congest-loud-pop

Rock, pop, soul, and other such pressings that have a tendency to get congested in the louder parts of the music.

The Original Pressings of The Beatles Albums Are the Best Sounding, Right?

beatles help labelHot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Beatles Available Now

No, they are most definitely not. At least the ones on the label you see pictured are not (with the exceptions noted below).

We think it’s just another example of mistaken audiophile thinking.

Back in 2005 we compared the MFSL pressing of Help to a British Parlophone copy of the Help album and were — mistakenly, as you may have already surmised — impressed by the MoFi. We wrote:

Mobile Fidelity did a GREAT JOB with Help!. Help! is a famously dull sounding record. I don’t know of a single original pressing that has the top end mastered properly. Mobile Fidelity restored the highs that are missing from most copies.

The source of the error in our commentary above is in this sentence, see if you can spot it:

I don’t know of a single original pressing that has the top end mastered properly.

Did you figure it out? If you’ve spent any time on this blog you did.

Original pressing?

Is that the standard?

Why? Who said so? Where is it written?

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Nat King Cole Sings / George Shearing Plays – Mono Vs. Stereo

More of the Music of Nat “King” Cole

The reissue pressings rarely sounded right to us.

In addition, the mono copies were uniformly awful — small, congested and gritty.

Our Hot Stamper pressings — even the lowest-graded copies we offer –are sure to give you fuller vocals, more transparency, more weight to the piano and, of course, the tubey warmth of vintage analog.

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