small-sample

A too-small sample size is the most common source of a mistaken judgment about the sound of any given title.

We Were Way Off the Mark with Stand Up in 2006

Hot Stamper Pressings of Jethro Tull Albums Available Now

Years ago we wrote:

This Island Pink Label Original British pressing has ABSOLUTELY AMAZING SOUND! We mention that there was a Sunray pressing that may have been even better, but I didn’t have this copy in hand to compare the Sunray to, so I can’t be sure that pressing was any better.

This one sounds as good as any I’ve ever heard. 

It’s amazingly dynamic and powerful, yet full of tubey magic. I played almost ten different pressings of this record today (11/08/06): every domestic label variation and a handful of imports. This copy is clearly the best of the batch.

A textbook case of live and learn.

My stereo was dramatically less revealing back then and also I did not know how to clean records properly. Those two facts, combined with the underdeveloped or yet-to-be-developed listening skills that go with them, allowed me to arrive at the wrong conclusion.

In 2006 we simply had not done our homework well enough. I had been an audiophile for at least 31 years by then, and a legitimate audiophile record dealer for 19.

Sure, by 2006 my staff and I had auditioned plenty of the pressings that we thought were the most likely to sound good: the original and later domestic pressings, the early and later British LPs: in other words, the usual suspects.

The result? We were roughly in the same position as the vast majority of audiophiles. We had auditioned a sizable number pressings of the album and thought we knew enough about the sound of the album to pick a clear winner. We thought the best pink label Island pressings had the goods that no other copies could or would have.

But of course, like most audiophiles who judge records with an insufficiently large sample size, we turned out to be completely wrong.

Logic hadn’t worked. None of the originals would end up winning another shootout once we’d discovered the right reissues.

But in 2006, we hadn’t stumbled upon the best pressings because we hadn’t put enough effort into the only approach that actually works.

What approach is that? It’s trial and error. Trial and error would eventually put us on the path to success. We had simply not conducted enough trials and made enough errors by 2006 to find out what we know now.

We needed a breakthrough, and we hadn’t gotten it yet.

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Revisiting the Analog Vs. Digital Debate with Donald Fagen

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Steely Dan Available Now

Many years ago we did a big shootout for this album. Afterwards we asked this question:

Do all the pressings of The Nightfly sound like CDs?

The average copy of this digitally recorded, mixed and mastered LP sounds just the way you would expect it to: like a CD.

It’s anemic, two-dimensional, opaque, thin, bright, harsh, with little extreme top and the kind of bass that’s all “note” with no real weight, solidity or harmonic structure. Sounds like a CD, right? (That’s the way many of my CDs sound, which is why I rarely listen to them these days.)

But what if I told you that the best copies of The Nightfly can actually sound like a real honest-to-goodness ANALOG recording, with practically none of the nasty shortcomings listed above? You may not believe it, but it’s true.

How do I know it’s true?

The same way I came to learn practically everything I believe about the sound of equipment and records. I heard it for myself. (Keeping in mind that I am sure to be wrong about some things. Not to worry. When I find out which things those are, I will post them in this section of the blog where they can join the other 175+ entries.)

I heard a copy sound so natural and correct that I would never have guessed it was digital. On my honor, that’s the truth. The best copies of The Nightfly can actually be shockingly analog.

Simply put, the question before the house is: Can this record sound analog? We’ll be taking the affirmative.

The problem with the typical copy of this record is gritty, grainy, grungy sound — not the kind that’s on the master tape, the kind that’s added during the mastering and pressing of the record. When that crap goes away, as it so clearly does on a copy we played recently, it lets you see just how good sounding this record can be. And that means really good sounding.

On most copies, the CD-like opacity and grunge would naturally be attributed to the digital recording process. That’s the conventional wisdom, so those with a small data sample (in most cases the size of that sample will be one) could be forgiven for reaching such a conclusion. Based on our findings it turns out to be false.

The bad pressings do indeed sound more like CDs. The best pressings do not.

If you like having your biases confirmed, then by all means, keep your digital-sounding copy and pretend you know why The Nightfly sounds bad on vinyl.

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Led Zeppelin – Our Old Shootout Winner and Lessons We’ve Learned

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now

A textbook case of live and learn.

In 2007 we simply had no idea just how good this recording could sound on vintage vinyl. We needed to do a lot more homework, a subject we discussed in some depth here for Led Zeppelin III.

My guess is that we discovered the right pressings, with the right stampers, pressed in the right era, and mastered by the right guy, sometime in 2014. That was the year this copy came along.

Which, according to my audiophile math, means we needed 7 more years of buying, cleaning and playing copies of the album until we stumbled upon the hottest stampers of them all. And in the many years since, nothing has come along to take the crown away from this bad boy. Our customers seem pretty happy with the pressing we sold them, too.

Yes, it turned out to be quite the breakthrough, and it could not have happened to a better record, as Zep’s first album is my favorite rock album of all time. (Please excuse the all caps writing.)

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Jellyfish’s Bellybutton – DMM Mastering and Small Sample Sizes

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Jellyfish

The problem with the typical copy of this record is gritty, grainy, grungy sound — not the kind that’s on the master tape, the kind that’s added during the mastering and pressing of the record. When that crap goes away, as it so clearly does on side one of the copy we played recently, it lets you see just how good sounding this record can be. And that means REALLY good sounding.

While during the shootout I had completely forgotten that all the domestic pressings of Bellybutton are direct metal mastered. (The import pressings are clearly made from copy tapes and are to be avoided.) It was only afterwards, when looking for stamper variations, that I noticed the DMM in the dead wax .

On most copies the CD-like opacity and grunge would naturally be attributed to the Direct Metal Mastering process; that’s the conventional wisdom, so those with a small data sample (in most cases the size of that data sample will be no more than one) could be forgiven for reaching such a conclusion. Based on our findings, it turns out to be completely erroneous.

The bad pressings do indeed sound more like CDs. The better pressings do not. All are DMM, so the conventional wisdom, a term of disparagement here at Better Records to start with, again shows how little probative value it actually brings to the discussion.

We would love to hear a version of the album that was not Direct Metal Mastered, just for comparisons sake. That unfortunately is an experiment that cannot be run. What we can do is play the CDs — I have several, the earliest ones being the best — and note that they are clearly grungier and grittier sounding than the better LP pressings. Some of that sound is on the Master Tape, how much we will probably never know.

Spilt Milk, their second album, is one of my top two or three personal favorites of all time, right up there with Ambrosia’s first and The White Album. (more…)