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Letter of the Week – “No amount of anything can replace the joy in my being upon listening to these sounds.”

More of the Music of The Beatles

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently:

Hi Tom,
I just had to shoot you this quickie email. I just put on side 2 of my recently purchased WHS of the White Album.

When “I’m So Tired” came on, I found myself standing there in disbelief, mouth wide open, going are you fucking kidding me?!!

Such a simple song sounded like I have never heard it before. Unbelievable… I had not idea it could sound that good.

Simply and absolutely amazing. I am so stoked to be listening to these amazing sounds.

Thanks Again,
Michel

P.S. No amount of anything can replace the joy in my being upon listening to these sounds. I feel so lucky to be experiencing this. Never will I take any of this for granted, as it is really special. You and your team deserve a medal or something!

Michel,

Glad you liked our White Album as much as you did! We feel lucky to be able to play amazing recordings like The White Album and get paid to do it.

We never knew any copy could sound as good as the one you bought either, not until we started doing shootouts for the album around 2005, and it took us until about 2015 before we stumbled upon the right combination of stampers for all four sides. As I wrote to another letter writer:

It’s amazing how good it sounds once you know which pressings are the good ones and which to avoid.

Hint: it’s the originals that are to be avoided, but don’t tell that to the average record collecting audiophile. They will think you have lost your mind.

Thanks for your letter. By the way, no medals needed. We’re just doing our job. Once you catch on to how records work, then finding the best sounding pressings ever made is just a matter of applying the needed resources. It took a staff of half a dozen about ten years to unlock the secrets of The White Album, so if you are trying to do this on your own, you will need something like 10 times 6 man-years, or a total of 60 years if my record collector math is right.

The relatively high price you paid, $1100, covers the costs of running a business with more than ten people dedicated to buying, cleaning, and critically auditioning the greatest recordings of all time, as well as the ten years of research we had to do before we could dare to price “common rock records” for more than a thousand dollars.

The result is the record you now own and can enjoy for the rest of your life.

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Are the Originals the Best Sounding Pressings of Moondog Matinee?

More of the Music of The Band

In the case of this album, no. The copies with the later covers always win our shootouts.

This is not the least bit surprising to us. We’re the guys who are all about sound, not originality.

We discussed it in this commentary: Are hot stampers just original pressings?

Side One

  • Ain’t Got No Home
  • Holy Cow
  • Share Your Love
  • Mystery Train
  • Third Man Theme

Side Two

  • Promised Land
  • The Great Pretender
  • I’m Ready
  • Saved
  • A Change Is Gonna Come

AMG Review

The Band essentially went back to being the Hawks of the late ’50s and early ’60s on this album of cover tunes. They demonstrated considerable expertise on their versions of rock & roll and R&B standards like Clarence “Frogman” Henry’s “Ain’t Got No Home,” Chuck Berry’s “The Promised Land,” and Fats Domino’s “I’m Ready.”

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Sergio Mendes + Psych + Your Mind Will Be Blown

mendestill_depth_1102533608More of the Music of Sergio Mendes and Brasil ’66

This commentary was written sometime around 2010.

If you are looking for DEMO DISC QUALITY SOUND with music every bit as wonderful, look no further — this is the record for you.

If I had one song to play to show what my stereo can really do, For What It’s Worth on a Hot Stamper copy would probably be my choice. I can’t think of any material that sounds better. It’s amazingly spacious and open, yet punchy and full-bodied the way only vintage analog recordings ever are.

This one being from 1970 fits the bill nicely.

Side two of this album can be one of THE MOST MAGICAL sides of ANY record — when you’ve got a killer copy. I don’t know of any other record like it. It seems to be in a class of its own. It’s an excellent test disc as well. All tweaks and equipment changes and room treatments must pass the Stillness test.

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These Two Lena Horne Living Stereo Releases Didn’t Make the Grade

Hot Stamper Pressings of Vocal Albums Available Now

The words “Living Stereo” on the cover are apparently no guarantee of good sound.

We have never played a copy of either of these two albums that was especially good sounding, certainly not good enough to charge the kind of money we charge.

We love female vocal recordings, but these two just did not make the grade.

There are a great many male and female vocal albums that actually did make the grade, most often by going through a shootout, and here are some of the categories we use to separate them:

We’ve Played ‘Em

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 these two in our Hall of Shame, along with others that — in our opinion — are best avoided by audiophiles looking for hi-fidelity sound. Some of these records may have passable sonics, but we found the music less than compelling.  These are also records you can safely avoid.

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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. (Emphasis added.)

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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Beethoven’s Violin Concerto – Classic Records Reviewed

Hot Stamper Pressings Featuring the Violin

An Audiophile Hall of Shame pressing and another Classic Records Classical LP we found seriously lacking in some of the most important qualities we listen for on the classical and orchestral recordings we audition.

The Classic pressing of this album does not present the listener with the sound of a real, wood instrument, bowed by horsehair, in a physical space.

It is an airless fraud, a cheap fake reproduction that’s incapable of fooling anyone currently in possession of two good ears, a properly set up hi-fi system and a decent collection of Golden Age violin concerto recordings.

The fact that a great many writers identifying themselves as audiophiles embraced Classic’s mediocre-at-best reissues tells me that they were lacking some or all of the above.

Notes from a Recent Hot Stamper Pressing (more…)

Big Speakers and Loud Levels Bring Out the Power of the Orchestra

Hot Stamper LPs that Sound Their Best on Big Speakers at Loud Levels

The darker brass instruments like tubas, trombones and french horns are superb here. Other Golden Age recordings of the work, as enjoyable as they may be in other respects, do not fully reproduce the weighty quality of the brass, probably due to limiting, poor eq, poor miking, or some combination of the three.

The brass on this record has the powerful weight and energy of live music like practically no other orchestral pressing we have ever played.

It’s also tonally correct. It’s not aggressive. It’s not irritating. It’s just immediate and powerful the way the real thing is when you hear it live. That’s what really caught my ear when I first played the recording.

There is a blast of brass at the end of Catacombs that is so big and real, it makes you forget you’re listening to a recording. You hear every brass instrument, full size, full weight. I still remember the night I was playing the album, good and loud of course, when that part of the work played through. The power of it was truly startling.

Back then I had the Legacy Whisper speaker system, the one with eight 15″ woofers. They moved air like nobody’s business. If you want to reproduce the power of the trombone, the loudest instrument in the orchestra, they’re the speaker that can do it.

Some of Ansermet’s recordings with the Suisse Romande are absolutely the best I’ve ever heard. It was a magical combination of the right hall, the right engineers, the right orchestra and the right technology — the pure tube ANALOG technology of the 50s and 60s!

Dynamics

Another thing this recording has going for it is dynamic power. This is a dynamic piece of music. Few recordings I have ever heard have the dynamic contrasts that this one does. It really gets loud when it needs to. The best pressings sound completely uncompressed. Although I’m sure there has to be compression of one kind or another, the listener is rarely made aware of it.

Dynamics such as these are thrilling. They let the music come alive.

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Letter of the Week – “…they sound WONDERFUL…..no surprise but LOTS of satisfaction!”

More of the Music of  The Grateful Dead

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently:

Hey Tom,     

Just got the Fresh Cream and Grateful Dead albums, cranked up the rig and they sound WONDERFUL, no surprise but LOTS of satisfaction! Thanks for your sale to enable this “poor” retired audiophile access to great sound.

Thanks for being such a unique person to have discovered what the audio world never really knew or appreciated or admitted to, and for making it available to others.

Best Regards,

EdZ

Ed,

It was our pleasure.

Thanks for your letter.

Best, TP

My Aim Is True Can Really Rock – If You Have the Speaker System to Play It

Hot Stamper Pressings of Elvis’s Albums Available Now

Yet another in the long list of recordings that really comes alive when you Turn Up Your Volume.

There is a line in the Hot Stamper commentary on the site concerning driving punk rock bass. Man, this record lives or dies by your ability to reproduce the powerful bottom end that propels this music.

Pardon me for cueing up a broken record again, and with all due respect to the things they do well — they must do something well, right? People keep buying them — small speakers and screens are not going to cut it on My Aim Is True.

This is precisely the kind of album they don’t do well with.

’70s-era JBLs, the ones with the 15 inch woofers, as awful as they may be in most respects, do a better job with an album like this than the average audiophile speaker system being sold today.

Two six or seven inch woofers, even three six or seven inch woofers, is not what anybody had in mind when they pictured the playback system for My Aim Is True — and they were right about that.

We’re talking about one of the best records in the history of rock and roll. It will never sound dated. It will never go out of style. It will reward repeated listening from now until you lose your hearing.

In that respect it’s like all the best records both you and I own: they are timeless, priceless treasures. 

Oliver Nelson’s Masterpiece – So Much Better Sounding on the (Right) Reissue

Hot Stamper Pressings that Sound Their Best on the Right Reissue

For those of you who still cling to the idea that the originals are better, this Hot Stamper pressing of the album should be just the ticket to set you straight.

Yes, we can all agree that Rudy Van Gelder recorded it, brilliantly as a matter of fact. Shouldn’t he be the most natural choice to transfer the tape to disc, knowing, as we must assume he does, exactly what to fix and what to leave alone in the mix?

Maybe he should be; it’s a point worth arguing.

But ideas such as this are only of value once they have been tested empirically and found to be true.

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