on a few projects in the past, and holds him in very high regard, both professionally and personally.

We got together over Thanksgiving and I brought along my hot stampers. We listened to them on his gorgeous Linn stereo. One by one, he could appreciate the differences in them, and confirm what I was hearing.

I put my Rumours hot stamper and then his Steve Hoffman remaster. I put my Mahavishnu alongside his first UK pressing. I played my Abraxas Hot Stamper against the MoFi OneStep, which he had heard of, but never actually heard.

We debated the sonic merits of each, noting the different decisions that different mastering engineers had made. In all cases, he heard what there was to like about the hot stampers. Despite the evident sonic differences, which we could both hear and agree to, we disagreed over whether that meant Better Records was really on to something.

My friend’s reasons to resist becoming a customer really had nothing to do with the listening experience we had just shared. “Tom likes forward-sounding records, mastered for FM broadcasts. Steve masters for home stereos.”

Or, “a 1A-1A pressing that’s been well cared for will sound the best by definition because that’s closest to what the artists intended.”

Or, “Tom says there’s variance from one biscuit to the next. That’s clearly absurd.”

All this, despite having heard the records! Now, to my friend’s credit, he did allow that he might have a look at the site and try one out, if a record he really loves pops up at a reasonable price. (As far as I know, he hasn’t done it yet…)

Anyway, I had to agree with him – your business model makes no sense in light of all our preconceptions about how to find great sounding records.

And, even when you hear hot stampers for yourself, the defensive walls still stay up. It’s possible to deny what you’re hearing.

Aaron

Aaron,

A quick note about 1A/1A. There was a time when we might have had 6-8 original pressings of a title, some 1A’s, some 1B’s etc. I would have loved to have let you borrow them and have your friend spot the 1A pressing, since it’s “the best.”

It is of course impossible to do that, but then you just lose friends when you embarrass them that way, and who cares what somebody else likes or doesn’t like, thinks or doesn’t think about records? I sure never did. The records sound the way they sound. Opinions, as you found out for yourself, have been known to vary.

Hoffman’s fans are true believers. Try blindfolding the guys on his forum and playing them a variety of pressings, of his stuff and others. They would not do a good job of knowing which is which by ear, which are the ones you’re supposed to like and which are the ones that shouldn’t sound good, your friend included.

But most audiophiles will never submit to this test because the rug might be pulled out from under them. That is a risk they cannot take. The only tests they are willing to submit to are the ones where they know what the answers are in advance, and, to make matters worse, the only answers they will accept are the ones guaranteed to corroborate their biases and prejudgments.

When Geoff Edgers of The Washington Post wanted to test me with a batch of mystery pressings, I said “Bring it on. I do this for a living, and I’ve been at it for twenty years. I know good sound when I hear it.” He went on to play me two of the best sounding Heavy Vinyl pressings I have ever heard (here’s one of them), as well as some of the worst. (Reviews for those are  coming, but there are only so many hours in a day and finding the motivation to critique mediocre Heavy Vinyl pressings is not easy when there are so many great records to write about.)

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The Reissues Consistently Beat the Originals on this Mystery Mercury

Hot Stamper Pressings of Mercury Classical Records Available Now

For Mercury classical and orchestral recordings, the original FR pressings on the plum labels are the way to go, right? 

In some cases, yes. We talk about how much better the FR pressings for The Firebird are compared to the much more common, and still quite good, M2 reissue pressings here.

The stamper numbers you see below belong to a different album.

The notes for the FR originals we played read:

  • Tubey but never as open or dynamic as RFR-1 can be.

The better of the three FR pressings we played was not a bad sounding record, earning a grade of 2+. They’re just not as good sounding as the RFR reissues, which, of course, are the ones that win shootouts.

Something to keep in mind: A Super Hot Stamper Mercury orchestral record is guaranteed to be dramatically better than any Heavy Vinyl reissue ever made.

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These Pink Label Pressings Can Sound Good, But Great? Not a Chance

Hot Stamper Pressings of Music on Island Records Available Now

Below you will see the bottom part of the stamper sheet for a shootout we did recently.

Please note that the album you see pictured is not the one we are discussing here.

It very well could have been been a Jethro Tull album, but all we can say for sure is that it was definitely an album on Island, which just happens to be one of our favorite labels, for sound and music.

The earliest pressings for many records on the Island label are not very good. This one — again, not for This Was, for some other record — is not a bad sounding pressing.

With grades of 1.5+ on both sides, it fits comfortably in our section for good, not great sounding LPs — but the right reissues from the 70s are a big step up in class sonically. They’re the ones that win shootouts, not these Pink Label LPs.

It’s big and clear but dry and spitty and badly needs tubes in the cutting chain.

Do the record collectors who prize the Pink Label pressings above all others notice these things?

Do the audiophiles who play them?

Been There, Done That

We’ve run into so many sonically-flawed Pink Label Islands by now that hearing one sound lackluster if not actually awful doesn’t phase us in the least. Some of the other Pink Labels that never win shootouts can be found here.

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A Killer Reissue Pressing of Jazz Samba Won Our Shootout

Hot Stamper Pressings of Bossa Nova Albums Available Now

A killer copy of Jazz Samba (the first to hit the site in over four years) with INSANELY GOOD Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound from first note to last – exceptionally (and exceptionally rare) quiet vinyl too.

This is by far the best copy of the album we have ever played — we had no idea a copy could possibly sound this good and be pressed on vinyl this quiet.

Remarkably spacious and three-dimensional, as well as relaxed and full-bodied – this pressing was a big step up over all of the other pressings we played in our recent shootout.

No other copy earned a better grade than 2+ on either side, and some of the originals were godawful (watch for the “wrong” stampers coming to the blog soon).

As you can see from the notes, both sides of our most recent White Hot stamper shootout winning copy were doing everything right. This copy was so good that it qualified to be in our Top Shelf section, for records with two shootout winning sides.

You know what’s unusual about these notes?

They’re the kind of notes we’ve never written for any Heavy Vinyl reissue, even for the one that won our shootout not long ago.

They are the kind of notes that make it clear to us what a sham the modern Heavy Vinyl pressing tends to be, even those that are done right.

No modern record we’ve ever played has ever had anything even approaching this kind of big as life sound, and we doubt one ever will.

Records like this vintage vinyl pressing are thrilling in a way that very, very few records ever are.

Once you hear sound like this, you are not likely to forget it.

It sets a standard that modern remastered records simply cannot meet.

Hey, want to find your own top quality copy?

Consider taking our moderately helpful advice concerning the pressings that consistently win our shootouts.

This record has been sounding its best for many years, in shootout after shootout, this way:

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Talk About Getting the Sound Wrong – What Was Decca Thinking?

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

Even though we know that the UK Decca pressings have not done well in our shootouts for more years than I care to remember, if we see one for cheap locally you know we’re going to buy it and get it another chance at the brass ring no matter how many times it’s failed in the past.

As you can see from our shootout notes, the Decca import has once again let us down.

It’s bright, with no warmth or weight. It’s not musical like the London pressings with the right stampers are.

If a certain kind of audiophile were to play this record, the kind of audiophile who might be given to simplistic conclusions based on insufficiently small sets of data — which, in our experience, pretty much covers the entire audiophile record collector community, including, if not especially, the so-called expert reviewers — the conclusion such a person might reach is that Beggars Banquet is just not very well recorded.

If Decca pressings don’t sound good, what on earth would?

Or, to put it another way, if Decca, the label that the Stones recorded this album for, can’t figure out how to make Beggars sound its best, why would we assume that any other company could?

We would, naturally, assume that Decca did the best they could with the tape and the mediocre quality of the sound you hear — 1+/1.5+ is pretty much our definition of mediocre — is all there is.

The Option that Is Almost Always Wrong

Worse — if a new Heavy Vinyl pressing of the album came out with even halfway-decent sound, then it would prove beyond a doubt that some modern mastering engineer had finally figured out how to get Beggars to sound right.

But of course it would prove no such thing.

If all you have to guide you is conventional collector wisdom, then the one thing you can be sure of is that the Decca pressing from the UK should have better sound than any other, especially any record made in the states.

But it doesn’t. It’s possible I suppose – we haven’t played every pressing ever made – but it sure is unlikely based on the evidence presented to our ears over the course of the last twenty to thirty years or so.

If you would like to hear Beggars Banquet sound right, and have the hundreds of dollars we charge for a copy that is guaranteed to sound right or your money back, click on the link. It’s rare that we have one in stock, but you never know.

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Could This Be the Sound Audiophiles Complain About with RVG’s Mastering?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of John Coltrane Available Now

A rare and expensive early mono pressing that we put into our most recent shootout was dreadful sounding.

Our main listening guy owns the record and made the note you see below, saying that his personal copy is every bit as bad.

The sound of the original was painfully midrangy and crude. It was not the worst of all the pressings we played, but it was nevertheless pretty bad, sounding nothing like our shootout winners.

We had a pressing on an early Prestige label in stereo, also mastered by Rudy Van Gelder, that was reasonably good sounding, earning grades of 1.5+ to 2+. It was sweet and relaxed, but relatively small and lacked the weight of the best.

For this music, we’ve found the best sound on the better Two-Fer pressings and the right OJC.

That Two-Fer budget reissue pressing, remastered by David Turner in 1972, can do very well in a shootout, but it can also fall far short of the mark on some sides, as you can see from the grades for these three other copies.

If you have the Two-Fer, how does yours sound compared to the four we auditioned (a shootout we were doing for the third or fourth time I might add), and how could you possibly know such a thing without a great many more copies at hand to clean and play?

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Years Ago We Badly Misjudged the Recording Quality of Tull’s Debut

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Jethro Tull Available Now

A clear case of live and learn.

We listed a White Hot copy of This Was in 2008 on the Island pink label and noted at the time:

Be forewarned: this ain’t Stand Up or Aqualung. I don’t think you’ll be using any copy of This Was to demo your stereo, because the recording has its share of problems. That said, this record sounds wonderful from start to finish and will make any fan of this music a VERY happy person. We guarantee you’ve never heard this album sound better, or your money back.

Now we know a couple of things that we didn’t back in 2008.

1). This album is a lot better sounding than we gave it credit for years ago. It’s not perfect by any means but it is much better than the above comments might lead you to believe.

We chanced upon an exceptional sounding copy of the album in 2017 or so, and that taught us something new about the record:

2). The Pink Label pressings are not the best way to go on this album.

Once we heard the exceptional copy alluded to above, we played it against our best Pink Label copies and it was simply no contest.

In 2008 we still had a lot to learn. We needed to do more research and development, which of course we are doing regularly with Classic Rock records, our bread and butter and the heart of our business.

We do them as often as is practical, considering how difficult it is to find copies with audiophile quality playing surfaces.

Nine years later, we felt we finally had a proper understanding on the various pressings of This Was. It goes like this:

The Pink Label original British pressings can be good, but they will never win a shootout up against copies with these stampers (assuming you have more than one copy — any record can have the right stampers and the wrong sound, we hear it all the time. Beware of small sample sizes).

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These Are the Stampers to Avoid on A Hard Day’s Night

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Beatles Available Now

In our experience, the stereo pressings with -2/-2 stampers are terrible sounding.

We do not have any on hand, but we doubt that -1/-1 — the original, the first, the one approved by George Martin himself! — is any better.

With -2 stampers this is a hall of shame pressing, as well as another early Beatles LP reviewed and found seriously wanting.

You may know that the pressings with -2 stampers are the ones that come in the original BC-13 Beatles Box from 1978.

Some of the titles in that set can sound very good, but this is not one of them. To recognize a mid-70s pressing, note that the back of the jacket will have a laminate strip on the side. At the bottom of this post you can find a picture of it.

Avoid that cover and the record inside it if you want a good sounding pressing of A Hard Day’s Night.

That Old Canard

The early pressings are consistently grittier, edgier and more crude than the later pressings we’ve played. So much for that old canard that “the original is better.” When it comes to A Hard Day’s Night it just ain’t so, and it doesn’t take a state-of-the-art system or a pair of golden ears to hear it.

The audiophile community seems not to have caught on to the faults of the early Beatles pressings, but we here at Better Records are doing our best to correct these and other misconceptions, one Hot Stamper pressing at a time.

It may be a lot of work, but we don’t mind — we love The Beatles! We want to find the best sounding copies of ALL their records, and there is simply no other way to do it than to play them, preferably by the dozens.

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