experiments

Here you will find lessons we’ve learned from the record experiments we’ve run over the years.

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.

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On Tarkio, Do All the Robert Ludwig Mastered Copies Have Hot Stampers?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Hippie Folk Rock Albums Available Now

UPDATE 2023

This commentary recounts a few observations we’d made after doing a shootout for Tarkio a few years back.

Tarkio is one of those very special recordings that deserves credit for helping us dramatically improve the quality of our playback.

I learned a lot about unhyped, unprocessed, Tubey Magical sound from Tarkio and treasure the music it contains to this day.

Even though all the original Pink Label pressings are mastered by the great Robert Ludwig, they have a marked tendency to be dull, thick and opaque.

On too many of the original pressings we’ve played, even after a good cleaning the top end and upper midrange are a bit rolled off, causing the sound to be smoother than it should be. And of course the way we discover that fact is simplicity itself: the best pressings do not suffer from rolled-off sound.

Analog that is “super-smooth” is the kind of sound that is simply the reverse of the brighter, edgier sound that many CDs suffer from. Both of them are wrong. As Goldilocks will tell you, ideally there will always be a pressing with the correct tonality, neither smooth nor bright, and the way we know that is by playing a bunch of copies and finding the ones in the pile with that tonally correct sound.

We can’t predict which ones will have it, but we sure can hear which ones do.

But finding it without a pile of copies is very hard, almost impossible. How “tonally correct” is any given copy compared to “perfectly tonally correct?” You need plenty of copies to know that, as well as a tonally neutral system capable of playing them properly.

If you like your audiophile pressings to sound super smooth, smooth as mud, there is a guy that offers exactly what you are looking for. His name is Pete Hutchison. He has built a lucrative business for himself making all his records sound like they are being played back through 50s tube electronics.

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An Extraordinary Recording of the Carmen Fantasie – This Is Why You Must Do Shootouts

Hot Stamper Pressings Featuring the Violin Available Now

UPDATE 2025

It has been years since a Whiteback pressing on the later label won a shootout. Some reissue copies of CS 6165 have earned Nearly White Hot Stamper grades, but we would be very surprised if one of the Blueback originals we play in the next shootout does not come out on top. They are just too good.

This London Whiteback LP has DEMO DISC sound like you will not believe, especially on side two, which earned our coveted A Triple Plus rating. The sound is warm, sweet and transparent; in short, absolutely GORGEOUS. We call it AGAIG — As Good As It Gets!

As this is one of the Greatest Violin Showpiece Albums of All Time, it is certainly a record that belongs in every right-thinking audiophle’s collection. (If you’re on our site and taking the time to read this, that probably means you.) Ruggiero Ricci is superb throughout.

And side one was just a step below the second side in terms of sound quality, with very solid A++ sound. To find two sides of this caliber, on quiet vinyl no less, is no mean feat. You could easily go through ten copies without finding one as consistently good sounding as this one.

A True Demo Disc, Or Was It?

Ricci’s playing of the Bizet-Sarasate Carmen Fantasie is OUT OF THIS WORLD. There is no greater perforrmance on record in my opinion, and few works that have as much Audiophile Appeal.

Which is why I’ve had a copy of this record in my own collection for about fifteen years marked “My Demo Disc.” But this copy KILLED it. How could that be?

It just goes to show: No matter how good a particular copy of a record may sound to you, when you clean and play enough of them you will almost always find one that’s better, and often surprisingly better.

Shootouts are the only way to find these kinds of records. That’s why you must do them.

Nothing else works. If you’re not doing shootouts (or buying the winners of shootouts from us) you simply don’t have top quality copies in your collection, except in the rare instances where you just got lucky. In the world of records luck can only take you so far. The rest of the journey requires effort.

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Art Pepper Today – Latest Findings

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Art Pepper Available Now

UPDATE 2024

In 2010 we wrote a commentary about the album which can be found here.

It’s a long story that goes into great detail comparing the sound of the original Galaxy pressings with those of the much more common OJC’s.

Fourteen years later (!) and here we are, finally getting to the point where we have enough copies of Art Pepper Today to do a proper shootout.

Since this is a title we have not played in a very long time, we took the opportunity to give a quick listen to both kinds of pressings just to make sure that both could be expected to do well enough to be included in the shootout.

The OJCs Fall Short in a Different Way

Well, it turns out that the OJC pressings are no longer cutting it. That’s money down the drain.

It seems to be the case that they are dark and hard sounding compared to the Galaxy pressings.

This is a bit surprising because most of the OJC pressings that we don’t like are thin and bright, not dark and hard.

That’s not the way OJC’s typically sound, but in the world of records, when has that ever counted for anything?

Patterns are helpful up to a point, but on this album, the patterns we see across the label have broken down, which is why our business is built upon a foundation of playing every record we sell and judging it strictly on its own merits.

There are just too many exceptions to whatever patterns we may think we have detected.

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Ziggy Stardust Broke the Price Barrier in 2007

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of David Bowie Available Now

UPDATE 2024

The following is our 2007 commentary for the best Ziggy Stardust we had ever heard up to that time. Note that for the most part we were playing early British pressings back in those days, a mistake we did not know we were making. (Heroes was the same way, and it took us another ten years to figure out that one.)

In 2007, all we had to go by was the conventional wisdom that the original UK pressings on the RCA orange label should be the best, so that’s mostly what we were playing. I’m not even sure what pressing won this long-ago shootout. 

Looking back in 2024, it’s obvious to us that we had a great deal more research and development to do.

As best as I can tell, it would take us about ten more years to discover the pressings, like this one, that, based on our database going all the way back to 2017, consistently win our shootouts.

This RCA Import has DRAMATICALLY better sound than any Ziggy LP we’ve ever played here at Better Records. Whatever you think you know about the sound of this record, THINK AGAIN. The sound of this copy is so far beyond any expectation I had that hearing it was nothing short of a REVELATION. It’s TWO FULL GRADES better than any copy we played in our shootout.

After hearing this copy we had to lower our grades for every other pressing we had played. This was a completely new standard. (more…)

Is The Pink Label The Hot Ticket for Jethro Tull’s Brilliant Stand Up Album?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Jethro Tull Available Now

Well, it certainly can be, but sometimes it isn’t, and failing to appreciate that possibility is a classic case of misunderstanding a crucially important fact or two about records. Audiophile analog devotees would do well to keep these facts in mind, especially considering the prices original British pressings are fetching these days.

Simply put: Since no two records sound alike, it follow that the right label doesn’t guarantee the right sound.

A shootout years ago illustrated both of these truths.

We had a number of Pink Island British pressings to play — if you hit enough record stores often enough, in this town anyway, even the rarest pressings are bound to show up in clean condition from time to time — along with Sunrays (aka Pink Rims), later Brits, early Two Tone domestics and plain Brown Label Reprise reissues. All of them can sound good. (We do not waste time with German and Japanese pressings, or any of the later Chrysalis label LPs. Never heard an especially good one.)

What surprised the hell out of us was how bad one of the Pink Label sides sounded. It was shockingly thin and hard, practically unlistenable.

Keep in mind that during our shootouts the listener has no idea which pressing is being played, so imagine hearing such poor reproduction on vinyl and then finding out that such bad sound was coming from a copy that should have been competitive with the best, on the legendary Pink Island label no less. (Of course the other Pinks were all over the map, their sides ranging from good to great.)

Hearing one sound this bad was completely unexpected, but hearing the unexpected is what we do for a living, so I suppose it shouldn’t have been. Having dubious looking reissues and the “wrong” pressings beat the originals and the so-called “right” pressings from the “right” countries is all in a day’s work here at Better Records.

The audiophiles who collect records by label are asking for trouble with Stand Up.

Assuming they want the best sound, that is.

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The Times They Are A-Changin’ – Leave It Dry, Or Add Some Reverb?

More of the Music of Bob Dylan

The noisy (aren’t they all?) mono copy we keep around as a reference presents Dylan and his guitar in a starkly immediate, clear and unprocessed way. The stereo version of the album is simply that sound with some light stereo reverb added.

More than anything else, on some tracks the mono pressing sounds like a demo.

It’s as if the engineers threw up a mic or two, set the EQ for flat and proceeded to roll tape. This is a good sound for what it is, but it has a tendency toward dryness, perhaps not on all of the tracks but clearly on some. Certainly the first track on side one can have that drier sound.

What the stereo reverb does is fill out the sound of Dylan’s voice respectfully.

The engineers of the late ’50 and ’60s had a tendency to drown their singers in heavy reverb, as anyone who’s ever played an old Tony Bennett or Dean Martin album knows all too well.

But a little reverb actually benefits the vocals of our young Mr. Dylan on The Times They Are A-Changin’, and there is an easy way to test that proposition. When you hit the mono button on your preamp or phono stage, the reverb disappears, leaving the vocal more clear and more present, but also more dry and thin. You may like it better that way. Obviously, to some degree this is a matter of taste.

The nice thing about this stereo copy, assuming you have a mono switch in your system (which you should; they’re very handy), is that you have the option of hearing it both ways and deciding for yourself which approach you find more involving and enjoyable — if not necessarily truthful.

We suspect your preference will be both listener- and system-dependent. Isn’t it better to have the option and be able to make that determination for yourself?

To see our current selection of Hot Stamper pressings that we think sound better in mono, click here.

To see our current selection of Hot Stamper pressings that we think sound better in stereo, click here.

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Two Reviews of Child Is Father to the Man – Fremer Vs. Better Records

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Blood, Sweat and Tears Available Now

In 2010 MF reviewed both the Sundazed and Speakers Corner Heavy Vinyl pressings of the album.

I think his review is mistaken on a number of counts, and mostly unhelpful for those who love the album and want to hear it right.

The commentary below will discuss his errors in more detail, in the hopes that you, dear reader, will not make the same mistakes yourself. 

He talks about his history with the album and then notes:

Anyway, the original “360 Sound” edition of this record sounds fantastic. It’s a high quality Columbia studio recording, with vivid harmonics, impressive transparency and dynamics, shimmering highs and tight extended bass. The soundstage is expansive and the images tightly presented. I’m not sure it can get much better than the original given how well-pressed Columbia records were in those days, especially if you have a clean original.

We, however, seem to hold precisely the opposite view. I quote from our review:

Why did it take us so long [to do a Hot Stamper shootout]? Let me ask you this: have you ever played this album? The average copy of this record is a sonic MESS. Even the best copies have problems.

We then go on to discuss in detail what most copies do wrong and what to listen for in order to find a copy that gets it right. (More on that later.)

Shortcomings? What Shortcomings?

Fremer continues:

There are two reissues of this. One is from Sundazed and there’s a far more expensive one from Speakers Corner…

The Speakers Corner reissue, which uses the wrong label art is pressed at Pallas and consequently it’s quieter and better finished overall. However, the Sundazed copy I got was very well finished and reasonably quiet, but not as quiet.

On the other hand the Speakers Corner version was somewhat more hyped up at the frequency extremes and cut somewhat hotter, but not objectionably so. The Sundazed sounds somewhat closer to the original overall, so for half the price, you do the math.

“Somewhat hyped up”? We liked it a whole lot less than Mr. Fremer apparently did. Early last year I gave it a big fat F for failure, writing at the time:

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How Novel Patterns Emerge During Shootouts

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Ambrosia Available Now

When you sit down to play ten or twelve copies of an album, one right after the other, patterns in the sound are going to emerge from that experience, patterns which would be very likely to pass unnoticed when playing one copy against another or two over the course of the twenty or thirty minutes it would take to do it.

In the case of this album, the pattern we perceived was simply this: About one or two out of that dozen or so will have punchy, solid, rich, deep bass. (There is a huge amount of bass on the recording, so recognizing those special copies is not the least bit difficult if you have a full-range speaker and a properly treated room.)

About one or two copies really get the top end right, which is easily heard when the cymbals splash dynamically, with their harmonics intact, and they extend high about the rest of the soundfield (precisely the way they do in live music).

(Fewer copies have an extended top end compared to those with tight punchy bass by the way.)

Like so many Mastering Lab tube-mastered records from the era, most copies tend to be somewhat smooth.

Only one copy had both the best bass and the best highs.

All the other copies fell short in one or both of these areas.

Think about it: if you do your home shootouts with three or four or even five copies of an album, what are the chances that:

1. You will detect this pattern? Or,
2. That you will run into the one copy that does it all?

This is precisely the reason we have taken the concept of doing comparisons between pressings to an entirely new level.

It’s the only way to find the outliers in the group, the “thin tails” as the statisticians like to call them. (More on outliers here.)

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We Happily Admit the Originals of Time Out Are (Potentially) the Best Sounding

More of the Music of Dave Brubeck

This time around [2014] no other copy of Time Out could touch our good Six Eye Stereo pressings. They were simply in a league of their own.

If you’ve been with us for a long time you may remember that this was not always the case. We used to really like some 360s as I recall, as well as the original mono pressing. This time around, not so much. 

This time around most everything is different. Allow us to explain.

1. Our stereo is different; we’ve made quite a number of changes to it since our last big shootout for Time Out a few years back. We are strong proponents of making audio progress.

2. We’re different; we have better (I would hope) listening skills. In fact I’m sure we listen for different qualities in a recording than we might have years ago.

3. Even more importantly, we don’t have the same pile of pressings we had years ago. They’re gone, replaced by a new batch. This new batch had some killer original pressings, some good 360s, and not much to speak of on the later labels. 

With a different batch we might have found a great sounding 360 pressing; we have to believe they exist, and we certainly can’t say that our best copy here could not have been bettered in some way. That would be foolish; anything can be bettered.

The next time we run this experiment, the results could be different.

[Update from 2021: we have run the experiment a number of times in the five years since this commentary was written, and the best Six Eye in the shootout has not been beaten yet. Yet.]

For us, in 2014 (and probably through 2015), this is it.

This is the right sound.

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