DMM

Sting – Nothing Like The Sun

More Sting and The Police

  • A vintage copy of Sting’s killer double album from 1987 with solid Double Plus (A++) grades on all FOUR sides
  • The sound here is clearly bigger, richer, fuller, and livelier than most other copies we played it against
  • Features phenomenal contributions from legendary musicians, including Andy Summers, Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler, and Hiram Bullock
  • 4 1/2 stars: “…the melodies are insinuating, slowly working their way into memory, while the entire record plays like a mood piece – playing equally well as background music or as intensive, serious listening.”

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Simply Red – Men and Women

More Simply Red

More Rock and Pop

  • Simply Red’s sophomore LP makes its Hot Stamper debut with INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound throughout this original import pressing – remarkably quiet vinyl too
  • Both sides are amazing clear and transparent, with present and breathy vocals throughout
  • Analog at its Tubey Magical finest – you’ll never play a CD (or any other digitally sourced material) that sounds as good as this record as long as you live
  • “…the album holds up as a solid and assured work, and the musicianship is as stellar as you’d expect.”

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Whitney Houston – Whitney

More Whitney Houston

  • A vintage Arista pressing (one of only a handful of copies to hit the site in close to three years) with surprisingly natural sound for an 80s release, earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades from first note to last – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • Full-bodied, big, rich and solid, this album has the kind of analog sound we did not expect to find, but were pleasantly surprised, thank goodness
  • Lot of hits here: “I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)”, “Didn’t We Almost Have It All,” “So Emotional” and “Where Do Broken Hearts Go”
  • 4 stars: “Whitney Houston became an international star with this album. It sold more than ten million copies around the world, yielded a string of number one hit singles across the board…”

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Paul Simon – Graceland

More Paul Simon

Hot Stamper Pressings of Graceland Available Now


  • With two outstanding Double Plus (A++) sides, you’ll have a hard time finding a copy that sounds remotely as good as this vintage pressing – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • Richer and smoother, two important qualities all the best pressings must have, yet still clear and resolving – this is the sound you want for Graceland
  • Guaranteed to trounce the well-reviewed but nevertheless awful Heavy Vinyl LP in every way, or your money back and the shipping is on us
  • There’s a delicate, extended top end on this pressing that simply does not exist on the new reissue
  • 5 stars: “An enormously successful record, Graceland became the standard against which subsequent musical experiments by major artists were measured.”

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Columbia Released Mariah Carey’s Bad Sounding Debut in 1990

Digital Recordings with Honest to Goodness Audiophile Quality Sound

Very digital sounding, with way too much sizzle on the top end. Best to give this one a pass if you are looking for audiophile sound. If you are looking for audiophile sound quality, this site is full of the best sounding records ever made.

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

You can find this one in our hall of shame, along with more than 350 others that — in our opinion — qualify as some of the worst sounding records ever made. (On some records in the Hall of Shame the sound is passable but the music is bad.  These are also records you can safely avoid.)

Note that most of the entries are audiophile remasterings of one kind or another. The reason for this is simple: we’ve gone through the all-too-often unpleasant experience of comparing them head to head with our best Hot Stamper pressings.

When you can hear them that way, up against an exceptionally good record, their flaws become that much more obvious and, frankly, that much more inexcusable.

Further Reading

Bon Jovi – Slippery When Wet

  • A killer copy of the band’s smash-hit album, with Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it from start to finish – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • We guarantee there is dramatically more space, richness, vocal presence, and performance energy on this copy than others you’ve heard, and that’s especially true if you made the mistake of buying whatever mediocre pressing is currently on the market
  • “You Give Love A Bad Name,” “Livin’ On A Prayer,” “Wanted Dead Or Alive” – they’re all here with the HUGE Rock Sound missing from the average copy
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Slippery When Wet wasn’t just a breakthrough album for Bon Jovi; it was a breakthrough for hair metal in general, marking the point where the genre officially entered the mainstream… the best-selling album of 1987, beating out contenders like Appetite for Destruction, The Joshua Tree, and Michael Jackson’s Bad.”

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Nirvana – Nevermind from 2019

Reviews and Commentaries for Nirvana

A distinguished member of the Better Records Rock Hall of Fame and another in the long list of recordings that really comes alive when you turn up your volume.

An incredible sounding record, especially on a White Hot Stamper such as this (which is why this copy sold for $849!). I might even go so far as to say it’s better than practically anything recorded during the entire decade of the ’90s.

Man, when you’ve heard this record at its best, there is NOTHING like it. For the true Rock and Roll Audiophile Connoisseur, the man who will settle for nothing but the very best, we humbly offer this Nevermind Hot Stamper, the ultimate head-banging experience. (more…)

Bellybutton – Maybe Not a Perfect Recording, a Good One for Testing Though

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Jellyfish

I spent quite a few hours tuning up the stereo with side two of the album, specifically the song Now She Knows She’s Wrong, with its glockenspiel, loudly clanging tubular bells and yelling chorus at the end. 

It’s exceedingly hard to get everything right at the same time: the energy, the deepest bass, the extension at the very top of the top end, the greatest transparency, just to mention a few of the main ones. There are always trade-offs, and being able to balance the trade-offs against the gains in these areas and others is a real test of your critical listening skills.

It’s not a perfect recording, and those are usually the ones that can teach you the most about your system’s strengths and weaknesses.

DMM

The problem with the typical copy of this record is gritty, grainy, grungy sound — not the kind that’s on the master tape, the kind that’s added during the mastering and pressing of the record. When that crap goes away, as it so clearly does on side one of the copy we played recently, it lets you see just how good sounding this record can be. And that means REALLY good sounding.

While during the shootout I had completely forgotten that all the domestic pressings of Bellybutton are direct metal mastered. (The import pressings are clearly made from copy tapes and are to be avoided.) It was only afterwards, when looking for stamper variations, that I noticed the DMM in the dead wax .

On most copies the CD-like opacity and grunge would naturally be attributed to the Direct Metal Mastering process; that’s the conventional wisdom, so those with a small data sample (in most cases the size of that data sample will be no more than one) could be forgiven for reaching such a conclusion. Based on our findings, it turns out to be completely erroneous.

The bad pressings do indeed sound more like CDs. The better pressings do not. All are DMM, so the conventional wisdom, a term of disparagement here at Better Records to start with, again shows how little probative value it actually brings to the discussion.

We would love to hear a version of the album that was not Direct Metal Mastered, just for comparisons sake. That unfortunately is an experiment that cannot be run. What we can do is play the CDs — I have several, the earliest ones being the best — and note that they are clearly grungier and grittier sounding than the better LP pressings. Some of that sound is on the Master Tape, how much we will probably never know.

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On Ziggy, Avoid the Simply Vinyl and EMI 100 LPs

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of David Bowie Available Now

The Simply Vinyl version of Ziggy Stardust sounds just like the EMI that came out in the 90s. Neither are very good.

Flat, compressed and badly lacking in Tubey Magic, the right CD probably sounds better than either of these Heavy Vinyl pressings.

Even as recently as the early 2000s, we were still impressed with many of the better Heavy Vinyl pressings. If we’d never made the progress we’ve worked so hard to make over the course of the last twenty or more years, perhaps we would find more merit in the Heavy Vinyl reissues so many audiophiles seem impressed by.

We’ll never know of course; that’s a bell that can be unrung. We did the work, we can’t undo it, and the system that resulted from it is merciless in revealing the truth — that these newer pressings are second-rate at best and much more often than not third-rate and even worse.

Some audiophile records sound so bad, I was pissed off enough to create a special list for them.

Setting higher standards — no, being able to set higher standards — in our minds is a clear mark of progress. Judging by the hundreds of letters we’ve received, especially the ones comparing our records to their Heavy Vinyl and Half-Speed mastered counterparts, we know that our customers see things the same way.

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