rrr

London Orchestral Records from the 70s and the Problem of Opacity

Decca and London Hot Stamper Pressings Available Now

The average copy of this 1976 recording has that dry, multi-miked modern sound that the 70s ushered in for many of the major labels, notably London and RCA.

How many Solti records are not ridiculously thick and opaque? One out of ten? If that. We’re extremely wary of records produced in the 70s; we’ve been burned too many times.

And to tell you the truth, we are not all that thrilled with most of what passes for good sound on Mehta‘s London output either, especially those recorded in Royce Hall. If you have a high-resolution system, these recordings, like those on Classic Records Heavy Vinyl that we constantly criticize, leave a lot to be desired.

Opacity is a real dealbreaker for us. Most of the classical records we play from later eras simply do not have the transparency essential to transporting us from our listening room into the concert hall.

One thing you can say about live classical music, it is never opaque. (It can be dry though. Some concert halls have that sound.)

No recording in our experience — our experience having been informed by playing thousands upon thousand of them — can ever be remotely as transparent as live music.

If you have any doubts, next time you come home from the concert hall, take a moment to put on a favorite recording of the same music. You may be in for quite a shock.

Other Deccas and Londons that we’d cleaned and played and found to be disappointing can be seen here.

For more on the subject of opacity on record, click here.

Here are some of the other records we’ve discovered that are good for testing string tone and texture.

(more…)

The Said and the Unsaid – The Firebird on Mercury

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Igor Stravinsky Available Now

For our shootout years ago of The Firebird we had three minty, potentially hot copies of the Mercury with Dorati, as well as our noisy ref. (We have a noisy reference copy for just about every major title now. We have been doing these shootouts for a very long time. After thirty years in the record business we have accumulated a World Class collection of great sounding records that are just too noisy to sell.)

UPDATE 2024 

This is no longer true. Our customers seem to be able to put up with surface noise on the records we offer if the price is low enough. Not actually low, just low enough. We have a section for records with condition issues, and there are 175 entries in it as of today, which turns out to be more than a quarter of all the Hot Stamper pressings on the site as a matter of fact.

We had one FR pressing and two of the later pressings with the lighter label, the ones that most often come with Philips M2 stampers. This is how we described the winner:

So clear and ALIVE. Transparent, with huge hall space extending wall to wall and floor to ceiling. Zero compression.

Lifelike, immediate, front row center sound like few records you have ever heard.

Rich, sweet strings, especially for a Mercury. This side really gets quiet in places, a sure sign that all the dynamics of the master tape were protected in the mastering of this copy.

What we didn’t say — and what we never say in the listings — is what the second tier copies didn’t do as well as the shootout winner.

We used to. When you read the older entries, most of the time they mention the shortcomings that caused one side or another to be downgraded by some amount, usually something like a half to a full plus.

Not all the top end, not all the bass, not as present, slightly smeary, slightly congested — the list of potential faults for any given pressing is long indeed. These are all the problems we listen for and it’s the rare copy that doesn’t suffer from one or more of them.

We decided years ago that it was better just to let you hear the two sides of the record for yourself and make your own judgments about the sound, rather than make clear to you what areas we felt needed improvement.

Consider this example. If on our system the bass was lacking compared to the very best, perhaps on your system the bass was fine, not an issue, good enough. Without the top copy to compare yours to, how would you know how much better the bass could possibly be?

A classic case of “compared to what?”

Shootouts are the only way to answer that question, which, as we never tire of saying, is THE most important question in all of audio. This is why we do shootouts, and why you must do them too, if owning the highest quality pressings is important to you.

Click on the following link to see more records for which we’ve detailed the strengths and weaknesses of a specific copy.

What We Heard on The Firebird

With all that in mind, only the Triple Plus (A+++) copy, as described above, did everything right.

There were two Double Plus (A++) copies, and each of them fell short in different ways.

(more…)

Getting Older and Losing Patience

More Entries from Tom’s Audiophile Notebook

That guy you see pictured to the left has spent much of the last forty years wandering around used record stores looking for better records (ahem). Before that he wandered around stores that sold  new records because he didn’t know how good old used records could be.

Here are some of the things he’s learned since he started collecting at the age of ten, sixty years ago. (First purchase: She Loves You on 45. It’s still in the collection, although it cracked long ago and is no longer playable.)

I’ve noticed an interesting development in the world of record collecting, one that seems to be true for me as well as many of my customers.

As I’ve gotten older I find I have more money, which allows me to buy higher quality goods of all kinds, including — and especially — records.

I also seem to have much less tolerance for practically anything of mediocre quality.

(more…)

Who Can’t Hear Differences in Sound from Side to Side on Most Records?

rimskscheh_2446Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Rimsky-Korsakov Available Now

Both the Chesky [1] and Classic reissue pressings of LSC 2446 are just plain terrible. Embarrassingly, the latter is found on the TAS List.

There is a newly [2013, time flies!] remastered 33 RPM pressing of the album garnering rave reviews in the audiophile press. We didn’t like that one either.

It fails the violin test that we wrote about here.

Please note that in many of the reviews for the new pressing, the original vinyl used for comparison is a Shaded Dog pressing. In our experience almost no Shaded Dog pressings are competitive with the later White Dog pressings, and many of them are just plain awful, as we have noted previously on the site.

UPDATE 2024

Now that we know which stampers have the potential to sound the best in our shootouts, the Shaded Dog originals have lately been winning top honors, although the White Dog pressings can still sound quite good, just not as good.

The “original is better” premise of most reviewers renders the work they do practically worthless, at least to those of us who take the time to play a wide variety of pressings and judge them on the merits of their sound, not the design of their labels.

[A fairly embarrassing example of live and learn.]

rimskscheh_cheskyMissing the Obvious

The RCA White Dog with the best side two in our shootout had a very unmusical side one. Since reviewers virtually never discuss the sonic differences between the two (or more) sides of the albums they audition, how critically can they be listening? Under the circumstances how can we take anything they have to say about the sound of the record seriously?

The sound is obviously different from side to side on most of the records we play, often dramatically so (as in the case of Scheherazade), yet audiophile reviewers practically never seem to notice these obvious, common, unmistakable differences in sound, the kind that we discuss in every listing on the site. If they can’t hear the clear differences in sound from side to side, doesn’t that call into question their abilities at the most basic level?

(more…)

Why Own a Turntable if You’re Going to Play Mediocrities Like These?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Aja Available Now

Hot Stamper Pressings of Blue Available Now

Hot Stamper Pressings of Aqualung Available Now

This commentary was posted in 2007 and amended later with the statement that we would no longer be ordering new Heavy Vinyl titles. The thrill was gone and there was no sign of it ever coming back. It took a while to sell off the inventory, but by 2011 we had eliminated them completely from our site.

As it happens, 2007 turned out to be a milestone year for us here at Better Records.

If you bought any Heavy Vinyl pressing from us, ever, please accept our apologies.

Now is the perfect time to find out just how much a Hot Stamper pressing can do for your musical enjoyment. (You might consider taking the enthusiastic advice of these customers regarding that subject.)

Three of the Top Five sellers this week (8/22/07) at Acoustic Sounds are records we found hard to like: Aja, Aqualung and Blue. Can you really defend the expense and hassle of analog LP playback with records that sound as mediocre as the Rhino pressing of Blue?

Why own a turntable if you’re going to play records like these? I have boxes of CDs that sound more musically involving and I don’t even bother to play those. Why would I take the time to throw on some 180 gram record that sounds worse than a good CD?

If I ever found myself in the position of having to sell mediocrities like the ones you see pictured in order to make a living, I’d be looking for another line of work. The vast majority of these newly-remastered pressings are just not very good.

We Aren’t Walmart and We Definitely Don’t Want to Be Walmart

We leave that distinction to our colleagues at Acoustic Sounds, Elusive Disc and Music Direct (Walmart, Target and Sears perhaps?)

[Yes, Sears existed when I wrote this screed! Time flies.]

They sell anything and everything that some hapless audiophile might wander onto their site and find momentarily attractive, like shiny trinkets dangling from a tree, glittering as brightly as fool’s gold. They know their market and they know where the real money is.

(Hint: it ain’t records, dear reader, it’s equipment. If you haven’t seen one of their thick full-color catalogs lately, count how many pages of equipment you have to wade through at the front before you get to the “recommended recordings.”)

UPDATE

I would amend that to say that it probably is records now. Since 2007 they have become much more popular and profitable. Apparently you can cut the same title 16 different times and audiophiles will just keep buying it. Look at what is happening with reissues of The Beatles’ catalog.

The Hall of Shame

We had no business selling Neil Young’s Greatest Hits — the typical dead-as-a-doornail remastering job we’ve come to expect from Classic over the years — and now it can be found in our audiophile hall of shame, where it should have been from the start.

Which, by the way, has a new member: In Through the Out Door. We were doing a shootout in time for the mailer this week and decided to crack the Classic open to give it another listen, since my review was about five years old at this point, a lifetime in the world of audio. (My world of audio, anyway, and hopefully yours.)

Well, it turned out to be nothing but an absolute piece of crap. Tonally wrong from top to bottom, compressed, lacking presence, life, energy — an unmitigated disaster, joining the Classic pressings of II, III and Houses, three of the other worst sounding Zeppelin records I have ever had the misfortune to play. It’s a perfect we was wrong entry — watch for it soon — and we owe an apology to anyone who bought one from us. So sorry!

Further Reading

Speakers Corner Peer Gynt Reviewed, with Handy VTA Advice

Hot Stamper Pressings of the music of Edvard Grieg Available Now

Sonic Grade: C+

The Fjeldstad has long been one of our favorite performances of Peer Gynt here at Better Records. 

This record is handy for VTA set-up as well, a subject discussed below in our listing from 2010.

The sound is excellent for a modern reissue*, but in the loudest sections the orchestra can get to be a bit much, taking on a somewhat harsh quality. (The quieter passages are superb: sweet and spacious.)

So I adjusted the VTA a bit to see what would happen, and was surprised to find that even the slightest change in VTA caused the strings to lose practically all their rosiny texture and become unbearably smeared.

This is precisely why it’s a good heavy vinyl pressing for setting up your turntable.

If you can get the strings to play with reasonably good texture on this record you probably have your VTA set correctly.

VTA

(more…)

360 Original or Red Label Reissue?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Chicago Available Now

UPDATE 2026

This commentary has to be close to twenty years old by now.

Both can be good. I did the shootout and often tried to guess the label for the copy I was hearing, for fun more than anything else. I have to admit that my batting average was not much better than chance. 

The 360s tend to be a little fuller and smearier, but plenty of red label copies sound that way and some 360s don’t, so trying to match the sound to the label was even more pointless than usual.

When comparing pressings in a shootout it’s too late for the label to have any predictive value.

We’ve already bought the records, cleaned them up and now just want to know what they actually sound like — not which ones might be the best, but which ones are the best.

The time for guessing games has passed. Of course, if we do actually figure out what the right stampers are, this helps us next time around.

What Stampers Mean

Stampers mean something, but sometimes, as is the case here, they don’t mean much.

(If you don’t know that by now you probably haven’t done that many big shootouts on your own. Can’t blame you — without lots of helpers in the cleaning and needle-dropping departments, they’d be an even bigger pain than they already are. Even with three people involved it can still take almost all day, and that’s if you just happen to have ten or fifteen copies handy. It took us about two years to find that many, hitting multiple stores every week.)

(more…)

Midnight Blue on Classic Records (with Badly Mistaken Commentary about Original Blue Notes)

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Kenny Burrell Available Now

Sonic Grade: D

Flat and lifeless. You would never understand why audiophiles rave about this recording by listening to the Classic Records pressing of it. That happens a lot with their remastered pressings. Why do audiophiles think so highly of them when they make records that sound the one this one does?

We played it up against our best, and as expected it was nothing to write home about. Since Rudy has remastered and ruined practically all the Blue Note CDs by now, you will have your work cut out for you if you want to find a good sounding version of Midnight Blue. This sure ain’t one.

Of course we would be more than happy to get you an amazing sounding copy — it’s what we do — but the price will be five to ten times (or more) what the Classic costs. In our opinion it’s money well spent, as you will see in our review below.

Since the Classic conveys very little of what the musicians were up to whilst recording the album, our advice is to cross it off your list of records of interest.

It’s thirty bucks down the drain.

From a recent Hot Stamper listing:

I’ve never heard an original Blue Note pressing with this kind of resolution, sharp leading edge transients, tight, articulate bass definition, and on and on.

Collectors routinely pay hundreds of dollars for original copies that don’t sound nearly as good as this one.

Which is fine by us. We’re not in that business. We’re not selling the right labels; we’re selling the right sound. There is a difference. Collecting original pressings is easy (albeit expensive). Collecting good sounding pressings is hard; in fact nothing in the record collecting world is harder. But if you actually like playing your records as opposed to just collecting them, then the best possible sound should be at the top of your list and the rarity of the label down at the bottom.

Before and After Science – Rules Are Made to Be Broken

Hot Stamper Pressings of Art Rock Recordings Available Now

The domestic pressings of Before And After Science are typically grainy, low-rez and hard sounding. But that doesn’t mean our best Hot Stamper pressings are imports.

No. The best pressings are made right here in the good old U.S. of A.

Say what? Yes, it’s true. We were SHOCKED to find such Hot Stamper sound lurking in the grooves of a domestic Eno LP. It’s the only one of its kind. In thirty plus years of record playing I can’t think of any domestic Eno LP that ever sounded this good.

Now hold on just a minute. The British pressings of Eno’s albums are always the best, aren’t they?

For the first three albums, absolutely. But rules were made to be broken. This pressing has the knockout sound we associate with the best British originals of Eno’s albums, not the flat, cardboardy qualities of the typical domestic reissue.

The UK pressings we have played have always been awful. We put one in a shootout in 2025 and it was as awful as we remember it. Our notes read:

  • Very lean and dry.
  • Zero bass!
  • Lousy!

(more…)

Counting Down to Ecstasy and Singing Along with My Old School

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Steely Dan Available Now

We’ve found that two songs are especially helpful in challenging your setup and playback: Razor Boy on side one, and My Old School on side two.

Countdown to Ecstasy shares top honors with Katy Lied as the toughest Steely Dan album to reproduce properly.

It’s a positive shame that most copies are such sonic let-downs. They’re often congested, bass-shy, veiled, compressed and grainy. There’s a good reason we don’t do this album but once a year [make that once every two or three years at present], and it’s not because of a lack of demand. It’s because so many copies are mastered and pressed poorly.

What to Listen For

Side One: Piano and Vibes

On Razor Boy listen especially to how clear and solid the piano and vibes are underneath the vocals. On the best copies their contributions are easy to follow and really provide support in the lower registers for the vocals above them. If your copy they’re a murky mess don’t be surprised; that’s pretty much the way they sound on most copies. (They’re a good test for the quality of your reproduction from the mid-bass up through the lower midrange.)

(more…)