krieg-wunderlich

Letter of the Week – “…so much more engaging and rich than I was used to.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Charles Mingus Available Now

This posting on an audiophile forum was made by our good customer ab_ba who authorized me to print it here. (It started out on Hoffman’s forum but was quickly taken down as the subject of Hot Stampers is verboten. I have added some bolding and italics.)

The title is the author’s.

Better Records Hot Stampers: Or, how I learned to stop collecting and love listening

We are witnessing an absolute explosion in vinyl. It’s thrilling, but it has also become frankly overwhelming.

What matters? The experience of listening, of course. But, how do we know, I mean, how do we really know, what listening experiences are going to be sublime?

Too often, collectability becomes our proxy for listening. We’ve all done it – chasing a near mint early pressing, a Japanese or German pressing, a re-press from a label we trust. We all end up with multiple copies of our favorite records, but only listen to one or two of them. And whether we sell them or not, it brings us some comfort to see their going rates on Discogs continue to climb. For me at least, FOMO was a strange driver of my buying habits. I regretted records I didn’t purchase, far more often than I regretted purchases I did make, even as I have about a year’s worth of listening in records still sealed on the shelf. I’m even afraid to open some of them because I can see their value is rising. Isn’t that silly?

My Philosophy Was Off-Base

I love records. Listening to them, curating a collection, is a joyful hobby. It gets at some need I can’t quite name. But, of course, records shouldn’t be only for collecting. They are for the pleasure of listening. My philosophy was pretty off-base. I didn’t even perceive it that way, and here’s what got me to realize it, and get out of it.

Last summer, I came across an original mono pressing of Mingus Ah Um in one of my local shops. It was labelled as a “top copy” and the surface looked pretty good. The price was a little absurd, and considering I had the [MoFi] OneStep and the Classic Records pressings, I wasn’t sure I needed it. But, this is an album I loved, even as a kid, even on digital, and a first pressing held a lot of allure. I took some time to think about it, do some online comparison shopping, and by the time I got back to the shop, it was gone.

In a fit of pique, I bought the copy Better Records was selling.

It was listed as a Super Hot Stamper, and it was slightly cheaper than the copy the shop was selling. With a 30-day no-questions-asked return policy, it seemed a safe bet.

An Initially Disappointing Hot Stamper Reissue Pressing

Well, you can imagine my disappointment when it arrived a few days later. Nicely boxed for shipping, I unsleeved what was clearly a later pressing. My disappointment magnified when the needle dropped and the first thing I heard was surface noise. I’ve been conditioned by the heavy vinyl renaissance to equate surface noise with a bad-sounding record.

But then, the instruments kicked in, and from the first notes I could tell I was listening to something really different.

It was clear, forward, and dynamic. Nothing harsh, even in the horns, but so much more engaging and rich than I was used to. It was the drum solo partway through the first track that convinced me I was hearing something special in this pressing. I sat and listened to the entire record without doing anything else, and for me, something that holds my attention to where I don’t want to grab my phone or a book is part of what defines a peak listening experience.

(more…)

Somethin’ Else on MoFi – How Is This Company Still in Business?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Recordings by Rudy Van Gelder Available Now

For our 2023 White Hot Stamper shootout winning pressing we wrote:

A triumph for Rudy Van Gelder, a top Blue Note title, and as much a showcase for Miles Davis as it is for Cannonball Adderley.

The best sides of this album have as much energy, presence, dynamics and three-dimensional studio space as any jazz recording we’ve ever played.

When you hear it on a copy like this, it’s hard to imagine it could get much better.

We’ve heard more than our fair share of tubby, groove-damaged originals and smeary, lifeless reissues over the years, but this White Hot Stamper blew them all away.

This is a record we could play every week and never tire of. 

But this expensive ($125) MoFi pressing had us wondering what the hell we were on about, because almost nothing about it is right except for something we were not expecting: it’s actually tonally correct.

What are the chances?

With Mobile Fidelity, slim and none, but in this case they managed to pull off slim. So let’s give credit where credit is due.

But the sound is still a mess no matter how tonally correct it is.

Allow me to list its faults based on the notes we took as the record was playing. The last line sums up the experience nicely.

1) It’s very recessed and lean.

2) The trumpet is thin and very squawky.

3) There is an exaggerated resonance in the peaks.

We summed it up this way:

Typical MoFi.

Flabby and compressed.

“Clean” yet the transients are soft.

Our final judgment:

Sucks more with each listen…

Man, that’s gotta hurt.

We made some other notes about how the MoFi compared to the originals and reissues we had on hand, but I did not reproduce them here for the simple reason that they gave away too much information about the pressings that tend to win shootouts.

Those pressings are hard enough to find as it is — we don’t want anybody finding them on his own and robbing our good customers of the chance to hear this amazing album sound the way it should: amazing.

Two to Four Questions

Is this the worst version of the album ever made?

Hard to imagine it would have much competition.

Are any of these Mofi One-Step pressings any good?

I seriously doubt it. Until one comes along that doesn’t sound awful, the jury is out. Those of you looking for miracles are likely to be disappointed.

Having said that, I’m sure there are audiophiles and audiophile reviewers who like the sound of this pressing and have said so online.

Based on what we heard, how on earth are these people qualified to judge the sound of records? I guess that’s three questions.

How bad does a record have to sound before they notice? Make that four, sorry.

(more…)

Why Is It So Hard for Mobile Fidelity to Get the Midrange Right?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Joni Mitchell Available Now

We recently auditioned the Mobile Fidelity One-Step pressing of Blue and made the notes regarding the sound you see below.

We focussed on the quality of their pressing’s vocal reproduction, for the simple reason that a Joni Mitchell album that gets the vocals wrong is a Joni Mitchell album that no music lover and certainly no audiophile  would ever want to play.

The fact that some audiophiles do want to play this record speaks poorly of their ability to reproduce it properly. Accurate playback will reveal the problems with Joni’s voice described in detail below. The post-it for side one is on the left, for side two on the right.

We try to be very specific about the shortcomings of these records, which is why we reproduce our notes whenever they are available.

Side One

  • Tonally not far off, a bit too stringy and flat. Not awful. Congested vocals at peaks, harsh. 1+

Side Two

  • Vocal peaks like “traveling, traveling, traveling…” or “California” get squashed and harsh, lacking the real dynamics, presence and space of the vocals. No grade. (Awful in other words.)

Notice that only the vocals are mentioned in the notes — not how deep the bass goes, not how high the highs are, not the tone of the piano, not the pluck of the lap dulcimer, not the black background, not the soundstaging — none of those things that audiophiles — including us! — like to talk about endlessly in our reviews so that everyone will know how attuned we were to every aspect of the recording.

For this album that kind of listening is unnecessary.

When the voice is wrong, the sound is wrong. What more do you need to know?

And when the voice is wrong on a Joni Mitchell record, you have a worthless piece of vinyl no matter how much you may have paid for it.

(Other titles that get the voice wrong and therefore should be avoided by audiophiles of all stripes can be found here.)

We noted in our first ever Hot Stamper listing for Blue what the best pressings of the album are able to offer the discriminating audiophile:

(more…)

There’s Something Not Quite Right about MoFi’s Blue

Robert Brook has a blog which he calls

A GUIDE FOR THE DEDICATED ANALOG AUDIOPHILE

Below is a link to a review Robert Brook wrote recently for the MoFi One-Step pressing of one of our favorite albums of all time, Joni Mitchell’s Blue, originally released in 1971.

BLUE: What’s the RIGHT SOUND For Joni Mitchell’s CLASSIC?

Blue Sounds Funny Now

Based on everything I am reading these days from Robert Brook, he has a good stereo, two working ears, and knows plenty about records and what they are supposed to sound like.

This was not always the case as he himself would tell you. His stereo used to be much better at hiding the faults of a record like the MoFi One-Step of Blue than the stereo he has now. He got rid of most of his audiophile electronics, got a better phono stage, cartridge and arm, improved the quality of his electricity, found some sophisticated vibration controlling platforms for his vintage gear and did lots of other things to make his playback more accurate and — we cannot stress this too strongly — more fun, more exciting and more involving.

When your stereo is doing a better job of reproducing what’s in the grooves of your records, the first thing you notice when playing a Mobile Fidelity or other Heavy Vinyl pressing is that the sound is funny and wrong. (Please excuse the technical jargon; those of you who have been audiophiles as long as we have will understand what I mean, the rest of you can just play along. All of this will make sense eventually.)

When you use colored-sounding audiophile equipment — but I repeat myself — then your colored-sounding audiophile records don’t sound nearly as colored as they would under other conditions.

For example, other conditions obtain if you have — again, sorry about the jargon — revealing, accurate, tonally correct, natural-sounding equipment, free from the colorations — euphonic and otherwise — that allow one piece of audiophile equipment to sound so different from another.

(more…)

Thriller Is Proof that Mobile Fidelity Is Cutting Some Real Crap These Days

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Michael Jackson Available Now

Don’t blame the digital step for the bad sound of this pressing. If it were all analog, you can be sure Mobile Fidelity would have screwed it up every bit as badly.

If this is the sound audiophiles are interested in, lord have mercy on their souls. They must be as lost as lost can be.

Side One:

Track One: thin and small, clear but badly lacks body and punch.

Track Two: unpleasant cymbals, no real dynamics.

Side Two:

Track One: no dynamics, bright and small.

Track Three: unpleasant and small.

Two Questions

Is this the worst version of the album ever made?

Hard to imagine it would have much competition.

Are any of these Mofi One-Step pressings any good?

I seriously doubt it. Until one comes along that doesn’t sound awful, the jury is out. Those of you looking for miracles are likely to be disappointed.

Having said that, I’m sure there are audiophiles and audiophile reviewers who like the sound of this pressing and have said so online.

Based on what we heard, how on earth are these people qualified to judge the sound of records? I guess that’s three questions.

How bad does a record have to sound before they notice? Make that four, sorry.

Bernie Was The Man

Bernie Grundman cut the original pressings of Thriller. About the nicest thing we can say about him these days is that his work at one time was excellent.

Our evidence? When you hear a killer copy of Thriller — a recording with a lot going on and one that no doubt was difficult to master — the fact that nobody else has even come close to cutting the album as well as he did all those years ago stands as proof that he will always be considered one of the greats. (If he would only stop taking Chad’s calls, the record world would be in a much better place.)

Speaking of Chad (a man who thinks he is “saving the world from bad sound“), we have now auditioned the new Aja UHQR. You can read all about it here.

(more…)

Our Filmed Tapestry Shootout Was a Real Shocker

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Carole King Available Now

The Washington Post article that Geoff Edgers wrote includes a video of a little shootout we did for Tapestry, using, without my knowledge, the MoFi One-Step, a Hot Stamper pressing, and a current, modern, standard reissue of the album. Could I spot the Hot Stamper without knowing what record was playing?

First up (and of course unbeknownst to me), the MoFi. My impressions from the video:

That’s probably tonally correct for this record. It’s just missing everything that’s good about this record, which is a meaty, rich piano. And the vocal sounds very dry. There’s no Tubey Magic. It’s tonally correct. If you were playing me a CD right now, I wouldn’t be able to tell you weren’t. 

Next up, the cheap ($20?), current reissue:

Piano’s better.

Voice is better!

Richer and smoother.

That’s what this is supposed to sound like.

Her voice sounds mostly correct.

This might not be a particularly good record. If I played a real one for you, you might just say, oh, my God, there’s so much more.

But this is not a wrong record. It’s not awful. It’s doing something… I don’t know if I would say most things right. I’ll just say something right.

At least the person understands what she’s supposed to sound like.

Then the Hot Stamper (a Super Hot copy as it turns out):

She sounds pretty right on this copy.

I think there’s more space.

You hear more space, more three-dimensional space.

The piano: there’s more richness to the tone of the various notes that she’s playing.

I would probably pick this one.

Jeff sums it all up as follows:

So we have a winner, and I couldn’t fool the Hot Stamper king.

Without knowing what he was listening to, he chose the hot stamper of Tapestry.

If he still had it, that copy would be sold for about $400 on the Better Records website.

When we went back and played each of the pressings again, the differences were much more pronounced. The MoFi still sounded like a CD, the current Columbia reissue was still no better than passable, and the Hot Stamper became even better sounding than it had been earlier, with sound the other two could not begin to offer.

Our grades for the three pressings would have been F, C and A, in that order.

In the video, you can see that it took me a few minutes to get deep into the sound, but once I was there, it turned out to be no contest. The Hot Stamper was the only pressing capable of showing us just how good Tapestry can sound.

Colorations Are Bad Now?

The MoFi was by far the worst sounding of the three. As I said, it sounded to me like a CD.

(more…)

Did Carlos Santana want to make music or produce fireworks?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Santana Available Now

Our good customer Aaron has lately been putting a great deal of time and money into the pursuit of perfect sound. His progress in audio since he discovered Hot Stampers and the kind of high quality vintage equipment we’ve recommended he use to play them has been remarkable.

In 2022 he wrote to tell us that the Super Hot Stamper Abraxas we had sent him and the Mofi One-Step he already owned were comparable in sound quality. Knowing what an awful label Mobile Fidelity is, and what a foolish idea Half-Speed Mastering is, you can imagine that we might have been a wee bit skeptical of this estimation, and we asked him to clarify his position.

Aaron also has made many improvements to his system since then. He carefully listened to both versions of Abraxas again and reported his findings. We believe that there is much to be learned from the kind of shootout that Aaron did for the album.

Hey Tom,

Oh, it’s a fascinating comparison! Here’s some data points, with the final one being the most relevant to your question.

I did another series of shootouts yesterday with my new vintage amp and speakers, and I included Abraxas in it. The bass on the onestep is monstrous and unreal. Sometimes the cymbals and chimes leap out of the speakers. I understand why people go gaga for this record. If you listen for sound, it doesn’t get any better than this.

Then I put on the hot stamper. The bass was back under control. Driving, but not dominating. The overall character was lighter and less ponderous. It was more listenable, more musical, and overall it was a relief to be less distracted by the fireworks. The vocals are back in front where they belong, and more palpable.

But, the hot stamper simply doesn’t grab ahold of you the way the one-step does.

When you describe the sound of the MoFi One-Step of Abraxas, with bass that’s “monstrous and unreal. Sometimes the cymbals and chimes leap out of the speakers,” all I hear in my head is a classic case of smile curve equalization, the kind MoFi has been using since the day they produced their first rock record in 1978, Crime of the Century. Years ago we noted:

We get these MoFis in on a regular basis, and they usually sound as phony and wrong as can be. They’re the perfect example of a hyped-up audiophile record that appeals to people with lifeless stereos, the kind that need amped-up records to get them to come to life.

I’ve been telling people for years that the MoFi was junk, and that they should get rid of their copy and replace it with a tonally correct version, easily done since there is a very good sounding Speakers Corner 180g reissue currently in print which does not suffer from the ridiculously boosted top end and bloated bass that characterizes the typical MoFi COTC pressing. [Of course, we no longer recommend anyone buy Crime of the Century on Speakers Corner. The better our system gets, the less we like them.]

That’s the sound of MoFi all right. The Hot Stampers we offer would never have those “qualities,” if you care to call them that.

Leaping cymbals and chimes? Are they supposed to do that?

Also, the bass on our early pressing would have to be “back under control” or we wouldn’t have sold it to you as a Hot Stamper.

Unsurprisingly, without all that extra added bass, the sound is “lighter and less ponderous.” Saints be praised.

Smile Curve Redux

With the smile curve adding to the top and the bottom, what suffers the most? The midrange. There’s less of it relative to the  now-boosted frequency extremes. We described the effect here:

The Doors first album they released was yet another obvious example of MoFi’s predilection for sucked-out mids. Scooping out the middle of the midrange has the effect of creating an artificial sense of depth where none belongs. Play any original Bruce Botnick engineered album by Love or The Doors and you will notice immediately that the vocals are front and center.

The midrange suckout effect is easily reproducible in your very own listening room. Pull your speakers farther out into the room and farther apart and you can get that MoFi sound on every record you own. I’ve been hearing it in the various audiophile systems I’ve been exposed to for more than 40 years.

Nowadays I would place it under the general heading of My-Fi, not Hi-Fi. Our one goal for every tweak and upgrade we make is to increase the latter and reduce the former.

Or as Aaron might have phrased it, “The vocals are back in front where they belong, and more palpable.” You sure got that right.

Musicality

Aaron was impressed with how much more musical our pressing is, noting: “It was more listenable, more musical, and overall it was a relief to be less distracted by the fireworks.”

Then he concludes with this, sending my head into a spin: “But, the hot stamper simply doesn’t grab ahold of you the way the onestep does.”

(more…)

Robert Brook Hears Something Funny on the MoFi One-Step of B,S&T

Robert Brook has a blog which he calls

A GUIDE FOR THE DEDICATED ANALOG AUDIOPHILE

Below is a link to a review Robert Brook has just written for the MoFi One-Step pressing of one of our favorite albums of all time, BS&T’s second album.

I do not doubt for a minute that it’s every bit as awful as Robert says it is. Probably worse! I made some rather extensive notes in the comments at the end of his review you may find of interest.

Blood, Sweat & Tears: How Do MoFi’s 2 Disc 45 rpm’s STACK UP?

We’ve written quite a bit about the album, played copies of it by the score as a matter of fact, and you can find plenty of our reviews and commentaries for the album on this very blog.

Based on everything I am reading these days from Robert Brook, he has a good stereo, two working ears, and knows plenty about records and what they are supposed to sound like.

(more…)

Robert Brook Does Abraxas Again, This Time on MoFi One-Step

More of the Music of Santana

Robert Brook has a blog which he calls

A GUIDE FOR THE DEDICATED ANALOG AUDIOPHILE

Below is a link to a review Robert Brook has just written for the MoFi One-Step pressing of Abraxas, the price of which now far exceeds what even the hottest stamper copies would sell for. Luckily he managed to borrow one from a friend. Had he paid good money for it, you can imagine that his review would have included a lot more exclamation marks. Bad sounding audiophile records upset me too, so I know how the man feels.

Review: Mobile Fidelity’s ABRAXAS ULTRADISC ONE STEP

We’ve written quite a bit about Abraxas, played copies of the album by the score as a matter of fact, and you can find plenty of our reviews and commentaries for the album on this very blog.

Moments ago I did a search for this title on the web, and I could not find a single review that was less than a rave, and some audiophile reviewers were calling the One-Step one of the best sounding records they had ever played. They all agreed: analog nirvana, or something like it, has finally arrived. Thanks Mobile Fidelity! You da bomb.

I myself have never heard the pressing, and have no intention of buying one or borrowing one in order to do so.

The sound that Robert Brook describes in his review is a sound I know all too well from playing other Mobile Fidelity pressings, some of which sound bad enough they defy all understanding. After playing one of their remastered records, I frequently find myself asking the same two questions: Who are these idiots and how are they still in business?

The Linda Ronstadt record this label released in 2008 is so awful we put it on our list of audiophile pressings that are the worst version of the album we’ve ever heard. You might even think we created that category of awfulness just to have a place for records of its ilk to get the attention they deserve. You would not be far off the mark.

The Genesis album MoFi released in the early 80s is every bit as bad, and the best part of the story we tell about their pressing is how much I used to like it. [1]

You think Modern Heavy Vinyl pressings are lifeless? Play this piece of crap and see just how bad an audiophile record can sound.

And to think I used to like this version! I hope I had a better copy back in the ’80s than the one I played a few years ago. I’ll never know of course. If you have one in your collection give it a spin. See if it sounds as bad as we say. If you haven’t played it in a while (can’t imagine why, maybe because it’s just plain awful?), you might be in for quite a shock.

As I never tire of pointing out, for the first twenty years I spent in audio I was completely lost. I sure didn’t think I was lost. I thought I had a really good system and I thought I knew a lot about records and audio.

But clearly I did not. When I read the posts of those on audiophile forums or the comments of those discussing our approach to finding better sounding records on videos and articles, I see a reflection of the foolish audiophile I used to be. Luckily I didn’t have internet access in the 80s. I still have copies of my embarrassing catalogs from back then, locked away ni a file cabinet and not up on the web for all our critics to feast upon.

Back to Robert Brook

Based on everything I am reading these days from Robert Brook, he has a good stereo, two working ears, and knows plenty about records and what they are supposed to sound like.

His story is not that different from my own. At the start of his journey, he found himself going in a particular audio direction. He was making some progress, but felt that he needed to take a different approach to get the sound he imagined was still eluding him.

Fighting the inertia that holds us all back in our lives, he reversed course and now finds that he is making progress by leaps and bounds, progress that surely would have been impossible had he stayed on the road he was on.

I did the same thing. I simply stopped believing what I read or was told and started testing everything for myself.

By 2004, after only 30 or so years in the hobby, that approach paid off. I had made enough progress in audio to officially start doing regular shootouts for vintage pressings I knew from experience to have top quality sound, potentially anyway. Teaser and the Firecat was the first Hot Stamper pressing we put up for sale. Our customers were ecstatic to pay ten times the going rate to get a pressing of Teaser that sounded better than they’d ever even imagined the album could sound. They wrote us lots of nice letters, more than 300 to date.

From that point on, we never looked back. Why would we? Our customers were buying Hot Stampers like they were going out of style. Records would go up on the site and sell in minutes.

Now, with a staff of ten, and having discovered much better ways of doing practically everything involved in finding Hot Stampers, not the least of which is using the knowledge we have gained from the thousands and thousands of different pressings we’ve played over the years, we feel confidant our records can hold their own against any and all comers. Especially those being produced today.

Bring it on, we say, and some audiophiles do. Most do not, but we’ve long been resigned to the fact that there’s little we can do about that situation. Even with a money back guarantee, the idea of Hot Stampers is just too absurd for some folks to wrap their heads around.

And the MoFi One-Step? I do not doubt for a minute that it’s every bit as awful as Robert says it is.

Down the road, A.B., our letter poster and source for the pressing Robert played, will no doubt come to recognize the faults that Robert lays out so clearly.

It took me a long time too.

[1] As far as Trick of the Tail goes, live and learn, right?