too-smooth-modern

Whether made by DCC, Analogue Productions or any other label, starting at some point in the mid-’90s many remastered audiophile pressings started to have a tonality problem that we found insufferable right from the get-go: they are just too damn smooth.

The bulk of the heavy vinyl reissues we’ve played, in addition to being too smooth, suffer from numerous other shortcomings that rob the music of its life and energy.

Thick, opaque, veiled, recessed and lacking in ambience, this is what we hear on one modern remastered record after another. It may be someone’s idea of “analog,” but it sure isn’t ours.

Ride The Lightning at 45 RPM – MoFi Reviewed

Hot Stamper Pressings of Rock and Pop Albums Available Now

Sonic Grade: F

This review is for the 2008 Warner Brothers 45 RPM 180g Double LP Half-Speed Mastered by Mobile Fidelity from the original analog master tapes.

Compressed, sucked-out mids, no deep bass and muddy mid-bass, the mastering of this album is an absolute disaster on every level.

If you want to know how lost the average audiophile is, a quick Google search will bring up plenty of positive comments from listeners and reviewers alike. 

(more…)

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

More of the Music of Creedence Clearwater Revival

The last time I played the MoFi pressing mentioned below I found the sound so weirdly colored as to defy understanding. Ten years ago when I wrote this commentary I apparently found it more tolerable.  More recently I clearly did not.

When an audiophile record sounds worse than it used to, there is a very good chance that you are making progress in audio.

Of course this is not something to be assumed. (Speaking of assumptions, you can find more on the subject here).

Rather it is something to be tested. (You can read more about some of the rigorous and extensive record testing we have conducted over the last twenty years here.)

Even if 99 times out of a hundred it turns out to be the case that the modern remastered record can now be seen for the fake it always was, there is still a one out of a hundred chance that the record may in fact be better than you remember.

These audiophile records are easily called out for their illusory superiority for the simple reason that the better your stereo gets, the more obvious their colorations and shortcomings become. This was my experience, and I pass this information on in the hopes that you will make progress with your stereo system and find them every bit as wrong as I do.

We’ve created a section for the worst of them, and even with 274 entries we could easily double that number if we were inclined to carry out more auditions and catalog their manifold shortcomings.

With the number of Heavy Vinyl records being pressed today, triple or quadruple that number I suspect would be possible.

Without sounding even more arrogant than some believe me to be, I have better things to do with my time. Thank god we are in the business of selling good records and not in the business of reviewing bad ones.

Further Reading

Records are getting awfully expensive these days, and it’s not just our Hot Stampers that seem priced for perfection.

If you are still buying these modern remastered pressings, making the same mistakes that I was making before I knew better, take the advice of some of our customers and stop throwing your money away on Heavy Vinyl and Half-Speed mastered LPs.

At the very least let us send you a Hot Stamper pressing — of any album you choose — that can show you what is wrong with your copy. of the album.

And if for some reason you disagree with us that our record sounds better than yours, we will happily give you all your money back and wish you the best.

To Our Children’s Children’s Children on Mobile Fidelity Anadisc

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Moody Blues Available Now

Sonic Grade: F

We here present yet another MoFi pressing that we played and found seriously wanting.

Pure Anadisc murky mud, like all the Moody Blues records MoFi remastered and ruined in the ’90s with their misbegotten foray back into the world of vinyl. By 1999 they were bankrupt and deservedly so.

Their records were completely worthless to those of us who play them and want to hear them sound good but, unsurprisingly, a quick search on ebay indicates that they’re still worth money to the audiophile types who collect the kind of trash this label put out.

Folks, seriously, you really have to work at it to find pressings of the Moody Blues albums that sound worse than the ones MoFi did in the ’90s.

To be honest, we really don’t know of any. Which means that, as far as we’re concerned, their pressing of To Our Children’s Children’s Children is the worst version of the album ever made.

(more…)

One Customer’s Take on the Analogue Productions 45 RPM Remaster

A good customer bought some SRV Hot Stampers from me a while back. He then told me he was going to spend $400 on the AP SRV Box Set

Hey Tom,

For kicks on this issue of heavy vinyl vs. hot stampers, I’m tempted to order the ‘Texas Hurricane’ box set — 45rpm, 200g etc. — and shoot it out against the SRV records I’ve got from you.

Would you be interested to know how that goes?

In the admittedly unlikely event that the heavy vinyl smoked the hot stampers, would you take them back? Easy to sell the heavy vinyl on without losing money, but not so much the hot stampers.

Just an idea… I’m delighted with what I have from you, but so curious to learn more by comparing etc. Could be fuel for a cool blog post in due course…

CF

I replied:

Oh, I think you are in for quite a shock, and of course we would take our copies back, but I would give you very good odds that that will never happen as long as you have two working ears.

A few weeks go by.

Tom,

So the results are in … after listening to Texas Hurricane (at 45rpm) and comparing to the White Hot Stamper versions of the same albums I can say… as a musical experience it’s incomprehensible. It just doesn’t rock, doesn’t uplift, and it’s veiled, so you lose the whole meaning of this music, the energy, soul, life.

I wasted $400 to find this out. Any chance you have another customer who’d like to relieve me of it to do their own shootout?

I’ll never doubt you again : )

CF

Good to know you will never doubt me again! Always think back to the sour taste in your mouth and the painful throbbing in your brain from playing this heavy vinyl garbage and perhaps you will never be tempted again. If you feel the urge to cross over to the dark side, please email me and I will do my best to talk you out of it. That way lies madness (and audio frustration).

TP

Here’s the $32,000 Question

(more…)

L.A. Woman on German Heavy Vinyl, Part Two

Part One can be found here.

I have a Super Saver budget reissue domestic pressing of LA Woman. Want to guess what it sounds like? It sounds exactly like this German version. When I described the sound of the German version to Steve, he immediately recognized what I was talking about. There is a tape — they call it “the master tape” — of L.A. Woman that has exactly the bad qualities I have described above. I’m guessing that my Super Saver copy is a flat transfer of that bad tape. (When budget reissues are mastered, it’s often the case that the transfer is flat or something very close to it, because little time and expense is justified for a cheap reissue.)

Now if the Super Saver is a flat transfer and sounds just like this German pressing, I think we can safely infer that this new 180 gram remastered record is a flat transfer. It’s a flat transfer of a bad tape. Nothing more, nothing less.

And nothing new. There are tons of badly remastered records out there. I’m sure you’ve bought some. I could spend days listing them in the Records We Don’t Sell section. Most of the records found on my competitor’s Web sites could be cut and pasted into that section if I wanted to take the time to do it.

But how is it that such a bad record seems to have met with such favor among audiophiles? I’m frankly at a loss to understand it. I’m sure some of you reading this commentary own the record. Some of you no doubt LIKE the record. So let me think of a few reasons why you might not have noticed how bad sounding a record it is.

(more…)

Very Tall and Very Awful on MFSL Anadisq

Reviews and Commentaries for Mobile Fidelity Records

If you made the mistake of buying the atrocious Anadisq pressing MoFi put out in the ’90s, our Hot Stamper pressings will let you hear what a wonderful recording Val Valentin cooked up with these cats back in the day.

FURTHER READING on Half-Speed Mastered Records

The best place to start is here:

How come you guys don’t like Half-Speed Mastered records?

To learn more about records that sound dramatically better than any Half-Speed ever made (with one rare exception, John Klemmer’s Touch), please consult our FAQs:

More Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Below you will find our breakdown of the best and worst Half-Speed mastered records we have auditioned over the years.

(more…)

Fresh Cream – A DCC Disaster

Hot Stamper Pressings of British Blues Rock Albums Available Now

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 all any audiophile contemplating spending money on this kind of trash needs to know.

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

Whether made by DCC or any other label, starting at some point in the mid-’90s, many remastered audiophile pressings started to have a tonal shortcoming that we found insufferable from day one: they are just too damn smooth.

Almost any domestic or British original pressing of Fresh Cream will be better in almost every way. Read our Hot Stamper review below for the full story. 

UPDATE

[This is an old review. We buy very few domestic pressings of Fresh Cream. They are often noisy, and they don’t sound remotely as good as the right British imports, including some late reissues. But anything beats the DCC LP.

It is, in our experience, the worst version ever.

Our Hot Stamper Commentary from 2008

AN EXCEPTIONAL SIDE ONE BACKED WITH GREAT SIDE ONE, both on surprisingly quiet vinyl! We just finished a shootout for this hard-rockin’ debut album and were delighted to hear how good this music can sound on the right pressing. This copy has the kind of bottom end that this music absolutely demands but is sadly missing in action from most of the pressings we played. If your Cream record can’t rock, remind me, what exactly is the point again? (more…)

The Merchant of Venice Suite – Another Dubby Klavier Record

Hot Stamper Pressings of Classical and Orchestral Music

Sonic Grade: F

A Hall of Shame Pressing and another Heavy Vinyl Classical LP debunked.

This record sounds like it was mastered from copy tapes, which is where at least some of its dubby sound comes from. All the Klavier Heavy Vinyl pressings we’ve played have this problem.

Yes, it is yet another murky, smeary Audiophile Piece of Trash from the mastering lathe of the formerly brilliant Doug Sax. He used to cut the best sounding records in the world. Once he started cutting Heavy Vinyl it was all over.

Advice – What to Listen For on Classical Records

(more…)

The Not-So-Magnificent Thad Jones – More Dreck on Heavy Vinyl

Hot Stamper Pressings of Blue Note Albums Available Now

After discovering Hot Stampers and the mind-blowing sound they deliver, a new customer generously sent me a few of his favorite Heavy Vinyl pressings to audition, records that he considered the best of the modern reissues that he owns.

He admitted that most of what he has on Heavy Vinyl is not very good, and now that he can clearly hear what he has been missing, having played some of our best Hot Stamper jazz pressings, he is going to be putting them up on Ebay and selling them to anyone foolish enough to throw their money away on this kind of junk vinyl.

We say more power to him.  That money can be used to buy records that actually are good sounding, not just the ones that are supposed to be good sounding, perhaps because they were custom manufactured with the utmost care and marketed at high prices to soi-disant audiophiles.

Audiophile records are a scam. They always have been and always will be.

The three of us who do the critical listening here at Better Records dropped the needle on the first disc in this set and, once the VTA was properly adjusted, gave it a chance to show us just what expert remastering from vintage mono tapes, at 45 RPM, on two slabs of luscious, thick vinyl, could do for the sound of Thad Jones’s trumpet, circa 1956.

The reissue we are playing is the one Music Matters released in 2010. There was a single disc version released by them in 2016, recut by Kevin Gray and Ron Rambach. At the time of this writing, there is one for sale on Discogs for $235.

None of us had ever heard the album on any media, vinyl or otherwise, but we know a good sounding jazz record when we hear one, and we knew pretty early on in the session that this was not a good sounding jazz record.

Two minutes was all it took, but we wasted another ten making sure it was as bad as we thought.

(more…)

Van Halen on DCC – Not My Idea of Good Sound

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Van Halen Available Now

As I recall it isn’t very good — thick and dull and closed-in; in other words, boring as all get out — but, in its defense, I confess I played it quite a while ago.

If your copy sounds better, more power to you.

But I bet it doesn’t.

Any copy we sell is guaranteed to blow the doors off of it — as well as any other pressing you own — or your money back.

Here are other records, many of them on Heavy Vinyl or Half-Speed Mastered, that we found to have similar shortcomings. They are, to one degree or another:

(more…)