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Jethro Tull – One of the Worst Releases on DCC (and That’s Saying Something!)

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Jethro Tull Available Now

Sonic Grade: F

The DCC pressing is a complete disaster, one of the worst sounding versions of the album ever made.

As bad as the MoFi is, the DCC is even worse. Murky and bloated, to my ear it does almost nothing right, not on vinyl anyway. The DCC Gold CD is better, and it’s certainly nothing to write home about. 

Our Hot Stamper commentary below sorts out the DCC, the Classic Records Heavy Vinyl pressing and the MoFi Half-Speed Mastered LP, as well as British and domestic originals.

We love this album and we’ve played every kind of pressing we could get our hands on. The winner? Read on!

Over the course of the last 25 years we was wrong three ways from Sunday about our down-and-out friend Aqualung here. We originally liked the MoFi.

When the DCC 180g came along we liked that one better, and a few years back I was somewhat enamored with some original British imports.

Our first big shootout disabused us of any notion that the British originals were properly mastered. As we noted in our Hot Stamper commentary, “The original Brits we played were pretty hopeless too: Tubey Magical but midrangy, bass-shy and compressed.”

Another myth bites the dust.

The same is true for Thick As A Brick; the best domestic copies are much more energetic and tonally correct.

Heavy Vinyl Quality Control? We Put That Proposition to the Test

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Important Lessons We Learned from Record Experiments

Part one of this commentary concerns the random nature of record making processes. It can be found here.

A Heavy Vinyl Shootout

A number of years ago (2011?) the opportunity to crack open two brand new sealed copies of a recently remastered Heavy Vinyl pressing came our way.

At the time, we were told that with this pressing every effort was made to produce the highest quality product and to maintain the utmost in quality control throughout the production process. They were adamant that every copy produced, from first to last, would be indestiguishable from any other. Not just in terms of surfaces, but sound quality too.

To accomplish this feat, the producer used the real master tapes (we were told, no reason to doubt him), had a well known mastering engineer do the mastering at a highly-regarded studio, then had a well-known audiophile pressing plant in Germany make the record, using the finest vinyl compounds available, in presses that meet the highest standards in the industry, operated by skilled individual of the utmost professionalism.

Any stamper would be replaced long before it could possibly be showing any wear.

All the metal mothers and stampers would be made in a way designed to eliminate all variation.

One and only one complete run would be made. If another was needed at some later date the whole process would have to be started over from scratch using the same strict quality controls.

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Why Would Anyone Want to Take All the Fun Out of CCR’s Music? Part Two

More of the Music of Creedence Clearwater Revival

This commentary is at least ten years old. Still holds up though!

The last time I played one of Chad’s CCR pressings, which I confess was close to a decade ago, it had all the bad qualities of the Bonnie Raitt disc on DCC, a sound that I’ve grown to dislike more with each passing year.

But what the new AP version really gets wrong is the guitar sound.

Creedence’s music lives or dies by its grungy guitars, and the AP pressing is as wrong as they come.

Latest Findings as of 2022

This commentary used to end this way:

The fat, smeary, overly-smooth guitars you hear on the record, lacking any semblance of the grungy energy that are the true hallmarks of this band’s recordings, probably means that some audiophile mastering engineer got hold of the tapes and tried to “fix” what he didn’t like about the sound.

You know, the sound that is all over the radio to this very day. Something was apparently wrong with it. So now that it’s been fixed, everything that’s good about CCR’s recordings is missing, and everything that has replaced those sonic elements has made the sound worse.

Nice job! Keep up the good work. Chad is proud of ya, no doubt about it.

It has now become clear that the various mastering engineers Chad hires are not the ones trying to fix what they don’t like about the sound. Chad is El Jefe, the one telling them what to fix and rejecting their work until these remastered albums sound the way he wants them to sound.

There is no use complaining about the awful work Doug Sax, Steve Hoffman, Kevin Gray, George Marino or anyone else did when hired to master for Analogue Productions. Their task was to please Chad. He is the customer, he is the one paying their fees, and he is the one getting the sound he wants.

He apparently thinks he is saving the world from bad sound, but we sure don’t see it that way. Just the opposite in fact.

If Chad wanted better sounding records — records that are more lively, more tonally accurate, less bloated down low and less smoothed-over up top — veteran engineers such as the gentlemen named above would surely have been able to master these titles more correctly than the evidence provided by the records would lead you to believe.

But Chad, like many other audiophiles, is a My-Fi guy, not a Hi-Fi guy, and he likes the sound he likes, regardless of what is on the master tapes or what other pressings — mastered by a number of different engineers, often over the course of many decades — might sound like.

He wants the sound he wants, and their job is to give it to him.

Bernie Grundman, the man in charge of remastering Aja, is finding out that his way is not going to work for Chad. If it takes seven test pressings before Aja has the sound Chad likes, then he will just have to keep working it until Chad hears “his Aja” sounding the way it should.

When it finally comes out, I have no doubt that it will be very different from any pressing of Aja you or I have ever heard. It won’t sound much like the early pressings that Bernie Grundman mastered for ABC in 1977, which are of course the ones we sell. Unless I miss my guess, it will be very different from the master tape. (Something I freely admit I have no way of ever knowing.)

It will sound the way Chad likes music to sound. He paid a small fortune for the privilege of making Steely Dan sound the way he wants them to sound. Now that the die is cast, those of us with good stereos and basic critical listening skills can go pound sand. The mid-fi guys are being pandered to — in the audiophile world, that’s where the Heavy Vinyl money is — and expecting anything else from this atrocious label means you haven’t been listening very carefully to the records they’ve been releasing for more than 30 years.

Will I Like the New Steely Dan Remasters?

If you think this pressing of Tea for the Tillerman sounds good, it’s a near certainty you will want to be the first on your block to collect all the newly remastered Steely Dan Heavy Vinyls.

The same goes for this pressing of Stand Up. If this is the sound you are looking for, you can be sure Chad will give it to you, good and hard (apologies to H.L. Mencken).

Do these records sound fine to you? You’re happy with them, are you?

Then you have much to look forward to with the release of the complete Steely Dan LP collection!

These Analogue Productions releases will no doubt share many of the sonic characteristics of the above-mentioned titles.

How could they not? They are guaranteed to sound the way Chad wants them to sound. Chad is the customer, and the customer is always right.

If you’re Bernie Grundman, it might take you six or seven runs at it until you find that indescribable and elusive “Chad” sound, but you will have to keep at it until you do, assuming you want to get paid.

Our review for the first of the series that we’ve had the chance to play is in, and here it is.

Could it have been worse? Absolutely. Is it really very good? No, it’s not.

Considering his dismal track record, it’s probably as good sounding a record as Chad is able to make.

To paraphrase Cormac McCarthy:

It’s a mess of a record, ain’t it, Tom?

If it ain’t, it’ll do till a mess gets here.

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A Night at the Opera – A DCC Disaster

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Queen Available Now

Sonic Grade: F

This DCC pressing is a disaster, one of the worst releases that Kevin Gray and Steve Hoffman ever mastered.

Murky, opaque and compressed: yes, we can agree it has never been an especially good sounding record on anything but the most difficult to find UK pressings [and we know exactly which ones those are now, which only makes this record sound even worse in comparison], but does it deserve this kind of mastering disrespect?

Isn’t the idea to try and FIX what is wrong, rather than to make it worse?

Whether made by DCC or any other label, starting at some point in the mid-90s many audiophile pressings started to have a shortcoming that we find insufferable these days — they are just too damn smooth.

At collector prices no less. Don’t waste your money.

Is it the worst version of the album ever made?

That’s hard to say. But it is the worst sounding version of the album we’ve ever played, and that should be good enough for any audiophile contemplating spending money on this kind of trash. Our advice: don’t do it.

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Live At The Village Gate on Audio Fidelity Heavy Vinyl

Hot Stamper Pressings of Jazz Albums Available Now

An Audiophile Hall of Shame pressing. It’s yet another Disastrous Heavy Vinyl release with godawful sound.

What a murky mess. Hard to imagine you couldn’t find a common domestic pressing that wouldn’t sound better.

I mention throughout this blog that, starting in the ’90s, the records put out by Cisco, DCC, S&P and finally Audio Fidelity had to fight their way through Kevin Gray’s opaque, airless, low-resolution cutting system. We discuss that subject in some depth here.

Compressed, thick, dull, opaque, and almost completely lacking in ambience, this record has all the hallmarks of a Modern Heavy Vinyl Reissue pressed at RTI.

The average ’70s pressing on the Atlantic Red and Green label will kill this audiophile piece of junk, and it’s unlikely to cost you more than ten bucks. Whatever you do, don’t waste your money on this incompetently remastered reissue.

For 35 years we’ve been helping music loving audiophiles the world over avoid bad sounding records.

To see the records with bad sound or bad music we’ve reviewed that weren’t marketed to audiophiles, click here.

It’s yet another public service from Better Records, the home of the best sounding records ever pressed. Our records sound better than any others you’ve heard or you get your money back.

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We Review the DCC and an Original Pressing of Lush Life

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of John Coltrane Available Now

Sonic Grade: B or so (DCC) 

The DCC heavy vinyl pressing is a nice record. I remember liking it when it came out. Nowadays I would probably call it passable, similar in quality to those on this list.

If for some reason we could not find copies of the album that substantially beat the sound of remastered LPs such as the DCC LP, we simply would not have anything to offer.

It was only a few months ago, early in 2016 in fact, that we chanced upon the right kind of pressing — the right era, the right label, the right stampers, the right sound. Not just the right sound though. Better sound than we ever thought this album could have.

Previously we had written:

“There are great sounding originals, but they are few and far between…”

We no longer believe that to be true. In fact we believe the opposite of that statement to be true. The original we had on hand — noisy but with reasonably good sound, or so we thought — was an absolute joke next to our best Hot Stamper pressings. Half the size, half the clarity and presence, half the life and energy, half the immediacy, half the studio space. It was simply not remotely competitive with the copies we now know (or at least believe, all knowledge being provisional) to have the best sound.

Are there better originals than the ones we’ve played? No doubt. If you want to spend your day searching for them, more power to you. And if you do find one that impresses you, we are happy to send you one of our Hot Copies to play against it. We are confident that the outcome would be clearly favorable to our pressing. Ten seconds of side one should be enough to convince you that our record is in an entirely different league, a league we had no idea even existed until just this year.

By the way, the mono original we played was by far the worst sound I have ever heard for the album. By far. (more…)

Sonny Rollins Plus 4 – Defending the Indefensible

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Sonny Rollins Available Now

We reviewed this album in 2014 or thereabouts.

I cannot recall hearing a more ridiculously thick, opaque and unnatural sounding pair of audiophile records than this 45 RPM Analogue Productions Heavy Vinyl release, and I’ve heard a ton of them. 

Surely someone must have noticed how awful these records sound.

So, being an enterprising sort, with a few idle moments to spare, I did a google search. To my surprise it came up pretty much empty. Sure, dealers are selling it, every last one of the bigger mail-order types.

But how is it that no reviewer has taken it to task for its oh-so-obvious shortcomings?

And no one on any forum seems to have anything bad to say about it either. How could that be?

We don’t feel it’s incumbent upon us to defend the sound of these pressings. We think that for the most part they are awful and want nothing to do with them.

But don’t those who DO think these remastered pressings sound good — the audiophile reviewers and the forum posters specifically — have at least some obligation to point out to the rest of the audiophile community that at least one of them is spectacularly bad, as is surely the case here.

Is it herd mentality? Is it that they don’t want to rock the boat? They can’t say something bad about even one of these Heavy Vinyl pressings because that might reflect badly on all of them?

I’m starting to feel like Mr. Jones: Something’s going on, but I don’t know what it is. Dear reader, this is the audiophile world we live in today. If you expect anyone to tell you the truth about the current crop of remastered vinyl, you are in for some real disappointment.

We don’t have the time to critique what’s out there, and it seems that the reviewers and forum posters lack the — what? desire, courage, or maybe just the basic critical listening skills — to do it properly.

Which means that in the world of Heavy Vinyl, it’s every man for himself.

And a very different world from the world of vintage vinyl, the kind we offer. In our world we are behind you all the way. We guarantee your satisfaction or your money back.

Now which world would you rather live in?

UPDATE 2025

Still not a single review on Discogs for this pressing.

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Love Is the Thing – Remixed, Remastered and Ruined

More Hot Stamper Pressings of Pop and Jazz Vocal Albums

Love Is the Thing on DCC was given a “new sound” and I don’t like it

I really liked the Nat King Cole albums on DCC when they came out back in the ’90s. Thought they were a revelation as a matter of fact.

Now I find them insufferable. Here are some of my reasons for not liking Hoffman’s remix.

Nat’s voice is much too forward and loud in the mix; consequently the orchestra is too soft. The balance is off. At least on my stereo, at the levels I play the record at, the balance seems off. You surely have a different system, in a different room, and may not feel the way I do.

But without a top pressing to compare, how do you know the mix is right or wrong? Like everything in audio, it’s relative.

The balance problem is bad enough, but what really sets my teeth on edge is the fact that the Nat King Cole record on DCC doesn’t sound remotely like any Nat King Cole record I have ever heard, outside of the ones Hoffman worked on of course.

Where is all the Capitol reverb? Nat’s records all have it, and although the reverb may be a bit excessive or unnatural in some ways, at least to some people, when you take it away you end up with a sound that never existed before, and, to my ears, it’s a sound that’s just wrong for the music.

The more I listened to the DCC the less I liked it.

The first full-length commentary I ever wrote in my record catalog in 1994 took Analogue Productions to task for remastering Way Out West and giving it a “new sound,” a sound I had never heard coming from any Contemporary pressing, from any era.

I didn’t like what Doug Sax did with Way Out West, Jazz Giant, Waltz for Debby and many, many others, and I don’t like what Steve Hoffman and Kevin Gray did to Love Is the Thing, The Very Thought of You and Just One Of Those Things.

I have tried to listen to the Gold CD in my car, but even in the car I found the sound boring and insufferable.

Is this the kind of sound you hear on your DCC Nat King Cole records? If it is, we recommend you try a Hot Stamper. If it doesn’t kill your DCC you get your money back.

At the very least it will show you some of the things your DCC is doing differently, and, we think, wrong.

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Today’s Heavy Vinyl Mediocrity Is… Fragile

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Yes Available Now

The Analogue Productions 180g reissue shown here is mastered by Steve Hoffman and Kevin Gray, two guys with reputations for doing good work, but the results of their collaboration [can you believe this record came out in 2006!?] leave much to be desired.

The overall sound is too lean.

This is especially noticeable on the too-thin-sounding guitars and vocals.

Believe me, it’s no fun to play a Yes album with thin guitars and vocals.

Also, there’s a noticeable lack of ambience throughout the record. What comes to mind when I hear a record that sounds like this is the dreaded D word: dubby.

I find it hard to believe they had the actual two-track original master tape to work with. The sound is just too anemic to have come from the real tape. If they did have the real tape, then they really botched the job.
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Fandango! – Another Warners Heavy Vinyl Mediocrity

More of the Music of ZZ Top

Sonic Grade: C

Warner Brothers remastered Fandango in 2008, so we took some domestic pressings and put them up against their Heavy Vinyl LP.

The results were mixed; most of our original pressings were lackluster, many were noisy, and we just weren’t hearing anything with the sound we thought deserved to be called a Hot Stamper.

We shelved the project for another day.

In the interim we kept buying domestic pressings — originals and reissues — in the hopes that something good would come our way.

Fast forward to 2015. We drop the needle on a random pressing and finally — finally — hear a copy that rocks like we knew a ZZ Top album should. With that LP as a benchmark, we got a shootout up and running and the result is the record you see here.

How did the WB remaster fare once we had some truly Hot Stamper pressings to play it against?

Not well. It’s tonally correct, with a real top and bottom, something that a substantial number of copies cannot claim to be.

But the sound is stuck behind the speakers, veiled, and sorely lacking in energy and excitement.

The transparency is of course compromised on all these new reissues, and without transparency and resolution, much of the audience participation on the first side is lost.

I won’t say the new pressing is boring. Let’s just say it’s a lot more boring than it should be. (more…)