More of the Music of KansasHot Stamper Pressings of Prog Albums Available Now
Sonic Grade: F
Both this album and Leftoverture are way too bright and thin.
What were the engineers thinking — that brighter equals better?
In the case of these two titles it most definitely does not. It’s the sound that most audiophiles are fooled by to this day.
Brighter and more detailed is rarely better. Most of the time it’s just brighter. Not many half-speed mastered audiophile records are dull. They’re bright because the audiophiles who bought them preferred that sound. I did too, a couple of decades ago [make that four decades ago].
Hopefully we’ve all learned our lessons by now, expensive and embarrassing as such lessons usually turn out to be.
Waking Up a Dull Stereo
If your system is dull, dull, deadly dull, the way older systems tend to be, this record has the hyped-up sound to bring it to life in no time.
There are scores of commentaries on the site about the huge improvements in audio available to the discerning (and well-healed) audiophile. It’s the reason Hot Stampers can and do sound dramatically better than their Heavy Vinyl or Audiophile counterparts: because your stereo is good enough to show you the difference.
With an old school system you will continue to be fooled by bad records, just as I and all my audio buds were fooled thirty and forty years ago. Audio has improved immensely in that time. If you’re still playing Heavy Vinyl and Audiophile pressings, there’s a world of sound you’re missing. We discussed the issue in this commentary:
My advice is to get better equipment and that will allow you to do a better job of recognizing bad records when you play them.