Record Collecting for Audiophiles from A to Z
Recently we received this inquiry:
Hello there! From my experience I can attest that there great sounding vinyl records.
I am not aware of the reasons for the variations in sound quality from one pressing of a title to another. It raised a question in my opinion that these same variations might also affect modern day pressings and therefore to dismiss a new reissued pressing out of hand would seem myopic.
I apologize if you’ve covered this somewhere on the blog, so a link would be appreciated if you have. Otherwise I am interested in your thoughts on the matter.
Thanks,
Harry
Dear Harry,
Thanks for writing.
With 5300 listings on the blog, it is indeed hard to find answers to questions such as the ones you pose. Even I struggle sometimes, and I’m the guy who wrote the darn things.
In order to answer your questions, I took the opportunity to go back through a few that I knew about and tag them so that they could all be found with ease.
Here are the links:
The short version of our current understanding is that even the best of these modern pressings never have much more than the bare minimum sound quality we would want to offer our customers, so why on earth would we bother?
The real thing is dramatically better, and that’s why we feel it’s best to put our efforts into the vintage pressings we play, since those are the pressings our customers seem to get most excited about. (Our weekly mailer of Shootout Winners comes out on Wednesdays and most of the best records posted in it sell within hours, often within minutes.)
Heard a Great Sounding Heavy Vinyl Pressing, Have You?
If anyone thinks he has an especially good sounding Heavy Vinyl pressing, perhaps one that easily beat all the vintage pressings he played against it, we would encourage that person to buy one of our Hot Stampers and find our for himself how good his remastered title really is, by putting it up against our best, on the same system he used, judging it by whatever criteria he chooses. (Please adjust your VTA for the thinner vinyl our pressings have.)
It’s the only way to answer the most important question in all of audio: “Compared to what?”
If such a person doesn’t hear the difference, or likes his copy better, or likes our copy better but doesn’t think the difference justifies the price, or for any other reason, he is free to return it. For new customers we even pay the domestic shipping back.
This Steely Dan title actually earned a 1.5+ grade for one side, but with a 1+ side two, it is not really good enough to sell. And since it was far from competitive with our better pressings, we quickly lost interest and moved on.
This Led Zeppelin title is still one of our favorites on Heavy Vinyl, but nobody else seems to agree with us as to just how good it is.
And now we have a new king of Heavy Vinyl: this Original Jazz Classic that actually won a shootout in 2024. (Nothing to offer our customers yet, but we expect to have something on the site this year.)
Any other questions, please feel free to write and I will do my best to answer them.
Best,
Tom
Further Reading
- New to the Blog? Start here
- Hot Stamper testimonial letters by the hundreds
- How to get the most out of your records – a step by step guide
