tonally-correct-mids-but

We have a new link for audiophile pressings that are tonally correct in the midrange but have serious faults in other areas, as they almost always do.

You can assume that our Hot Stamper pressings are tonally correct, since correct tonality is critical to high fidelity sound. Not essential, but certainly very important.

September of My Years – Yet Another Kevin Gray Mediocrity

More of the Music of Frank Sinatra

Sonic Grade: C-

Reprise reissued this album on 180 gram vinyl in 2004.

Our advice: skip this Heavy Vinyl mediocrity.

The originals are far better and not that hard to find.

In fact, the good originals are so good that they can be found in our vocal Demo Disc section. I’m pretty sure that this run-of-the-mill reissue is nobody’s idea of a Demo Disc.

Mastered by Kevin Gray, this record has what we would call ”modern” sound, which is to say it’s clean and tonally correct, but it’s missing the Tubey Magic the originals are full of.

In other words, it sounds like a CD.

Who can be bothered to play a record that has so few of the qualities audiophiles are looking for on vinyl? Back in 2007 we put the question this way: Why Own a Turntable if You’re Going to Play Mediocrities Like These?

Also, skip the orange label reissues. We’ve never heard a good one and we stopped buying them a long time ago.

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Lady in Satin on Classic Records

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Billie Holiday Available Now

It’s been quite a while since I played the Classic Records pressing that came out in 1998, but I remember it as nothing special, tonally correct but with somewhat low-rez (not breathy) vocals and lacking in both space and warmth.

Records made for audiophiles are rarely any good, so rarely in fact that we are positively shocked when such records are even halfway decent. After playing so many bad audiophile records for so many years it’s practically a truism here at Better Records.

A recording like this is the perfect example of why we pay no attention whatsoever to the bona fides of the disc, but instead make our judgments strictly on the merits of the record spinning on the table. The listener normally does not even know the label of the pressing he is reviewing. It could be a Six Eye original, the 360 reissue, or even a (gasp!) ’70s-era LP.

We don’t care what the label is.

What does that have to do with anything? We’re looking for the best sound. We don’t play labels, we play unique pressings of the album.  We assume that every pressing sounds different from every other pressing. Our job is to figure out what each of them is doing, right or wrong. 

We mix up all our copies and play them one after another until we come across the best sounding one.

This approach has opened up a world of sound that most audiophiles — at least the ones who buy into the hype associated with the typical audiophile pressing — will never be able to experience.

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John Coltrane – Another in a Very Long Line of Disappointing Rhino Remasters

More of the Music of John Coltrane

Mastered by Kevin Gray, this record has what we like to call ”modern” sound, which is to say it’s clean and tonally correct for the most part, but it’s missing the Tubey Magic the originals and the good reissues both have plenty of.

In other words, it sounds too much like a CD.

Any properly-mastered, properly-pressed 70s copy on the red and green label will be richer, fuller, sweeter, and just plain more enjoyable than this 180 gram version.

It’s below average, which means it merits a D.

That said, “Giant Steps” is not an easy record to find in good condition, because any serious jazz lover would have played it plenty. It is inarguably one of John Coltrane’s greatest achievements. 

Rhino Records has really made a mockery of the analog medium. Rhino touts their releases as being pressed on “180 gram High Performance Vinyl”. However, if they are using performance to refer to sound quality, we have found the performance of their vinyl to be unsatisfactory, with sound quality substantially lower than the average copy one might stumble upon in the used record bins.

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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…)

Somethin’ Else on Classic Records – More of the Same Old Same Old

More of the Music of Cannonball Adderley

Sonic Grade: C

Another Classic Records LP that’s hard to get excited about.

There are certainly some incredible sounding pressings of this album out there, but who has the resources it takes to find them? Most of the original Blue Notes we come across these days turn out to have mediocre sound, and many of them have severely damaged inner grooves. Even the mintiest looking copies often turn out to be too noisy for most audiophiles, Blue Note vinyl being what it is.

This is of course why the hacks at Classic Records did so well for themselves [until they went under] hawking remastered versions of classic albums pressed on new, quieter vinyl.

The problem is that most of their stuff just doesn’t sound all that hot, this album included. We’ve played it; it’s decent, but any Hot Stamper will show you just how much music you are missing.

If you want to hear this album with amazing fidelity but don’t want to spend the time, money and energy collecting, cleaning, and playing mostly mediocre copies until you luck into a good quiet one, a Hot Stamper pressing is the only way to go.

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Spirit – Sundazed Heavy Vinyl Mono Reviewed

Hot Stamper Pressings of Psychedelic Rock Recordings Available Now

Sonic Grade: D

Another Sundazed record reviewed and found to be way off the mark.

As usual, the Sundazed only hints at the exceptionally good sound found on the best early pressings. We recommended it back at the day — let’s face it, we had a lot to learn.

In its defense, allow me to point out that it’s tonally correct, so for fifteen bucks you are getting your fifteen bucks worth, and probably not a dime’s more. We just cannot take this kind of sound seriously anymore.

Once you’ve heard the real thing, this pressing just won’t do.

Kevin Gray remastered this title, and we have found that the bulk of the records he’s involved with are rarely better than awful. Here is a good example of a record he mastered that falls far short of any record that would qualify to have the words “audiophile pressing” attached to it.

Look for these obvious signs that you are playing one his recuts:

The sound is opaque. It resists your efforts to hear into the recording. This is to be expected. Modern records in general tend to lack transparency, one of the most important qualities that the better vintage pressings have in abundance.

In addition, Gray’s records consistently lack ambience and air. We discuss that subject in more depth here.

If you are looking for audiophile sound on vinyl, our advice would be to avoid any record he is associated with.

Blue – Rhino Records Reviewed

Hot Stamper Pressings of Blue Available Now

Sonic Grade: B-

In March of 2007 we remarked that we would not be carrying the new 180 gram Rhino pressing of Blue. We noted at the time: 

Since Kevin and Steve are [were] friends of mine I won’t belabor its shortcomings. Let’s just say I think you can do better.

The following is an excerpt from our first successful Hot Stamper shootout back in 2007. Blue has only gotten better — dramatically better, if I may be so bold — since then.

The copy of Blue we are offering today is one of the few that sounded good before. Now it sounds really good. It got much quieter after applying some of our new cleaning techniques, and the sound became even warmer, richer, sweeter and more transparent.

Both sides sound wonderful — rich, sweet, and delicate. The warmth, breath, and presence of Joni’s vocals take this copy to a place light years beyond the typical copy, not to mention any reissue. The guitars sound amazing, particularly on side two, and the piano has weight without hardness. There’s tons of energy and lots of ambience, plus real depth to the soundfield — you really hear INTO this copy. Try that with your Rhino LP.

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Tapestry on Classic Records

More of the Music of Carole King

Sonic Grade: C

Years ago we wrote the following:

It’s been quite a while since I played the Classic LP, but I remember it as being fairly good.

UPDATE 2020

I doubt if I would care much for it now. These pressings by Classic Records rarely age well.

At the time we had this to say about the sound:

It’s a little rolled off on the top, but it’s a good rolled off, because brightening it up would make it sound modern and wrong. It’s rich and full of body, especially the piano, the way modern recordings almost never are.

So often when we revisit the remastered pressings we used to like on Heavy Vinyl we come away dumbfounded — what on earth were we thinking? These are not the droids sounds we are looking for. Perhaps our minds were clouded at the time.

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

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Kenny Burrell Available Now

Sonic Grade: D

Pretty 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.