pinkfdarks

Letter of the Week – “I feel I own and can listen to something that a king or a millionaire would own…”

Hot Stamper Pressings of Pink Floyd Available Now

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

Hey Tom,  

Thank you so much for the Dark Side of the Moon White Hot Stamper. It is everything you said. I feel I own and can listen to something that a king or a millionaire would own, not an old codger like me!

Regards,
Peter D.

Peter,

You are very welcome. We like to say that a White Hot stamper pressing — of any album — is the one that takes the music to another level, typically beyond where the listener thought it could go, and it seems like that was the experience you had playing the record.

A king or a millionaire would have been very unlikely to get hold of the pressing of Dark Side that you played. It’s a pressing that is not well known in audiophile circles. Neither is it especially expensive.

It just happens to have the best sound for the album we’ve ever heard, and we’ve heard most of the expensive audiophile pressings, the ones that reviewers and posters will tell you will handily beat any and all comers, especially our humble import, and of course they never do.

If these audiophile pressings actually were better, why would anyone keep our Hot Stamper LP for ten times the money?

No, those who say these things about audiophile pressings are usually operating as a One Man Band, using a very small pool of data. It is very hard to do it that way.

I should know. I was a one man band for many years, and I was wrong a lot.

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Letter of the Week – “Why can’t all records sound this good…?”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Ambrosia Available Now

One of our good customers wrote to tell us about a very Hot Stamper pressing he purchased recently:

Hey Tom,   

Question:

Does Tom Port have any clue as to what the hell he’s doing or selling to the public?

That is my question.

Hello Tom,

I’m the idiot who spent $399 on your White Hot Stamper of Ambrosia’s first album a few weeks ago. I did an A/B listening test with an A++/A++ copy I bought from you a few years ago. Your website waxes lyrical about the exceptional qualities of this recording; I always thought it was very, very good but not quite the recording you make it out to be!

To perform my listing test, I listened to my A++/A++ side one first. Then listened to the newly purchased A+++/A+++ next. The results? I almost had to call 911 because my jaw hit the floor! THIS was the recording you had written about in the records descriptive comments. This pressing is so holographic I swear I could have stepped into the recording.

Dare I say this is a better recording than Dark Side of the Moon; and yes, I can make such a claim, I purchased an A++/A+++ – A++/A+++ copy from you guys a few years ago. This is what I refer to as Master Tape sound quality. A Holy Grail for audiophiles.

It’s pressings like this that pose the questions: Why can’t all records sound this good and why can’t all recording engineers be as great as Alan Parsons?

So, back to my original question. Does Tom Port know what the hell he is doing or selling to the public?

Yes Tom, I’d say absolutely, 100% you know what you are doing and I’m the happiest idiot on this Earth. Keep up the great work, Tom, and thank you and your staff for the incredible service you provide.

Todd N.

Dear Todd,

Thanks for your letter. I’m positively blushing!

Seriously, the right vintage pressing — on the right stereo — can take the enjoyment of music to a level far beyond that of anything being experienced by the audiophile of today, at least those who are stuck in a rut due to their misguided devotion to the modern Heavy Vinyl reissue. (more…)

Hot Stampers and Good Sounding Records Are Not the Same Thing

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Stevie Ray Vaughan Available Now

They are barely even related. Here’s why.

A good customer wrote to us recently to say that he was not happy with the Stevie Ray Vaughan White Hot Stamper pressings we had sent him.

Tom,

I also have a couple more returns for you: SRV Couldn’t Stand the Weather and SRV Soul to Soul. While these are good, they’re just not quite up to White Hot Stamper quality like some of the other records clearly are.

I took the opportunity to reply at length.

Dear Sir,

You appear to be conflating two concepts, Hot Stampers and good recordings. They are not the same thing. They are barely even related.

Hot Stampers are especially good sounding pressings of specific albums that we found through shootouts.

The recordings of these albums may be better or worse than others you are familiar with. That has nothing to do with how hot the stampers are of the pressings we sell.

It works this way: if you had a hundred copies of The Dark Side of the Moon, the median pressing– the one that would have ranked number 50 out of 100 — would sound substantially better than either of those two SRV albums.

Pink Floyd: amazing recording. 

SRV: good, not great recording.

We would never sell an average pressing of DSOTM. We only sell the best sounding versions of it.

We would never sell the average version of any SRV album. We only sell the best sounding versions of them.

But no SRV album is ever going to sound like a good Dark Side of the Moon! (more…)

Letter of the Week – “…there is no comparison to the experience of this record vs any other of the ~15 pressings I have.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Pink Floyd Available Now

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

Hey Tom, 

I was finally able to give the White Hot Stamper a listen.

I was blown away.

This record sounds so amazing. The sound is expansive….big, wide, and deep. With higher highs and extended lows that are still clear and pure.

It’s such a huge difference, there is no comparison to the experience of this record vs any other of the ~15 pressings I have, including one super hot stamper.

Awesome.

Thanks,
Alex

Alex,

Glad you liked it as much as we did!

White Hot means it won the shootout and had the best sound of any copy we played.

It sounds like that’s what you heard too.

We love it when our customers take the time and make the effort to do their own shootouts, especially when we win, which is what happens about 99% of the time.

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On Dark Side of the Moon, “Breathe” Is a Good Check for Midrange Tonality

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Pink Floyd Available Now

Breathe is my favorite test track for side one for any version of Dark Side Of The Moon, Half-Speed or otherwise. When the voices come in about halfway through the song, you can tell that most copies are too bright simply by listening to the vocals on this track. The cymbals might sound wonderful; lots of other instruments might sound wonderful; and there might be plenty of ambience, detail and transparency.

But all of that counts for nothing if the voices don’t sound right.

And far too many copies have the voices sounding bright, aggressive, grainy and transitory. (This is unfortunately the case with the 180 gram 30th anniversary edition. That pressing will wake up a sleepy stereo, but my stereo hasn’t been sleepy enough to play that recut for a very long time, and I hope you can say the same.)

The discussion below may shed light on some of the issues involved in the remastering of Dark Side.

Of course, most audiophiles are still under the misapprehension that Mobile Fidelity, with their strict ‘quality control’, which they spend hundreds of words explaining on their inner sleeves, eliminates pressing variations of these kinds.

Isn’t that the reason for Limited Edition Audiophile Records in the first place? The whole idea is to take the guesswork out of buying the Best Sounding Copy money can buy.

But it just doesn’t work that way. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but our entire website is based on the proposition that nothing of the sort is true. If paying more money for an audiophile pressing guaranteed the buyer better sound, 99% of what we do around here would be a waste of time.

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Letter of the Week – “NEVER would I have thought a single record could make this kind of difference…”

Hot Stamper Pressings of Pink Floyd’s Albums Available Now

Dan, our letter writer, is a new convert to the world of Hot Stampers. Although his system is modest by his own admission, the sound he was able to conjure up in his living room was “…a revelation…”

An amazing sounding pressing of Dark Side can have that effect on you.

Hi Tom,

I received this DSOTM yesterday…

First I played the 180gm 25th anniversary release, so I listened to the first side. While it didn’t necessarily ‘grab’ me, I sat through and listened, with the assumption that I really needed to get a feel for this to do a somewhat critical A/B listening experience.

Then I put this Hot Stamper on.

From the very beginning, I heard vocals I never heard before, in my 12 years of listening to this album. There was such a dramatically engaging ‘dreamlike’ flow to the music, that I have never experienced before! The soundstage was so 3-dimensional, the speakers disappeared, and moment after moment, I completely forgot I was sitting in my living room!

NEVER would I have thought a single record could make this kind of difference… it was TRULY one of those rare experiences – a revelation, of recreating an actual concert in one’s listening room.

While my system is quite modest by most accounts, this is a new chapter in the music playback book, to hear/ listen to something that is so lifelike, everything else disappears.

I look forward to enjoying this for a lifetime.

Sincerely,
Dan E.

Dan started out by emailing me about having some records cleaned, especially a copy of the Dark Side on Heavy Vinyl remastered for the 25th Anniversary of its release, by Doug Sax with the assistance of Kevin Gray (basically just using Kevin’s mastering chain).

My less-than-artful reply:

Dan, this is not a good sounding record. Cleaning it won’t help it much. Boosted top, zero ambience, it’s a dog on most levels.

My excuse for being curt?

Simply this: Who has time to waste talking about a bad sounding record? The world is full of them.

Their shortcomings are obvious to anyone with even a halfway-decent stereo. (Apparently such stereos are in shorter supply than one would think.)

Everything being relative; the Heavy Vinyl beat Dan’s SACD, so naturally he concluded that it must be pretty good, since SACD is widely considered the latest and greatest digital software around.

But we here at Better Records think all this digital foolishness is a load of crap and a sure dead end.

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The Dark Side of the Moon – 2003 Heavy Vinyl Reviewed

Pink Floyd Hot Stamper Pressings Available Now

An audiophile hall of shame pressing and a Heavy Vinyl disaster if there ever was one (and oh yes, there are plenty).

The 30th Anniversary Heavy Vinyl pressing is too bright. There is a boost in the top end, probably in the 12K region, that appears to be a poor mastering choice the late Doug Sax made, one that is surely not doing this recording any favors.

In fact, in the case of this new pressing, it’s positively ruinous, assuming you have set your VTA correctly and have the properly functioning tweeters to show you how bright this record is. If you like the phony detail a boosted top end provides, this record should be right up your alley. However, you would do well to recognize that this is a blind alley, and the best way forward is to turn around and start heading in the opposite direction.  

Some audiophiles revere a record like this (last time I checked, the average selling price on Discogs was $149.50) because they need it to wake up their sleepy stereos. My stereo hasn’t been sleepy enough to play this 2003 recut for a very long time, and I hope you can say the same.

As a service to the audiophile community, please click on the link below to find other records that your system should be able to make clear are too damn bright.

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Letter of the Week – “I just wanted to thank you for enriching the lives of us audiophiles.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of Pink Floyd Albums Available Now

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Pink Floyd

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased not long ago:

Hey Tom, 

I just wanted to thank you for enriching the lives of us audiophiles.

As I upgrade my system (and this time I made quite a breakthrough), I am beyond astounded each time one of the Hot Stampers you all sent me comes right along for the ride and blows my mind all over again.

I recently ordered a Hot Stamper of Dark Side Of The Moon. You know I’ve been dreaming of the day I can buy a grand copy from you. Until then, I buy the just nearly not as good copies you sell.

The A Side 1 and A to A+ Side 2 of DSOTM that you sold me a while back still has the power to blow my mind at parts. I am looking forward to seeing what a copy that costs almost four times the price can do. If it can! But I believe it one exists, you are the ones that found it.

You guys rock.

Best, Jeremiah

Thanks, Jeremiah. We aim to please, and, if I may say so myself, we do rock.

Thanks very much for writing. We’ve published a number of other letters like yours, written to us about Dark Side of the Moon. It’s a title we have difficulty keeping in stock.

As you point out, making progress in audio is key to getting these amazing vintage recordings to sound their best. We’re glad to know that you are hearing our records sounding better and better, something the Heavy Vinyl crowd doesn’t appreciate, especially those who still cling to the idea that this is a good pressing of Dark Side.

Here is an overview of the album you may enjoy reading.

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The Dark Side of the Moon – An Overview

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Pink Floyd Available Now

I admit to some bias when it comes to DSOTM. I must have played more than a hundred copies over the last forty-odd years. Whenever I was sure I understood exactly which copies had the best sound, again and again I was proved wrong by a pressing I had never played before.

We only found out what the best sounding versions were about five ten years ago. We did that by doing shootout after shootout with every version we could lay our hands on, starting around 2005. We even did a shootout for two different Mobile Fidelity pressings many years ago, which we think still makes for some good reading twenty years later.

It’s especially good reading for those who don’t appreciate how dramatic pressing variations can be for even quality-controlled limited editions. The comparison of the two MoFi’s centers around the idea that midrange tonality is by far the most important quality on Dark Side, and that, surprisingly to some audiophiles, but obviously not to us, there are MoFi pressings with a correct midrange and there are those without.

Our Take on DSOTM Pressings

The domestic pressings we have auditioned over the years have never made it into a real shootout. They have always sounded far too flat and veiled to be taken seriously. There are some very good sounding Pink Floyd pressings on domestic vinyl — Wish You Were Here and The Wall can both sound amazing on domestic vinyl — but Dark Side is not one of them in our experience.

The Doug Sax-mastered Heavy Vinyl version from 2003 we played when it came out was way too bright and phony to these ears. We hated it and made that clear to our readers at the time.

We came across a very early British pressing about fifteen years ago, the one with the solid blue triangle label, but it was not as good as other pressings we were playing back then and we never bought another one.

We’ve liked a lot of later UK pressings over the years, but we don’t go out of our way to buy those anymore now that we have heard the really amazing pressings we like now.

As I said, we discovered the killer stampers about five ten years ago, and that showed us an out of this world Dark Side we had no idea could even exist.

We have a name for records like those. We call them breakthrough pressings, and we used to award them a sonic grade of more than Three Pluses in some cases.

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Letter of the Week – “…makes my years of developing and investing in my stereo worthwhile.”

More of the Music of Simon and Garfunkel

More of the Music of Pink Floyd

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

Hey Tom, 

I absolutely love my Hot Stamper of Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme, and of Dark Side of the Moon, and so many others that you have sold to me.

I find myself just playing the same side over and over, never tiring of the music. Which is something I never do with a CD….. no matter with a Reimyo CD player, or CEC TL-1X with Audiologic DAC, or even Acoustic Arts DAC, which actually sounds pretty good, but still fatiguing, and missing the immediacy and soul of a good LP — and in addition to sounding better, there is just something about having an original copy made back when the music was fresh and newly released, putting me back in my college years, and somehow linking up the past to the present.

The music is living there in those grooves, even better now because I can actually hear the music with a decent system. I don’t think many record players back in 1972- 1978 could begin to do these records justice.

Thanks so much for all the great music – makes my years of developing and investing in my stereo worthwhile.

Kurt B.

Kurt, you are welcome!

We love both these albums and we’re in agreement with you that the music is more alive in these grooves than it could ever be in the digits of a CD.

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