deeppmadei

Letter of the Week – “Hard to believe it can sound much better.”

More of the Music of Deep Purple

More of the Music of Jackson Browne

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently. He bought two Jackson Browne albums — The Pretender and Late for the Sky, not sure which he is talking about below — as well as the Deep Purple album you see pictured.

Hey Tom, 

I am taking my time going through all my hot stampers one by one. Still waiting for my cartridge to break in so I know things will only get better.

This album is amazing. I forgot how good it was. Only had the cassette back in the day and loved playing it in the car. The overall tonal balance is fantastic. Big, room filling sound. Jackson’s voice is just so well centered in the mix.

I think your rating may have been a bit conservative. Hard to believe it can sound much better.

Side 2 is probably my favorite and sounds even better than side 1 to my ears–but it is close. Another winner for sure.

Thanks!

Rob

Rob,

So glad you liked it!

As for the grades, we don’t keep them around, but we liked two copies better than that one, which just goes to show you never know how good a record can sound until you hear a better sounding copy, and we heard two.

This is something the forum posters of the audio world have always had trouble understanding.

They think they have a Hot Stamper when what they probably have is a good sounding record.

The word “probably” in the sentences above and below is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.

Nothing in audio or record collecting could be more important than appreciating how little we can really know and how much there is to learn. [3]

The forum posters of the audio world simply have no way to know how amazing the recording can sound — so much better than the record they own, probably — so they assume [1] they have the best.

They probably do not, but no one can actually know for sure, and that includes us.

We do not judge records we have never played (although we do like to make educated guesses about some of them from time to time, for sport if for no other reason).

A shootout would provide some of the evidence they need in order to know where on the bell curve their copy sits, and they have simply never conducted one. They have an anecdote, and not a very trustworthy one. What they lack is data [2].

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Deep Purple – Another Ridiculously Bad DCC Remaster

More of the Music of Deep Purple

Hot Stamper Pressings of British Blues Rock Albums Available Now

Sonic Grade: F

An Audiophile Hall of Shame pressing and another Disastrous Heavy Vinyl release with godawful sound.

What a murky mess. Dead as a doornail sound. Disgraceful in every way.  

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 kind of trash. Our advice: don’t do it.

There’s More Where This Pressing Came From

If this is the kind of sound you like, below are links to recordings that you may wish to pursue, with similar “qualities,” if I can use that term.

We don’t sell junk like this, but every other audiophile record dealer does, because most of the current group of mastering engineers making records for audiophiles have somehow gotten into their heads that this is the way records should sound.

We’ve been telling them they are wrong about that for years now, that good records have never sounded this way, but the collectors and audiophiles of the world keep buying their wares, so why should they listen to us?

These are the hallmarks of the modern Heavy Vinyl LP. Whether made by Speakers Corner, DCC, AP or any other label, starting at some point in the mid-’90s, the sound these labels preferred had an infuriating tonal balance problem we heard in practically every record we played.

A tonal balance that was just too damn smooth.

The phony boosted highs of the bad old audiophile pressing days are gone, replaced by the phony rolled off highs of today.

(Bernie Grundman cut hundreds of records for Classic Records starting in the ’90s, and it’s clear he chose to go a different way, but his way turned out to be every bit as problematical.)

Are the audiophiles who buy these new, super-smooth records any better off?

The ones with bright, phony systems probably are.

As we have been saying for years, first you need to have reasonably good sound. Then you can buy records that actually are good.

Here are some of our reviews and commentaries concerning the many Heavy Vinyl pressings we’ve played over the years, well over 200 at this stage of the game. Feel free to pick your poison.

Heavy Vinyl Commentaries

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Deep Purple – One of the All Time Great Sounding Live Rock Albums

deeppmadei_1606_1152215422More of the Music of Deep Purple

More Live Rock Recordings of Interest

Machine Head Live? That would not be far off, and the fact they brought Martin Birch along with them all the way to Japan in order to engineer a live album that was only supposed to sell to the Japanese market (!) could not have been more fortuitous for us audiophiles.

Machine Head is clearly one of the best sounding hard rock records ever made, and Made In Japan, its successor, sounds more like a top quality studio production than any live album I’ve ever heard. It’s shocking how clean and undistorted the sound is. Equally shocking is the fact that it’s every bit as big and lively as a Hard Rockin’ Live Album should be.

This is a combination the likes of which we hear far too rarely.

We’ve raved about a number of live albums over the years. Some of the better sounding ones that come readily to mind (in alphabetical order) are listed below. Fans of any of these bands can be proud to have a Hot Stamper pressing of any of these albums in their collection.

The albums I would want in my personal collection are noted with an asterisk [*].

  • The Band / Rock of Ages*
  • Harry Belafonte / At Carnegie Hall*
  • David Bowie / David Live*
  • Johnny Cash / At San Quentin
  • Cheap Trick / At Budokan
  • Eric Clapton / Just One Night*
  • Deep Purple / Made in Japan
  • Donny Hathaway / Live*
  • Jimi Hendrix / The Jimi Hendrix Concerts
  • Humble Pie / Performance – Rockin’ The Fillmore
  • Albert King / Live Wire – Blues Power
  • Little Feat / Waiting For Columbus*
  • Lou Rawls / Live!*
  • The Rolling Stones / Get Your Ya-Ya’s Out* 
  • The Who / Live at Leeds*

Having just played a stack of copies of Made In Japan, I’d put it right up there with the best of the best.

In terms of Tubey Magic, richness and naturalness — qualities that are usually in very short supply on live albums — I would have to say that the shootout winning copies of Made In Japan might just take Top Honors for Best Sounding Live Rock Album of All Time. Yes, the sound is that good.

Want to find your own top quality copy?

Consider taking our Moderately Helpful Advice about the pressings that have tended to win shootouts over the years.

In our experience, this record sounds best this way:

Watch out for this UK pressing, it sounds as dubby as the domestic pressings do.

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Deep Purple – Made In Japan

More Deep Purple

More Recordings Engineered by Martin Birch

  • Get ready to rumble! This UK copy boasts INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it on all FOUR SIDES – remarkably quiet vinyl too
  • A phenomenally well-recorded album that’s a true Demo Disc on an exceptional pressing such as this
  • Turn it up and you will hear sound that is incredibly powerful and natural with amazing presence, energy and weight down low
  • Marks in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these Classic Rock records – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you
  • Rolling Stone: “They’ve done countless shows since in countless permutations, but they’ve never sounded quite this perfect.”.
  • If you’re a fan of the band, this title from 1972 is clearly one of their best
  • The complete list of titles from 1972 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here.

Having just played a stack of copies of Made In Japan, I’d put the album right up there with the best recorded live albums of all time. In terms of Tubey Magic, richness and naturalness — qualities that are usually in very short supply on live albums — I would have to say that the shootout winning copies of Made In Japan would be very likely to take Top Honors for Best Sounding Live Album of All Time.

Yes, the sound is that good.

Machine Head Live? That would not be far off, and the fact they brought Martin Birch along with them all the way to Japan in order to engineer a live album that was only supposed to sell to the Japanese market (!) could not have been more fortuitous for us audiophiles.

Machine Head is clearly one of the best sounding hard rock records ever made, and Made In Japan, its successor, sounds more like a top quality studio production than any live album I’ve ever heard. It’s shocking how clean and undistorted the sound is. Equally shocking is the fact that it’s every bit as big and lively as a Hard Rockin’ Live Album should be.

This is a combination the likes of which we have never heard.

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Deep Purple / Made In Japan – UK Vinyl But Mastered in the States?

More of the Music of Deep Purple

Reviews and Commentaries for Made In Japan

To our dismay, we discovered that some of the stampers for some of the sides on some of the British import pressings are actually sourced from a well known American cutting house. When those sides did poorly in the shootout, naturally we wanted to know more about them in order to avoid buying any more pressings with those markings.

We had no idea the British would “import” the metalwork from here, but they did, and the results were not good, at least not for us audiophiles. I hope it goes without saying that we will not be selling any versions of the album that are not cut in England.

This is what you learn when you have lots of copies of the same album and play them against each other.

We constantly Experiment with Different Record Pressings this way and we recommend you do the same.

Carry out as many experiments as you can find time for. The quality of your collection — at least the sonic quality of your collection — will improve immensely.

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