veiled-sound

The sound of these pressings is veiled. It’s as if someone threw something over your speakers and you are listing to music through a curtain.

Sometimes the sound is so lacking in presence, clarity and immediacy it can seem as if the curtain would better be described as a blanket, and in the worst cases, a quite heavy one.

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:

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Minute By Minute – Nautilus Reviewed

More of the Music of The Doobie Brothers

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of The Doobie Brothers

Sonic Grade: D

You may remember reading on the site that we used to like the Nautilus Half-Speed of this title. Playing our Nautilus copy against the better domestic pressings made us wonder what the hell we must have been smoking.

The Nautilus was awful — veiled and compressed, with a lightweight bottom end. (The Nautilus of Threshold of a Dream is another one we used to like and boy does that record sound awful these days.)

Maybe we had played a better copy years ago, or maybe we had played some really bad domestics back then, who can say? A lot of water has gone under the bridge since then.

All we can say for now is that our Hot Stampers are going to blow that audiophile piece of junk — and any other pressing of the album that might exist — right out of the water. (Or your money back.)

And the gold CD too of course. I have never in my life heard a CD sound like this record does, and I don’t think anyone else has either. CDs do some things reasonably well, but few of them have the kind of richness, sweetness and Tubey Magic that the best vinyl copies of this album do, cleaned right and played on a proper stereo of course. (more…)

Honky Mids and Veiled Vocals Are Common on Another Side of Bob Dylan

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Bob Dylan Available Now

This commentary was written many years ago.

We played a bunch of these this week and only a very small handful of sides had enough magic to be considered Hot Stampers.

The typical pressing loses its steam in (at least) one of two ways:

  • honky mids, and
  • veiled vocals.

The copies with the honk can be nearly unlistenable when Dylan starts blowing his harmonica, and the copies with veiled vocals and no real immediacy bored us to tears. 

This copy has the magic on side two. The sound is full-bodied, natural, and rich with excellent presence and real depth to the soundfield.

It’s also SUPER open and spacious with lots of ambience and clearly audible transients on the acoustic guitar. The clarity is off the charts, and the sound is wonderfully natural throughout.

Side one is clean, clear and transparent with correct tonal balance. The vocals have a touch of honk to them and the presence is nowhere near as amazing as on the flipside. We rated side one A – A+. It’s musical and enjoyable but not superb like side two.

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Freak Out! – All Four Sides Critiqued

More of the Music of Frank Zappa

This commentary is from many years ago.

No Demo Disc by any stretch, this Hot Stamper beat the pants off of what appears to be a true first pressing that we just happened to have on hand. Most pressings of this double album are just awful, if you can even find one that’s clean enough to bother playing. Our copy here earned grades of A Plus on sides one, two and four, and a grade of A Double Plus on side three. No copy in our shootout earned a higher grade than A++, for the simple reason that we just can’t find enough clean original copies with which to do a definitive shootout. (more…)