one-track

Baby You’re a Rich Man

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Beatles Available Now

Below we discuss listening to Baby You’re a Rich Man from side two of the German Magical Mystery Tour album.

If you own a copy, play yours and listen for what we describe in this track by track breakdown.

For those who want to dig deeper into the sound of scores of other titles, our listening in depth commentaries have track breakdowns for some of the better-known albums we’ve done shootouts for.

Baby You’re A Rich Man

This track is Demo Disc Quality on the best Hot Stamper pressings. As I was playing this song for the shootout, the following thought occurred to me:

If I had one track to play to someone to demonstrate what a thrill it is to have a big, expensive stereo, it would be hard to pick a better song than Baby You’re A Rich Man.

The only other one that occurs to me off the top of my head is Sergio Mendes’ For What It’s Worth from Stillness, a record we never have in stock by the way.

The sound is wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling and big as life. You can’t get that sound with screens and you can’t get it with smaller speakers and their smaller drivers.

Once you’ve heard that sound it’s hard to get excited about any other.

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“Traction in the Rain”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of David Crosby Available Now

I discovered If Only I Could Remember My Name sometime in the 90s, probably from reading about it in The Absolute Sound. When I was in my twenties and buying records regularly, the album was already out of print; I know because I went looking for it an nobody seemed to stock it.

The (awful sounding) Super Saver came out in 1975 and probably was deleted before long due to a lack of demand.

Once I had heard the record, it quickly became a go-to Test and Demo Disc, mostly for the song Traction in the Rain. The autoharp on that track is one of the most amazing things I have ever heard, on any album. The exceptional resolution and harmonic coherency of the multiple electrostatic arrays I was using for the mids and highs of my speaker system were perfectly suited to reproduce that instrument, as well as the complete track with Crosby’s delicate, breathy vocal being another key element to the sound.

I listened intently for the notes that got louder and softer as the autoharp was strummed. The more different each note sounded, the more micro-dynamics I knew I was reproducing. I tweaked and tested my system for months, even years with this track. (Nowadays I might put it on the list of records that sound so good they’re not actually ideal for testing, but that’s another story for another day.)

I didn’t know enough to buy other copies and compare them to mine. I just knew it was a great sounding record that I could blow people’s minds with as a big speaker demo disc.

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Detail on Crosby, Stills and Nash – Holy Grail or Audio Trap?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Crosby, Stills, Nash and (Sometimes) Young

Detail may be the Holy Grail to some audiophiles, but listening for the details in a recording can be a trap we too easily fall into unless we are on our guard.

Tonal balance is the key.

Without correct tonal balance, no judgments about the details of the recording have any real value. 

A case in point: As good as the Classic Heavy Vinyl pressing is, the guitar at the opening of Helplessly Hoping tells you everything you need to know about what’s missing. The guitar on the better Hot Stamper domestic copies has a transparency and harmonic integrity that cannot be found on Classic’s version.

The Classic Records pressing gets the tonal balance right, but their guitar lacks the subtlety and harmonic resolution of the real thing.

I’m laboring here to avoid the word “detail,” since many audiophiles like bright, phony sounding records because of all their wonderful detail. Patricia Barber’s albums come to mind, along with scores of audiophile pressings. 

The MoFi guys and the CD guys are constantly falling into the trap of being impressed by the phony detail in some recordings.

The solution is to get the sound tonally balanced first, then see how much detail you have left.

Detail is not the end-all and be-all of audio. Those who think it is have systems that are sure to fall apart at louder levels. If the sound of your system on your best pressings doesn’t get better as it gets louder, you are failing one of the most important tests in all of audio, the turn up your volume test.

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Rockin’ Out to Victim of Love

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Eagles Available Now

This commentary was written more than ten years ago. Wouldn’t change a thing though!

Victim of Love is a classic case of yet another in the long list of recordings that really comes alive when you turn up your volume.

It’s the sound of this five piece tearing it up LIVE IN THE STUDIO. It’s also the track where the DCC just falls apart for us. Where did the rock and roll energy go? The DCC makes it sound like the band just doesn’t care, which was certainly not our experience when we were playing any of the killer Hot Stampers we came across.

Just the reverse was true; we had them turned up full blast and they ROCKED.

One reason the turn up your volume test is such a great test — in this case, the problem being the kind of lifeless sound that Heavy Vinyl pressings more often than not suffer from — the harder it is to ignore.

I might go so far as to say that Victim of Love is the best sounding track on the whole album. It’s punchy, real and MUSICAL in a way that nothing else on the album is, because it’s being played by a real band, live. The energy and coherency of the sound is like nothing else you will hear on Hotel California, and possibly on any other Eagles record. (more…)

Way Back in 2007 We Discovered the Hottest Meddle Stampers of Them All

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Pink Floyd Available Now

UPDATE 2020

This review from 2007 describes our experience of having stumbled upon the right stampers for Meddle. To this day, only these stampers and no others have won the many shootouts we’ve done for the album in the ensuing years, perhaps as many as a dozen shootouts or more.

These stampers are also very hard to find, which is why you may not have seen a copy of Meddle hit the site in a while. If we could find them, believe me, we would have them up all the time, as this is one amazing sounding album.

Want to find your own shootout winner?

Scroll to the bottom to see our advice on doing just that.

This Harvest Green Label British Import pressing has a side one that goes FAR beyond anything we’ve ever heard for this album. We had no choice but to award this side one the very rare A with FOUR pluses. We’ve never given any side of any other Pink Floyd record such a high grade, so you can be sure that you’ve never heard them sound this amazing.

  • Our lengthy commentary entitled outliers and out-of-this-world sound talks about how rare these kinds of pressings are and how to go about finding them.
  • We no longer give Four Pluses out as a matter of policy, but that doesn’t mean we don’t come across records that deserve them from time to time.
  • Nowadays we often place them under the general heading of breakthrough pressings. These are records that, out of the blue, reveal to us sound that fundamentally changes what we thought we knew about these often familiar recordings.
  • When this pressing (or pressings) landed on our turntable, we found ourselves asking “Who knew?“
  • Perhaps an even better question would have been “how high is up?”

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Listening for Harmonically Correct Acoustic Guitars on America’s Debut

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of America Available Now

The guitars on this record are a true test of stereo fidelity. As it says below, most of the pressings of this record do not get the guitars to sound right. They often sound veiled and dull, and on a copy with a bit too much top end they will have an unnatural hi-fi-ish sparkle.

This kind of sparkle can be heard on many records Mobile Fidelity made in the ’70s and ’80s. Tea for the Tillerman, Sundown, Year of the Cat, Finger Paintings, Byrd at the Gate, Quarter Moon in a 10 Cent Town — the list of MoFis with sparkling acoustic guitars would be very long indeed, and these are just the records with prominent acoustic guitars!

Three Roses and Rainy Day

The key song on side one that we use to test is Three Roses. There are three sonically-separated individuals each playing six string acoustic guitars, and when this side is cut right the guitars sound just gorgeous: sweet, with all their harmonic structures intact. (It’s also my favorite song on side one.)

The real test on side two is the song Rainy Day. Lots of guitars, and when the close-miked descending guitar figure comes in after the first few couplets, if it’s too bright, you’re going to know it. This song is the hardest one to cut and almost never sounds right. Some copies are cut JUST RIGHT. The vocals are breathy, the guitars are full-bodied, and the overall sound is airy, open, and spacious.

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Stevie Ray Vaughan – Beyond White Hot Stamper Sound

More of the Music of Stevie Ray Vaughan

Years ago we heard a copy sound so much better than any copy we had ever played that we gave it a grade of Four Pluses on side two.

  • Our lengthy commentary entitled outliers and out-of-this-world sound talks about how rare these kinds of pressings are and how to go about finding them.
  • We no longer give Four Pluses out as a matter of policy, but that doesn’t mean we don’t come across records that deserve them from time to time.
  • Nowadays we often place them under the general heading of breakthrough pressings. These are records that, out of the blue, reveal to us sound that fundamentally changes what we thought we knew about these often familiar recordings.
  • When this pressing (or pressings) landed on our turntable, we found ourselves asking “Who knew?“
  • Perhaps an even better question would have been “how high is up?”

The Sky Is Crying is one of the best sounding rock records ever made, especially if you are fortunate to have access to the kind of big speaker system that can play it at very loud levels like we do.

The song Little Wing rocks as hard on this pressing as any song we’ve ever heard, with demo disc sound to rival the greatest rock recordings of all time.

The guitar solos on Little Wing are as huge and lively as any we have ever heard (assuming you have a copy that sounds like this one).

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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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Hot Stamper Note Taking – Here Is What You Need to Know

Basic Concepts and Realities Explained 

Finding Hot Stampers is all about doing shootouts for as many different pressings of the same title as you can lay your hands on, the more the merrier.

The kind of notes we take can be seen below. 4×6 Post-its work great for this purpose, using one per side. We go through thousands of them every year.

Without specific notes on your records about exactly what you heard as you played them, you cannot possibly keep track of which pressings have the qualities you were listening for, and to what degree.

Extensive notes like the ones you see below are a must. Here is what I had to say about a copy of Rubber Soul.

Other reviews with post-its can be found here.

We also make every effort to be very specific about the shortcomings of the audiophile pressings we review, which is why we started to reproduce our notes for their reviews when they are available.

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The Best Reason to Go Deeper into Audio

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Graham Nash Available Now

This is one of the records that convinced me that I needed to actively pursue better quality home audio.

I realized pretty early on that I simply had to devote the time, energy and money into improving my system so that I could play records like Songs for Beginners better. I obviously didn’t know what I was doing — on one at the start does — but I knew I needed to figure out how to get my favorite records to sound more like live music.

I had such irrepressibly deep feelings while listening to the album that I knew I had to do everything in my power to get it to sound as good as I possibly could.

Songs for Beginners is an album that made me want to become a better listener.

And the song that really did it for me on the album was Better Days.

I was originally thinking of calling this commentary “Why I Became an Audiophile,” but I quickly realized that being an audiophile — a lover of sound — doesn’t necessarily involve buying lots of expensive audio equipment or endlessly searching out recordings with the highest fidelity.

No, being an audiophile simply means you love good sound.

Where you find it — at clubs, at home, in the concert hall or the car — should make no difference to anyone.

Songs for Beginners couldn’t make me an audiophile; I already was one. It did, however, make me a more dedicated audio enthusiast. It’s precisely the kind of record that rewards the 40 50 plus years I’ve put into this hobby, trying to get it and hundreds, now thousands, of other wonderful records to sound their best.

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