stan-ricker-bad

A select group of records mastered by Stan Ricker that should be avoided by audiophiles looking for higher quality sound.

Supersax Plays Bird – Remastered, But Why on Earth Did They Bother?

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More Audiophile Records with Bad Sound, Bad Music or Both

Awful music, awful sound.

In 1980, this is the record that single-handedly convinced me that MoFi would lower themselves to remastering records that have little in the way of actual musical value.

Update: 2022. I just looked up the mastering engineer credited with cutting the original pressings in 1973, Wally Traugott. Now what are the chances that Stan Ricker cut this record better than Wally Traugott? One in a million? That would be my guess.

Which simply means that the right domestic pressing on Capitol might just be a good sounding record. But why should anyone care? The music is hopeless.

We’ve created a couple of sections for records such as these. There’s one for albums we don’t like, and one for the worst releases by Mobile Fidelity, limited, of course, to the MoFi’s we’ve played (or can remember playing) over the course of the last 40+ years. There are surely plenty of others that would fit the bill if we ever bothered to pick up a copy of the album and audition it.

The Audiophile Record Collectors of the world naturally need this dreadful title to ensure their Mobile Fidelity collections are complete.

Which is precisely the kind of Record Collector Thinking that keeps these awful labels in business. And it certainly does these devoted audiophile record collectors no favors when it comes to the quality of their collections.

I admit to having sold my fair share of these kinds of Audiophile BS titles back when I was an Audiophile Record Dealer. Live and learn is the only excuse I have to offer. I was foolish, but you can learn from my mistakes, right here on this blog.

Back to my story:

I also learned that spending $20 to find out if the music on an album is any good is an expensive way to learn more about music you may not be familiar with.

As curators, the bigwigs at MoFi were generally competent, batting something close to .500, but in cases such as this Supersax title, as far as I’m concerned they failed completely.

Further Reading

If you are still buying these audiophile pressings, take the advice of some of our customers and stop throwing your money away on Heavy Vinyl and Half-Speed Mastered Records.

More than anything, doing record shootouts raised our critical listening skills to a level that allowed us to accurately judge the records we were playing. It’s the only process we know of to become an expert listener.

Without our approach to shootouts, painstakingly developed over the course of the last twenty-five years, we could not possibly do the work we have set out for ourselves: to find the best sounding pressings of the most important music ever pressed on vinyl.

To learn more about how to conduct your own shootouts and gain the better listening skills that result from them, click here.

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The Nightfly on MoFi – More of the Same Old Same Old

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Donald Fagen Available Now

More MoFi phony EQ on the top right around 10k and sloppy bass.

You should be able to do a whole lot better and you sure won’t have to work very hard to do it.

Robert Ludwig is the man who knows how to cut this album, not Stan Ricker.

The properly pressed, properly cleaned Robert Ludwig-mastered copies are right in a way that the typical Half-Speed mastered or Heavy Vinyl pressing rarely is. The more critically one listens, the more obvious this distinction becomes.

The real thing just can’t be beat, and you can be pretty sure that the real thing is an old record.

If you are buying these audiophile pressings, take the advice of some of our customers and stop throwing your money away on Heavy Vinyl and Half-Speed mastered LPs.

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“Tour de Force” – Analogue Productions Reviewed

Hot Stamper Pressings of Bossa Nova Recordings Available Now

Sonic Grade: F

Acoustic Sounds had Stan Ricker remaster this record a number of years ago, and of course they (he) ruined it. A twinkly top end and flabby bass were just two of the major shortcomings of their version. Nothing surprising there, as Stan Ricker is famous for his “smile” curve, boosting both ends of the audio spectrum, whether they need boosting or not. (They rarely do).

When you add too much top end to a guitar album and ruin the sound of the guitar, what exactly are you left with?

Please note that not a single title from the Analog Revival series is any good, to the best of my knowledge, and every last one of them should be avoided if high quality sound is important to you.

The same is true for all the 180 gram jazz titles on Analogue Productions that were mastered by Doug Sax, as you may have read elsewhere on the site. Those records received rave reviews in the audiophile press when they came out, but you won’t find too many audiophile reviewers sticking up for them now, as they are, without exception, murky, compressed disasters of the worst kind.

I guess these reviewers eventually acquired equipment accurate enough to notice how bad those pressings are, which goes to show there is hope for practically anyone.

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1812 Overture on Telarc

More of the music of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)

Reviews and Commentaries for Recordings of the 1812 Overture

Sonic Grade: D

If you want an amazingly dynamic 1812 with huge amounts of deep bass reproduced for the cannon, you can’t do much better than this (or its UHQR brother). 

But if you want rich, sweet and tonally correct brass and strings, you had best look elsewhere. I’ve never liked the sound of this record and I’m guessing if I heard a copy today I would like it even less. 

Who in his right mind thinks live classical music actually sounds like this?

Telarc makes clean, modern sounding records. To these ears they sound pretty much like CDs.

If that’s your sound you can save yourself a lot of money avoiding vintage Golden Age recordings, especially the ones we sell. They’re much more expensive and rarely as quiet, but — again, to these ears — the colors and textures of real instruments seems to come to life in their grooves, and in practically no others.

We include in this modern group analog labels such as Reference, Sheffield, Chesky, Athena and the like. Having heard hundreds of amazing vintage pressings, at this stage of the game I find it hard to take any of them seriously.

Twenty years ago, maybe. But twenty years is a long time, especially in the world of audio.

We started a list of records that suffer from a lack of Tubey Magic like this one, and it can be found here.

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The Tony Bennett / Bill Evans Albums – More Mistaken MoFi EQ

Hot Stamper Pressings of Pop and Jazz Vocals Available Now

Sonic Grade: F

That weird boost around 10k that Stan Ricker likes to add to practically every record he masters wreaks havoc on the sound of Tony Bennett’s voice.

I would be very surprised if the current in-print Compact Disc doesn’t sound more tonally natural, and for us audiophile record lovers – not lovers of audiophile records, but guys who love records with audiophile sound – that’s simply another nail in the coffin for one of the most laughably inept remastering labels in the history of that sad enterprise.

If you love this album, and you should, the regular early Fantasy pressings are the only game in town.

Hall, Oates and Mobile Fidelity – A Counterfactual Approach to Remastering

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Hall and Oates Available Now

We here present a set of ideas about remastering that Mobile Fidelity could have used to guide them as they went about cutting their version of Hall and Oates’ masterpiece, Abandoned Luncheonette.

This is the approach they could have taken when it came time to produce an audiophile pressing of Abandoned Luncheonette, an album originally released in 1973.

By the time Mobile Fidelity released their version of the album in 1980, the record was already being offered as a Super Saver reissue, of minimal quality at a reduced price, produced solely for the purpose of keeping record store bins stocked with back catalog. (In our experience it is the rare Super Saver pressing that is worth the vinyl it’s pressed on.)

However, there is nothing inherently wrong with such a budget release. And the Super Saver version may even have some merit. But let’s assume for a moment that it does not.

Why Abandoned Luncheonette?

Now imagine that Mobile Fidelity knows, or at least believes, two things.

One, the album is a Masterpiece that belongs in any right-thinking audiophile’s collection, and two, the current version does not sound very good. The wise men at MoFi recognize that an opportunity to do some good for the audiophile community and make a buck at the same time has presented itself.

Audiophiles may not know it, but they are in need of a good sounding copy of this brilliant album, and they deserve one that sounds every bit as good as the shockingly good sounding originals (like the ones we sell).

In addition, we at MoFi can go Atlantic’s original one better.

We can now press the album on quieter vinyl than Atlantic ever could.

Next, Mobile Fidelity greenlights this project and gets a real master tape from Atlantic. (There are many tapes that masquerade as masters and aren’t any such thing, but let’s assume for the moment that Mobile Fidelity did get a real tape.)

They would also need a nice batch of original pressings, which in our opinion are the best, and would easily be recognized as being the best sounding by anyone playing the album on good equipment. The best originals are lively, rich and smooth, befitting an expensive, high quality studio recording from the era.

So instead of Mobile Fidelity trying to create a new sound for this album, they could have taken a different approach. They could’ve just said to themselves: let’s make a copy of the record that sounds as good as the original, and because we can press it on expensive, high-quality Japanese vinyl, we can justify selling it at a premium price to audiophiles looking for the best sound and quiet vinyl.

They could then cut a number of reference lacquers trying to re-create the best qualities of the originals, and then test those lacquers up against the best originals, in something that might be called a “shootout” long before the term was commonly used bu audiophiles of our persuasion.

The Counterfactual Part

This is what they could have done. That’s why we are calling this commentary a counterfactual.

They did something else entirely.

They tried to make the record sound better than any of the copies they had at hand. They tried to fix the sound. In trying to fix the sound, they made it worse because they simply were not capable of recognizing how right the good originals were.

They must have thought them dull, because the Brain Trust at Mobile Fidelity boosted the hell out of the upper midrange and top end. (Using the concept of reverse engineering, I assume their playback equipment was dull, a fairly safe assumption considering how many Mobile Fidelity records are bright enough to peel the paint.)

They Were on a Mission

They of course would never have been able to get the bass right, because half speed mastering always causes problems down low.

But they could have made the record tonally correct, and fairly transparent in the midrange, and then could have pressed that sound onto state-of-the-art Japanese vinyl.

But none of these things interested Mobile Fidelity at the time. They were hell-bent on making everything they touched better. In the process, practically everything they touched got worse, as anyone with good equipment and two working ears who has played a large selection of their records can attest.

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Night Moves – MoFi Reviewed

More of the Music of Bob Seger

Sonic Grade: F

An Audiophile Hall of Shame pressing and another MoFi LP reviewed and found seriously wanting.

The last time I played a copy of the MoFi pressing I could not believe how ridiculously bright it was.  

It’s interesting to note that some of the brightest records this atrocious label ever released came out about the same time as this one.

Aja is number 033

Night Moves here is number 034.

Tea for the Tillerman is number 035

Are you seeing a pattern here?

Three dogs in a row, all suffering from the same problem: they’re way too bright!

Did MoFi buy some dull studio monitors right before they mastered these awful pressings? Did a tweeter or two blow?

Did Stan Ricker have too much wax buildup in his ears?

What could account for records that are bright enough to peel the paint?

Some mysteries will never be solved, and I would bet this is one of them.

But really, what difference does it make? We should all know to avoid this company’s products by now, and that includes all three eras of records produced by this label:

That should pretty much cover it.

Never buy any record on this label (except the one we sell) if you are interested in top quality sound, and if you own any, get rid of them and replace them with records that actually sound good, like the ones we sell.

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Cat Stevens and His Sparkling Acoustic Guitars?

More of the Music of Cat Stevens

In the commentary for America’s first album we noted that:

The guitars on this record are a true test of stereo fidelity. … most of the pressings of this record do not get the guitars to sound right. … on a copy with a bit too much top end they will have an unnatural hi-fi-ish sparkle. 

This kind of sparkle can be heard on many records Mobile Fidelity made in the ’70s and ’80s. Tea for the Tillerman, Sundown, Year of the Cat, Finger Paintings, Byrd at the Gate, Quarter Moon in a 10 Cent Town — the list of MoFis with sparkling acoustic guitars would be very long indeed, and these are just the records with prominent acoustic guitars!

(On a side note, if you want a very different sounding Mobile Fidelity record, try anything mastered by Jack Hunt. They are every bit as wrong, but in the tonally opposite direction: murky, fat and way too smooth. This is the sound favored by another audiophile label, this one, and the fact that audiophiles actually buy into this kind of third-rate sound is confounding to say the least.)

Next time you drop the needle on a Mobile Fidelity record — one of the ones pressed in Japan and mastered by Stan Ricker; the Anadisq series tends to have the opposite problem, no top end at all — listen carefully to the acoustic guitars and tell me if you don’t think they sound a tad sparkly.

We’ve all heard acoustic guitars up close, at parties and coffee shops and what-have-you. They don’t really sound like that, do they? I should hope not.

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Half-Speed Mastered, But Why?

diresbrothMore of the Music of Dire Straits

Sonic Grade: D

The Warner Brothers 180g Double LP pictured above was mastered by Stan Ricker at Half-Speed.

Most of the time Stan Ricker’s approach to Half-Speed mastering results in a record that is too bright, with sloppy bass.

And what do you know, this pressing IS too bright and the bass IS sloppy. Imagine that!

We often discuss the unpredictability of records, but when it comes to Half-Speed Mastered pressings their faults are fairly consistent and easy to spot, once you know what to listen for.   

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Abandoned Luncheonette – More Stone Age Audio EQ from MoFi

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Hall and Oates Available Now

Those of you who have had the misfortune to play the MoFi LP know that they absolutely ruined this album. They boosted the hell out of the top end, the last thing in the world this recording needed. 

Actually, that’s probably not true. People who collect MoFi records apparently like the kind of phony sound found on the MoFi of this title and hundreds of others. If they didn’t, why would they keep buying them?

To the extent that a MoFi collector is not happy with the sound, my guess is he would more than likely place the blame on the recording, not the mastering.

Of course, since such a collector would never lower himself to buy a standard domestic copy of the record, he would have no way of knowing that it trounces his so-called audiophile pressing. If your stereo likes that MoFi sound in this day and age, you shouldn’t be buying records. You should be buying new equipment, which hopefully will allow you to recognize bad records when you play them.

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