More on the Subject of Half-Speed Mastering
That’s an easy one. Over the 37 years we’ve been in the audiophile record business, we’ve played Half-Speed mastered LPs by the hundreds. As our ability to reproduce the sound of records improved (better equipment, table setup, tweaks, room treatments, electricity and the like), the gap between the better non-half-speed mastered pressings and even the best of the half-speeds grew and grew.
The half-speeds fell further and further behind, with so few exceptions to the rule that they could easily be counted on the fingers of one hand. There are currently four half-speed mastered titles that we carry as Hot Stampers. To put that in perspective, of the roughly two thousand Hot Stamper titles we offer, those four are the only ones to make the cut.
The most serious fault of the typical Half-Speed mastered LP is not incorrect tonality or poor bass definition, although you will have a hard time finding one that doesn’t suffer from both. It’s dead as a doornail sound, plain and simple. We’ve been playing half-speed mastered records since I bought my first Mobile Fidelity in the late-70s. That works out to forty years of experience with the sonic characteristics of this mastering approach, an approach we have found to have consistent shortcomings.
These shortcomings have somehow eluded the devotees of these records, no doubt the way they eluded me until I had improved my playback to the point where I could hear just how wrong they were.
I made a list of the worst sounding ones that I actually used to like, numbering more than 30, and you can read all about them here.
Their sonic shortcomings no longer elude us, and we have taken the time to lay out their faults, chapter and verse, in the commentaries you see below.