true-test

Which ones do you want to play?

The One True Test for Records

More Entries from Tom’s Audiophile Notebook

There is only one true test for records: Which ones do you want to play?

Collect those and sell off all the others.

Acquiring better sounding pressings and getting rid of those that are no longer satisfying will result in a collection that is a joy to own, a collection that will provide a great deal more satisfaction than one made up primarily of collectible records.

To me there is nothing more thrilling in audio than hearing a favorite, familiar recording sound better than I ever thought it could. If that’s the kind of thrill you are looking for, I recommend you visit the site as often as you can. Something of interest is sure to pop up.

It can’t be downloaded. It can only be found — as far as I know — on an old vinyl record.

Like many of our customers who’ve had their standards raised by our Hot Stamper pressings, you may be so exhausted and disappointed by the mediocrities being churned out these days by one Heavy Vinyl grifter after another that you finally make the pledge to swear off bad records for good. Only you can free yourself of the chains that are holding you back.

Once those chains are broken, a world of possibilities will open up, populated by vintage vinyl pressings that exist by the millions all over the world, waiting to show you just how sublime and immersive and enjoyable music can sound in your very own home.

Here is a good way to get started.

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Analog Shmanalog – Why Avoid the Only Question Worth Asking?

Saving the world from bad sound you say? Hey, that’s what I’m about too!

The following is my reply to the friend who sent me the NYT article linked above.

He had been to my studio and heard for himself the sound of the Heavy Vinyl pressings that “The Wizard of Vinyl” produces. Up against properly-mastered, properly-pressed vintage LPs, they are rarely better than mediocre, and more often than not just plain terrible. (We actually play one of his remastered records in this video.)

Mr. Kassem can’t seem to stop stepping on rakes, no doubt because he never made any effort to develop his critical listening skills, which for some reason he thought he already possessed. As a consequence of this mistaken judgment, he literally has nothing to guide him, a fact that should be obvious to anyone who has played any of his company’s records.

My letter:

This “pure analog versus analog tainted with digital” debate needs to stop.

It completely avoids the only question worth asking: are these new records any good?

Who cares how they make them?

Only the deaf! Those who can actually hear know how badly they suck and could not care less.

You sat me down and we played a batch of modern remastered records. They all failed. (More or less.)

That is the only true test.

Put all of these new records to the same test! Please, somebody!

Somebody with a top quality system can volunteer to do shootouts for any and all of them and let the chips fall where they may.

Finding such a system may be impossible, but we can at least try. This talk of master tapes and pure analog sound is getting us nowhere.

There is no testing going on, just claims being made with almost nothing to back them up.

None of this matters. Literally, none of it.

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