fleetrumou-45

Letter of the Week – “I still find the WHS to Hoffman 45 comparison a particularly insightful one.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Fleetwood Mac Available Now

Our good customer Aaron is somewhat obsessed with the White Hot Stamper Rumours he bought from us a while back. He finds testing it against the Hoffman 45 RPM version of the album his audiophile friends own instructive, about their systems, what they listen for, and lots more.

I’ve added some comments which I hope are helpful as well. We’ll let him take it from here.

Dear Tom,

I still find the WHS to Hoffman 45 comparison a particularly insightful one. I remember the bass being bloated and wonky on the Hoffman, and tight and impactful on the WHS on my system. I found it that way on [my friend’s] system too, but sometimes live rock music has unpleasant, over-emphasized bass. The kids like it that way I guess.

Aaron,

The proper comparison is not live rock music because a studio album is not really trying to recreate the sound of the band in concert.

On the best pressings the sound should be tonally balanced and correct, with no faults of any kind to draw your attention.

A Super Hot could sound that way. The White Hot would be 25% bigger and clearer and more punchy and resolving while still being balanced and tonally neutral.

Having auditioned and tested them by the hundreds, it has been our experience that Heavy Vinyl records never come to life the way the best vintage pressings do.

You need the right system to hear the difference, and the more right the system, the more you will hear how big the difference is.

I didn’t make any particular note of the position of the vocals, but one thing [my friend’s] system does really well is imaging, so I’m inclined to trust his impression from where he was sitting. It might be that what he was experiencing as accurate, breathtaking sound was described as “forward.” Seems like a reasonable term for that experience.

That could be a bad wire, bad electricity, glare from hi-fi-ish electronics, bad room treatments or no room treatments at all, bad speaker positioning — lots of things make vocals more forward in either a good way or a bad way. This story might be helpful in understanding some aspects of midrange presentation we wrestled with when setting up our new studio.

From where I sat, I could agree with [my friend] that the Hoffman put the snare more forward than the WHS does, but whether you like that or find it a distraction is a matter of taste.

Which is why this is not a good test record.

Where is the snare supposed to be? Who can say?

Good test records are the ones where the sound is clearly more wrong or more right as something in the playback changes, whether it’s a new piece of equipment, a tweak, or a different pressing of the same music.

If the snare is forward on a system, you play an orchestral record and point to the fact that the violins are hard and the brass is honky, or the piano sounds clanky or vague, and then you know you need to fix something because none of those instruments are supposed to sound that way.

But a snare on a rock record?

You didn’t mix the album. You don’t know! Worse, you can’t know.

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Letter of the Week – “Tom likes forward-sounding records, mastered for FM broadcasts. Steve masters for home stereos.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Fleetwood Mac Available Now

One of our good customers played some Hot Stamper pressings for a friend of his and wrote to tell us about  the experience.

Dear Tom,

There’s some fascinating sociology here with how contentious your business model is. It really tweaks people.

I recently made a friend who’s always been a vinyl enthusiast. He’s got a fantastic collection. My friend has worked with Steve Hoffman on a few projects in the past, and holds him in very high regard, both professionally and personally.

We got together over Thanksgiving and I brought along my hot stampers. We listened to them on his gorgeous Linn stereo. One by one, he could appreciate the differences in them, and confirm what I was hearing.

I put my Rumours hot stamper and then his Steve Hoffman remaster. I put my Mahavishnu alongside his first UK pressing. I played my Abraxas Hot Stamper against the MoFi OneStep, which he had heard of, but never actually heard.

We debated the sonic merits of each, noting the different decisions that different mastering engineers had made. In all cases, he heard what there was to like about the hot stampers. Despite the evident sonic differences, which we could both hear and agree to, we disagreed over whether that meant Better Records was really on to something.

My friend’s reasons to resist becoming a customer really had nothing to do with the listening experience we had just shared. “Tom likes forward-sounding records, mastered for FM broadcasts. Steve masters for home stereos.”

Or, “a 1A-1A pressing that’s been well cared for will sound the best by definition because that’s closest to what the artists intended.”

Or, “Tom says there’s variance from one biscuit to the next. That’s clearly absurd.”

All this, despite having heard the records! Now, to my friend’s credit, he did allow that he might have a look at the site and try one out, if a record he really loves pops up at a reasonable price. (As far as I know, he hasn’t done it yet…)

Anyway, I had to agree with him – your business model makes no sense in light of all our preconceptions about how to find great sounding records.

And, even when you hear hot stampers for yourself, the defensive walls still stay up. It’s possible to deny what you’re hearing.

Aaron

Aaron,

A quick note about 1A/1A. There was a time when we might have had 6-8 original pressings of a title, some 1A’s, some 1B’s etc. I would have loved to have let you borrow them and have your friend spot the 1A pressing, since it’s “the best.”

It is of course impossible to do that, but then you just lose friends when you embarrass them that way, and who cares what somebody else likes or doesn’t like, thinks or doesn’t think about records? I sure never did. The records sound the way they sound. Opinions, as you found out for yourself, have been known to vary.

Hoffman’s fans are true believers. Try blindfolding the guys on his forum and playing them a variety of pressings, of his stuff and others. They would not do a good job of knowing which is which by ear, which are the ones you’re supposed to like and which are the ones that shouldn’t sound good, your friend included.

But most audiophiles will never submit to this test because the rug might be pulled out from under them. That is a risk they cannot take. The only tests they are willing to submit to are the ones where they know what the answers are in advance, and, to make matters worse, the only answers they will accept are the ones guaranteed to corroborate their biases and prejudgments.

When Geoff Edgers of The Washington Post wanted to test me with a batch of mystery pressings, I said “Bring it on. I do this for a living, and I’ve been at it for twenty years. I know good sound when I hear it.” He went on to play me two of the best sounding Heavy Vinyl pressings I have ever heard (here’s one of them), as well as some of the worst. (Reviews for those are  coming, but there are only so many hours in a day and finding the motivation to critique mediocre Heavy Vinyl pressings is not easy when there are so many great records to write about.)

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Letter of the Week – “I need to catch my breath here.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about the Hot Stamper Zep II he purchased recently, and we exchanged quite a few emails about his findings. 

As promised, we had given him a free copy of the Jimmy Page remaster so that he could compare the two, something we have always encouraged our customers to do, especially in this case.

Tom,

I need to catch my breath here. I rushed home to compare the two Zep 2s you sent. I played Whole Lot of Love on the Jimmie Page cut, then on the WH stamper. I was…stunned. Then I  asked my wife to come in to listen. She’s not a Led Zeppelin fan, so I said “Just listen to a minute of each track”. I played a minute of the Jimmie Page, she nodded, shrugged, and said “It sounds good.” Then I played the WH stamper. About 15 seconds in she exclaimed “What the F*CK?!?!”, and smiled. And wanted to hear the rest of the song.

You guys are geniuses to send the Jimmie Page LP with the WH. My friend insists on comparing it to his Classic Records copy, which we’ll do this weekend. I don’t think it will be a fair contest.

Is it worth $2,499? I know many people would say no. The vast majority. So I’m in the minority on this one.

Bill

Bill,

Such great news! It seems that even people who don’t care for Zep can’t resist the power of a hot copy of Zep II!

I will have more to say, and I wanted to let you know that we still want to hear from those who have compared the two pressings. If you feel like it, tell us what you think the differences are.

And the same with your friend and his Classic repress. That record was so bright it practically peeled the paint in my room. I doubt if it has changed much.

But you can tell me!

As we have said time and time again, the number of people that have ever had the privilege of playing a killer copy of Zep II like the one we sent you is small. It’s like owning your own rocket to Mars.

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Letter of the Week – “I wonder if you’ve ever had another customer who doesn’t own a turntable buy a White Hot stamper from you?”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Fleetwood Mac Available Now

Aaron has been trying to help his audiophile friends learn the differences between good records and Heavy Vinyl records. This first story concerns Chuck, who sold Aaron the VPI table you see pictured.

Aaron writes:

Chuck’s a real record guy. I played him some hot stampers, alongside the same record in heavy vinyl format.

First up was Rumours – white hot up against the Hoffman 45 mastering. He wanted to hear “you make loving fun,” so we did.

The drums on the Hoffman are more prominent, and they grab you right away. Way out of balance to my taste.

He said, “Hoffman’s done a great job with the drums. But it comes at the expense of Christine’s voice. That’s okay, I never loved her as a singer anyway.”

Next I busted out my holy grail, and played him my Zep 2 WHS. Followed up by the Jimmy Page remastering. The latter is indeed a decent record, Tom, as you say. But the clarity on the drums is superior on the Ludwig. [Clarity is not the word I would have chosen, but that’s another story for another day.]

As Chuck put it, “I never thought of this as a vocal record.” Plant’s voice just has so much more emotion on the hot stamper than on the Page version. He said, “the Page version takes out some of the humanity.” I totally agreed with that. Chuck was amazed that you were able to find and sell me a RL copy with such clean vinyl. I took the record off the table and showed it to him – he was amazed to see how scuffed it looked. It’d grade VG at best visually, but man does it play clean.

So, record after record, Chuck could hear what the hot stampers were doing. And, no doubt, the VPI table is making the hot stampers sound better, and in comparison, the heavy vinyl sounds even duller.

That said, this turntable is so much more revealing than my Clearaudio was, that there is always something delightful to listen to on my heavy vinyl records. They don’t sound worse, they sound better than they used to. It’s just that the gap between them and the hot stampers is only continuing to grow wider.

So, my man Chuck, who sold me his VPI turntable, saw the light. But then he shielded his eyes from it. Even though Chuck’s got a stack of 25 benjamins in his hand right now, I don’t think any of that is headed your way, Tom.

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Letter of the Week – “Your discovery is easily the most amazing thing of all the amazing things this audiophile has come across in 30 years of amazing things.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Fleetwood Mac Available Now

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

Hey Tom,   

Friend over recently, played Fleetwood Mac Rumours, 45RPM. He says that’s gonna be awful hard to beat. “With one arm tied behind my back! Watch this!”

Wow, that was more open….!

Your discovery is easily the most amazing thing of all the amazing things this audiophile has come across in 30 years of amazing things.

Keep at it, no one else can, we are counting on you.

Hi,

Thanks for the kind words.

Finding a pressing with amazing sound is our top goal in every shootout we do. It is not hard to beat the 45 RPM 2 disc set that Steve Hoffman mastered. This story has many similarities to the one you recount in your letter.

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Heavy Vinyl Quality Control? We Put That Proposition to the Test

bellcurve500

Important Lessons We Learned from Record Experiments

Part one of this commentary concerns the random nature of record making processes. It can be found here.

A Heavy Vinyl Shootout

A number of years ago (2011?) the opportunity to crack open two brand new sealed copies of a recently remastered Heavy Vinyl pressing came our way.

At the time, we were told that with this pressing every effort was made to produce the highest quality product and to maintain the utmost in quality control throughout the production process. They were adamant that every copy produced, from first to last, would be indestiguishable from any other. Not just in terms of surfaces, but sound quality too.

To accomplish this feat, the producer used the real master tapes (we were told, no reason to doubt him), had a well known mastering engineer do the mastering at a highly-regarded studio, then had a well-known audiophile pressing plant in Germany make the record, using the finest vinyl compounds available, in presses that meet the highest standards in the industry, operated by skilled individual of the utmost professionalism.

Any stamper would be replaced long before it could possibly be showing any wear.

All the metal mothers and stampers would be made in a way designed to eliminate all variation.

One and only one complete run would be made. If another was needed at some later date the whole process would have to be started over from scratch using the same strict quality controls.

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Letter of the Week – “I did a proper shootout this morning…”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Fleetwood Mac Available Now

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

Hey Tom, 

I’m on my fourth Hot Stamper now, and I’m having a wonderful experience overall. I wanted to touch base regarding a Super Hot Stamper (Quiet Vinyl) of Rumours. The sound is overall a delight, and although I have yet to do a head-to-head shootout with my 45rpm “audiophile” copy, I can sense I will prefer the copy I bought from you overall.

However, I really crave absolutely silent vinyl for this album, especially for The Chain. When the band comes to a halt, and there’s nothing but silence, it’s perfect. The particular copy I bought is pretty quiet when the music is playing, but the surface noise during quiet/silent passages is a bit of a disappointment for me. This leads me to believe that if a White Hot Stamper of Rumours popped up on your site, I would definitely want to buy it, in the hopes that the vinyl would be even quieter throughout. Do you think a White-Hot copy of Rumours is on the horizon?

I believe your policy is that I’ve got 30 days to return this one for money back, and then 12 months to exchange it, with some reduction. Knowing me, I’m going to want to get a white hot copy next time I see one listed, and I’d really love to do it sooner rather than later. (I say this assuming that one of the things that would separate a super hot from a white hot would be the level of background noise.)

Thank you
Aaron

Aaron,

Some thoughts:

Firstly, the surface noise grades and the sonic grades are not related.

Some records sound great and are noisy, some records sound great and are quiet, and nobody knows which are which until they get cleaned and played.

My advice would be to return the record so that we can eventually get you one you will be happy with. We do the shootout once or twice a year, so we should be able to find you a better sounding copy. A quieter copy is another matter.

We could do a shootout for 8-10 copies and find none that were any quieter than the one we sold you. 

We know what to listen for now, the quiet parts of The Chain. But that does not mean that out of the copies we play in any given year a copy with Super Hot grades would be quieter than the copy we sent you.

To get you a quieter one is a matter of luck, it might take three or four shootouts to get that lucky.

But if you want to keep the copy we sent you and basically “rent” it until we can find you a quieter one in a year or two, that is one of your options. We are good either way, Rumours sells very quickly, lots of folks waiting for a nice copy to show up on the site.

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