video

Julie Is Her Name – Now on Youtube

Hot Stamper Pressings of Pop and Jazz Vocals Available Now

One of our good customers has a blog which he calls

A GUIDE FOR THE DEDICATED ANALOG AUDIOPHILE

In the video below, Robert discusses how Tubey Magical his system is when playing an All Tube Chain recording from 1955, this without the benefit of any tubes in his system whatsoever. Quite the trick!

Everything was fine until he decided to track down a clean, quiet, good-sounding copy of Julie Is Her Name for a friend. As the saying goes, no good deed goes unpunished, and after buying scores of copies of Julie London’s records off the internet ourselves, we know firsthand how painful it is to have one noisy record after another arrive on our doorstep.

JULIE IS HER NAME: Worth the Effort!

 

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Robert Brook Shoots Out Brilliant Corners

Robert Brook has a blog which he calls

A GUIDE FOR THE DEDICATED ANALOG AUDIOPHILE

Below you will find a link to the shootout Robert recently conducted for Thelonious Monk’s amazing Brilliant Corners album on OJC.

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The Search for the Perfect Sound Wins the 2023 Excellence in Audio Digital Storytelling Award

Winner: 2023 Excellence in Audio Digital Storytelling, Use of Audio Storytelling

Apparently readers could not get enough of this old man and his big speakers.

For the story behind the story, and the award it has now won, please click on the link below.

More on the Shootout Video

The Washington Post talks more about the project:

In “The search for the perfect sound,” arts reporter Geoff Edgers explores the boom in vinyl record sales and the often contentious world of extreme audiophiles through an immersive mix of video, interactive audio and narrative reporting. This multimedia feature revealed the characters behind this growing subculture, from audio elites hunting down rare pressings to populists sharing their hobby with their community.

Edgers had rocked the audiophile world earlier in the year with his reporting on a record company scandal. Through more than two dozen interviews and over a year of reporting; original photography and video; and interactive audio, this project took both newcomers and experts into the debates and technicalities of this growing market — and captured the artistry that make fans so passionate to begin with.

To open the story, Edgers and video journalist CJ Russo joined the controversial audio entrepreneur Tom Port during one of his “shootouts,” sessions in which Port listens to many pressings of the same record to find the best-sounding version.

How could we re-create this scene for readers? Nothing could match the experience of sitting in front of one of these deluxe sound systems.

With the help of contacts in the music world, the team designed the next best thing. Edgers and audio producer Bishop Sand traveled to Brooklyn with a binaural microphone and a stereo microphone to record the same tracks, the Miles Davis Quintet’s “Oleo” and Neil Young’s “Out on the Weekend,” playing once as a digital file and once on vinyl through Jonathan Weiss’s $363,000 Oswalds Mill Audio speakers. Sand matched the loudness of the recordings postproduction.

The team embedded those tracks as audio quizzes in the story, challenging readers to listen and guess which version was the digital file and which was the vinyl track. After meeting the characters who organize their lives around the search for the perfect sound, readers could get a taste of the difference for themselves.

Further Reading

Robert Brook Discusses His Youtube Shootout Video

Hot Stamper Pressings of Revolver Available Now

More Reviews and Commentaries for Revolver

One of our good customers, Robert Brook, writes a blog which he calls A GUIDE FOR THE BUDDING ANALOG AUDIOPHILE. 

He recently made a youtube video for his shootout for Revolver, which we wrote about here.

Now he has posted some context and talked about his journey in audio which we think you will enjoy reading. Robert and I will be doing a video next week about his shootout, so expect to see that here on The Skeptical Audiophile soon.

REVOLVER SHOOTOUT!!!

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Robert Brook Makes History with the First Shootout Video Ever Posted on Youtube

Hot Stamper Pressings of Revolver Available Now

One of our good customers, Robert Brook, writes a blog which he calls A GUIDE FOR THE BUDDING ANALOG AUDIOPHILE. You can find it by clicking the link below.

Welcome to The Broken Record!

We recently loaned Robert some copies of Revolver so that he could do the first youtube-acceptable Record Shootout video in the history of mankind. He had three copies of his own to play along with the five we loaned him, plenty to work with.

We hope to be able to discuss the experience of doing the shootout and the video with him soon, but for now, let’s just enjoy the first of its kind.

Robert now knows firsthand something few audiophiles have made the effort to learn:

Shootouts are a great deal of work if you take the time to do them right.

If you have just a few pressings on hand and don’t bother to clean them carefully, or follow rigorous testing protocols, that kind of shootout anyone can do. You can find those kinds of shootouts on youtube, but we have never seen fit to take them seriously.

The results of shootouts that are not carried out in the serious way that we do and the way that Robert did cannot be trusted, for reasons that anyone reading this blog should find obvious.

Art Dudley illustrates this approach, but you could pick any reviewer you like — none of them have ever undertaken a shootout worthy of the name to our knowledge.

Here is an especially egregious example of how to go about it all wrong.

We ourselves struggled back in the old days. in 2005, our attempted shootout for Blue could not get off the ground. Two years and scores of shootouts later, we had been able to find and clean some amazing sounding copies, which is how we were able to tell how far off the mark this pressing was.

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The Graceland Remastering Disaster, Part 2

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Paul Simon Available Now

Click on the link below to read the story behind an interview conducted by a well-known reviewer of an engineer who was tasked (by whom I wonder?) with remastering Graceland on Heavy Vinyl.

He apparently had never played an original Sterling-mastered copy of Graceland. Either that, or this  engineer thought the original “needed improvement,” the kind supplied by taking a hatchet to the sound of the original tape.

Analogplanet Visits Sterling Sound and Interviews Mastering Engineer Ryan K. Smith

The interviewer apparently does not know how bad the new version sounds, but we had no trouble recognizing its awfulness here at Better Records. As a public service, we soon set about describing what we heard when we put this remastered piece of junk to the test.

Up against a properly-mastered, properly-pressed early pressing, it earned a failing grade.

Is it the worst version of the album ever pressed on vinyl? Hard to imagine it would have much competition. 

The title of our review gives away the game:

The reviewer who interviewed the remastering engineer responsible for this and no doubt many other awful sounding records has never been able to tell a good record from a bad one, and he carries on that tradition with Graceland.

Ryan Smith, the hack who cut this album, has done quite a lot of work for Analogue Productions. We can’t say we’ve played many of his recuts, but the ones we have played are hopelessly bad, with the overly smooth sound so much in vogue today.

We played his recut of Scheherazade, and rather than just give it the failing grade it deserved, we explained how any audiophile could go about using its mistaken EQ in order to recognize what is wrong with it, and of course, others like it.

(Contrary to popular opinion, it is no better than Bernie Grundman’s bad sounding version from the 90s, the one he cut for Classic Records.)

One of my good customers read this rave review from this same reviewer for the Texas Hurricane Box Set and made the worst mistake any audiophile can make: he believed it.

“His overdriven Stratocaster sound is one that guitar aficionados never tire of hearing live or on record, especially when it’s well recorded. … Yet again, Chad Kassem sets high the box set reissue bar delivering a “must have” package for SRV fans, every bit the equal of the one Doors fans have come to cherish. …every one of these records betters the originals and by a considerable margin. It is not even close…You’ve never heard these albums sound like this. That is a 100 % guaranty. …this is an impeccably produced box set physically and especially sonically. It’s the best these albums have ever and probably will ever sound.” — Music = 9/11; Sound = 10/11 — Michael Fremer

Sure, he’s out $400, but on the bright side he’s now learned a lesson he is very unlikely to forget.

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The Beach Boys – Sail on, Sailor

More of the Music of The Beach Boys

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of The Beach Boys 

The original record is dull on the lead vocal, but the chorus is magic.

All the other versions get is wrong as far as I can tell, and in exactly the way I describe in this commentary for Jackson Browne’s first album:  Jackson Browne’s debut – smooth or detailed, which Is right?

UPDATE 2025

The youtube clip posted here has been removed, sorry!

Most of the clips posted here are so modern and phony and wrong they make my head hurt. Really boosted on the top. Who on earth wants that sound? Apparently some people do.

The real pressings never sounded that way. Although they may need some modest help in the EQ department, making wholesale changes to the sound — as was clearly done for most of these modern versions — is just wrong.

It ruins everything that is good about the recording.

Now do you see why we have so little respect for modern mastering engineers?

They ruin classic titles like Surfs Up with their “improvements.” They destroy what is good about vintage analog while promoting themselves as the protectors of vintage analog.

The only people who can be trusted to promote the sound of vintage analog are the people who sell it and write about it.

The rest of them are frauds and charlatans and, as far as I can tell, deaf as a post.

A Chat with Yours Truly

The Video That Started It All

Steve Westman graciously invited one of the most controversial members of the Audiophile Community — that would be me — to appear on his youtube channel for a half hour chat. When he couldn’t shut me up, it ended going for an hour.

I want to thank him for putting up with me while I spent the time mostly criticizing all the modern reissues he seems to favor.

Please read the comments and feel free to post your own if you have something you would like to say. I read them all.

Say whatever you like, I can take it!

 

Unlike the Tom Port of twenty years ago, and some rather famous reviewers still writing today, my skin has grown quite thick since I started causing trouble in the vinyl community with my crackpot ideas and uncontrolled greed. People seem to enjoy  beating up on me and the snake oil they think I am selling, but more than a thousand years ago one of the great Stoic philosophers offered his advice on how to deal with the criticisms of one’s detractors. This is advice that I have tried to heed myself for lo these many years, not always successfully.

Below is an excerpt from an article in The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday.

The secret from Marcus Aurelius for when we get flak or insults or judgment from other people? He said we should look inside their soul.

“Get inside him,” Marcus wrote. “Look at what sort of person he is. You’ll find you don’t need to strain to impress him.”

His point was that too often we blindly “accept” what haters throw at us without stopping to actually examine who these haters actually are. You wouldn’t take driving advice from a bad driver, or be guilted about your finances from someone who knows nothing about money.

Nor should you listen to people telling you you’re not good at this or that, that you’re failing here or there, whether you should act in one way or another, if you don’t respect that person and their own choices.

If you want to stop caring what other people think, take a second and actually look at those people for a second. You’ll quickly find that there isn’t much to be harried on about, that you’re doing just fine.

In response to some of my critics, I wrote a commentary entitled a kinder, gentler approach to record reviewing.

Check it out if you have time.

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The Tapestry Shootout Video Is Here!

Geoff Edgers’ Washington Post article “The Search for the Perfect Sound,” in which he talks to lots of audiophiles and music lovers about his personal journey into the world of audiophile equipment and records, is now active on their website.

NEWSFLASH! This is currently the most popular story/video on the WAPO website! Number One with a bullet, baby. [Alas, no longer.]

Don’t miss the video below of yours truly doing a shootout for Tapestry.

It’s actually not a real shootout. For Tapestry we would typically play 8-10 early pressings and grade them for sound. This was more of a test, to see if I could spot the Hot Stamper among the pretenders, more What’s My Line than a shootout.

Part of the attraction of course is that I’m the guy they love to hate. Just check out the comments.

And please add some of your own. You are the only people on the planet qualified to talk about Hot Stampers because you are the only ones who have heard them on your own stereos with your own two ears.

Why should anyone care what somebody else has to say about something that that person has never experienced? The reason we stopped posting on the Hoffman website back in 2002 was simply the fact that I was tired of arguing with people that have strong opinions about the results of experiments they have never run.

Hot Stamper Shootouts are simply our way of doing blinded experiments on various pressings of records. We eschew theories and conjecture. We prefer observations and data. We write about these issues a lot here on the blog for those who would like to learn more about records. If you already know it all, this is probably not a blog you will find of much value.

I will be posting some comments soon, mostly about all the stuff that got left on the cutting room floor. We spent most of the time with some orange label Vertigo pressings of Dire Straits’ first album, finding a White Hot Stamper LP out of the batch we played, then comparing our records to the execrable Mobile Fidelity 45 RPM 2 disc pressings, pressings so bad they defy understanding. But that is another story for another day! (The MoFi was mastered by Krieg Wunderlich, so if you see his name in the credits of a record you may be interested in, don’t waste your money. He is hopelessly incompetent and can be counted on to produce some of the worst sounding audiophile records ever made.)

I had eye surgery on my right earlier on the day of the interview, so hopefully that accounts for some of my squinty appearance.

I have also been invited to participate in a Reddit Q&A sometime next week, discussing the issues raised in the article or video anyone would like to ask about, so stay tuned for that, and I hope you will participate as well.

Our customers have plenty of their own Hot Stamper stories to tell, and I hope to hear from some of you on that Reddit panel.

You are the only audiophiles with real, first-hand knowledge of what a Hot Stamper sounds like. Perhaps you will wish to share with other audiophiles what they don’t know they are missing.

And if you have any questions of any other kind, I hope you will give me a chance to answer them.

Just email tom@better-records.com

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Should We Tell This Guy the MoFi of Kind of Blue Is a Joke?

Hot Stamper Pressing of Miles’s Albums Available Now

The MoFi of KOB may be a joke, but don’t bother telling this guy, who appears to be rather new to this whole “reviewing” thing.

He has a record store in Phoenix and a youtube channel called The “In” Groove, wherein he proffers advice to audiophiles about records. Unsurprisingly, he tends to favor audiophile pressings. No doubt he sells lots of them in his store.

To quote the man himself, “I do a review of the best sounding copy’s [sic] of Miles Davis – Kind Of Blue. What are the copy’s [sic] you should own?”

Obviously, literacy is not his strong suit, so writing about records is out, replaced by endless talking about records on another one of these insufferable content-light videos.

Everything of interest this gentleman has to say could be written on the back of a napkin and read in the span of the average TV commercial, but that would require stringing together lots of words and arranging them so that they make some kind of sense. It’s so much easier to chat about vinyl while seated in front of some very expensive and no doubt awful sounding (judging by the results of this “shootout”) McIntosh electronics. (I am on record as being opposed to this approach to audio, and have been proselytizing for the benefits of low power amps for more than twenty years.)

Regardless of what he thinks he is doing, in no way does this fellow actually review the best sounding copies, because he’s too inexperienced and ill-informed to even bother with the ’70s Red Label reissue pressings, some versions of which happen to be among the best pressings we’ve heard, a subject we discuss here.

Our Kind of Blue Obsession

KOB is an album we have been obsessed with for a very long time, along with a great many others.

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