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Sibilance Is a Bitch on Nick Of Time

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Bonnie Raitt Available Now

We here present some advice on what to listen for to help you separate the best pressings of some of our favorite rock and pop records from those that are merely good.

On side two listen for the sibilance on Bonnie’s voice on Too Soon to Tell.

Some copies have gritty, spitty sibilance on her voice, while others keep the spit well under control, allowing much more of the silky quality of her vocal to be heard.

Sibilance is a great test for pressings that you may be comparing for sound quality. Sibilant pressings tend to be crudely mastered and that crude quality is sure to show up in other areas of the recording.

(Half-Speed mastered pressings are almost always spitty and should be avoided, for sibilance problems as well as their many other shortcomings we have documented in detail on this blog.)

Also, pay special attention to how silky the cymbal crashes can be on the better copies.

We also recommend that you listen for how all the elements of the recording are clearly laid out and audible, never forced or hyped in any way. The sound can be surprisingly 3-D for a modern recording.

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Nick of Time – Size Matters

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Bonnie Raitt Available Now

UPDATE 2026

This commentary was written in 2010 after playing a killer Shootout Winning pressing that was so huge and powerful we just had to write about it.

We custom built a system that was especially good at, among other things, showing us just how big some pressings could get. Twenty years ago we wrote about it in a lengthy commentary entitled outliers and out-of-this-world sound.

If you have big speakers in a big room and like to compare pressings, you should have no trouble hearing the differences in size between pressings. Here are a number of other records that are good for testing ambience, size and space.

The sound here is POWERFULLY BIG AND BOLD, with meaty, deep bass (such a big part of the rockers here, Thing Called Love being a prime example) and some of the sweetest, richest, most ANALOG sound we’ve heard from any record Don Was was involved with.

When you hear it like this — something probably pretty close to what he heard during the control room playback for the final mix — it actually makes sense. It works. It’s not exactly “natural,” but natural is not what they were going for, now is it?

We play albums like this VERY LOUD. I’ve seen Bonnie Raitt live a number of times and although I can’t begin to get her to play as loud in my listening room as she did on stage, I can try. To do less is to do her music a profound disservice.

Size Matters

One of the qualities that we don’t talk about on the site nearly enough is SIZE of the record’s presentation. So many copies of this album just sound small — they don’t extend all the way to the outside edges of the speakers, and they don’t seem to take up all the space from the floor to the ceiling. Some copies do; they create a huge soundfield with the music positively jumping out of the speakers. When you hear a copy that can do that, it’s an entirely different listening experience.

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Bonnie Raitt – Nick Of Time

More of the Music of Bonnie Raitt

  • Incredible sound for Bonnie’s 1989 Masterpiece, with both sides of this original copy earning Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) grades – just shy of our Shootout Winner
  • There was a time when these Capitol pressings were sitting in the bins all over town, but those days are gone, my friend
  • Some of the sweetest, richest, most analog sound we’ve heard from any record Don Was produced – “Have A Heart” is a Demo Disc quality track
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Producer Don Was used Raitt’s classic early-70s records as a blueprint, choosing to update the sound with a smooth, professional production and a batch of excellent contemporary songs. In this context, Raitt flourishes; she never rocks too hard, but there is grit to her singing and playing, even when the surfaces are clean and inviting. A great comeback album that made for a great story.”
  • Yes, the sound is heavily processed, with the kind of gloss that we’ve come to expect from Don Was, but these qualities take nothing away from the consistently high quality of the songwriting and production
  • If you like the vintage smooth sound of this album, there are plenty of Hot Stamper pressings currently available that offer it

The sound here is powerfully big and bold, with meaty, deep bass (such a big part of the rockers here, “Thing Called Love” being a prime example).

When you hear it like this — something probably pretty close to what he heard during the control room playback for the final mix — it actually makes sense. It works. It’s not exactly “natural,” but natural is not what they were going for, now is it?

We play albums like this very loud. I’ve seen Bonnie Raitt live a number of times, and although I can’t begin to get her to play as loud in my listening room as she did on stage, I can try. To do less is to do her music a profound disservice.

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DCC + RTI = Audio Enervation

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Bonnie Raitt Available Now

This commentary was the first one I wrote criticizing the sound of DCC vinyl, probably around 2008 or so. There would be many to follow.

A well-known Joni Mitchell album we played the year before didn’t exactly set us on a different path, but it did have the effect of kicking us up into a higher gear, and Bonnie’s album was one of the early fruits of that change.

During our shootout for Bonnie’s first Capitol album, we found that the DCC pressing was lacking in so many ways that I felt compelled to spell out for our customers what its shortcomings were.

I had enthusiastically recommended the album in 1996 when it came out, but our first big shootout had shown me how wrong that judgment would turn out to be. Our complete commentary from 2008 is reproduced below.

The no-longer-surprising thing about our Hot Stamper pressings of Nick Of Time is how completely they MURDER the DCC LP. Folks, it’s really no contest.

Yes, the DCC is tonally balanced and can sound very good, but it can’t compete with the best original pressings. It’s missing too much of the presence, intimacy, immediacy and transparency that we’ve discovered on the better original pressings. 

As is the case with practically every record pressed on Heavy Vinyl over the last twenty years, there is a suffocating loss of ambience throughout, a pronounced sterility to the sound.

Modern remastered records just do not BREATHE like the real thing.

Good EQ or Bad EQ, they all suffer to one degree or another from a bad case of audio enervation. Where is the life of the music? You can try turning up the volume on these remastered LPs all you want; they simply refuse to come to life.

We play albums like this VERY LOUD. I’ve seen Bonnie Raitt live a number of times and although I can’t begin to get her to play as loud in my listening room as she did on stage, I can try. To do less is to do her a disservice.

The DCC Approach

The DCC, like a lot of modern remastered titles we”ve played, is too damn smooth.

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Nick Of Time – What to Listen For

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Bonnie Raitt Available Now

One of the biggest problems we ran into over and over again with this album is a lack of top end. The sound gets a bit too smooth and some of the ambience and spaciousness of the studio disappears. (This, to a much stronger degree, is the problem from which the DCC suffers.)

On the best copies note how silky the cymbal crashes are; not too many copies get them to sound that way. 

The sound has the potential to be POWERFULLY BIG AND BOLD, with meaty, deep bass (such a big part of the rockers here, Thing Called Love being a prime example) and some of the sweetest, richest, most ANALOG sound we’ve heard from any record Don Was has been involved with.

When you hear it like this — something probably pretty close to what he heard during the control room playback for the final mix — it actually makes sense. It works. It’s not exactly “natural”, but natural is not what they were going for, now is it?

What to Listen For 

Listen especially for how all the elements of the recording are clearly laid out and audible, never forced or hyped in any way. The sound can be so 3-D!

Key note for side two — listen for the sibilance on Bonnie’s voice on Too Soon to Tell. Some copies have really gritty, spitty sibilance, others keep it well under control, with a much more silky quality to her vocals.

We play albums like this VERY LOUD. I’ve seen Bonnie Raitt live a number of times and although I can’t begin to get her to play as loud in my living room as she did on stage, I can try. To do less is to do her a great disservice.