If you guessed the Cisco LP from 2007, one of the worst sounding versions of the album ever pressed, you win a prize!
When I go searching the web to find out something about a record, occasionally I come across something I had no idea existed.
Look what I found today: a survey of various pressings of Aja!
Aja is an album I think I know pretty well. I’ve been playing it since the day it came out in 1977 and still listen to it regularly.
Play the video and tell me if you think you are learning anything useful from the guy. Does he seem to understand much about the sound of the pressings he is reviewing?
I didn’t think so. If you know much about records you should be appalled at the nonsensical opinions coming out of this guy’s mouth. This video will of course garner many ten of thousands of hits, but that is to be expected.
Phony record gurus like this guy — as opposed to authentic record gurus like us — have found a home in every corner of the web, full of bad advice for those foolish enough to take it.
One of the most difficult rock albums to find good sound for, bar none – it’s by far the toughest nut to crack in the entire Chicago catalog. We awarded it the title of artist’s worst sounding album.
This album spawned three top 10 singles and can sound very good on the right copy. Finding that copy, though, can be incredibly difficult — that’s why you won’t often find top copies of the album on our site.
Peter Cetera Was A Monster
Not many musicians qualify for the list of Most Underrated, but Peter Cetera should be right up at the top. His bass playing alone — forget his singing, which is as good as any pop singer of his generation — qualifies him for Most Talented (but for some reason) Overlooked Musician. The huge bass sound Peter got out of his axe is the meat and potatoes of this album.
Talk about beefy bass; this album, like their first, can really deliver rock-solid bottom end, at least on the tracks that were properly recorded, mastered and pressed, which is not many.
Again, it’s hard to believe this is the same guy that sang and played on ‘Hard To Say I’m Sorry’. His jazz-rock chops anchor the rhythm section with the kind of energy a band with as many pieces as this one needs. Chicago boasts seven top players, but Cetera’s brilliance cuts through on practically every song.
360 Original or Red Label Reissue
Both can be good. Years ago when I last did the shootout I tried to guess the label for the copy I was hearing, for fun more than for anything else. I have to admit that my batting average was not much better than chance.
The 360s tend to be a little fuller and smearier, but plenty of red label copies sound that way and some 360s don’t, so trying to match the sound to the label was even more pointless than usual.
When comparing pressings in a shootout it’s too late for the label to have any predictive value. We’ve already bought the records, cleaned them all up and now just want to know what they actually sound like — not which ones might be the best, but which ones are the best. The time for guessing games has passed. Of course, if we do actually figure out what the right stampers or labels are, this helps us next time around.
It doesn’t to me, but I admit to some bias when it comes to DSOTM. I must have played more than a hundred different pressings over the last forty-odd years.
Year after year I was sure I understood exactly which copies had the best sound, and again and again I was proved wrong. (To be clear, I proved myself wrong. Shootouts have a way of doing that kind of dirty work.)
We only found out what the best sounding versions were about five or six years ago [make that ten]. We did that by doing shootout after shootout with every version we could lay our hands on, starting around 2005. We even did a shootout for two different Mobile Fidelity pressings many years ago, which we think makes for some good reading to this day.
It’s especially good reading for those who don’t appreciate how dramatic pressing variations can be for even quality controlled limited editions. The comparison of the two MoFi’s centers around the idea that midrange tonality is by far the most important quality to listen for on Dark Side, and that, surprisingly to some audiophiles, but obviously not to us, there are MoFi pressings with a correct midrange and there are some without.
Is this fellow listening for midrange tonality? If you watch the video and he says he is, then you can let me know! And if not, you can ask him in the comments why he wasn’t. Maybe he just likes the chiming clocks and the deep bass of the heartbeat.
Some audiophiles have been known to ignore fundamentals such as a proper midrange when comparing records.
And picking six random copies of six different pressings is not exactly approaching the problem scientifically either of course. It is a clear violation of the first cornerstone of Hot Stamper shootouts, which clearly states the following, accent on the must:
You must have a sufficient number of copies to play in order to find at least one “hot” one.
Impressive Records? Not Really
Most of the versions of DSOTM that this individual is reviewing have never impressed us sonically. They are the pressings that most audiophiles have probably heard about and read about in the magazines and on forums. If you know practically nothing about the album going in, these might be the six pressings you would consider playing against each other in a shootout. To be charitable, I suppose you could call it a good start.
Our reviewer seems to be the type who puts a great deal of faith in so-called audiophile pressings — the Japanese Pro-Use Series, the UHQR — the kinds of records that sound more and more artificial and/or mediocre to us with each passing year.
If your stereo is not showing you what’s wrong with these kinds of records, you have your work cut out for you. This is especially true of some of the Ultra High Quality Records put out my Mobile Fidelity in the early ’80s, like this one.
Our Take on DSOTM Pressings
The domestic pressings we have auditioned over the years have never made it into a real shootout. They have always sounded far too flat and veiled to be taken seriously. There are some very good sounding Pink Floyd pressings on domestic vinyl — Wish You Were Here and The Wall can both sound amazing on domestic vinyl — but Dark Side is not one of them in our experience.
If only their recordings were better. Most of their early albums sound like they are playing on an AM radio.
Thanks god The Beatles were so well recorded (although I have to say With the Beatles and A Hard Day’s Night are consistently thinner and brighter than they should be, and thinner and brighter than the albums that follow and Please Please Me before them).
One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased a while back:
Hey Tom,
Love your efforts to upgrade audio listening. Keep it up! FYI (and you may already be aware of this) the original Aphex units were handmade tube pieces that used the nature of “Tubey Magic” to accentuate the even-order harmonics so pleasing to the human ear when they occur in music and voice.
The later solid state units just didn’t sound the same and are basically crap. Only a handful of original tube models survived and are rented out to studios or artists when they feel the need. Here’s a great link to an interview with Val Garay.
Hot Stamper Pressings of Aja Available Now
More of the Music of Chicago
More of the Music of The Hollies
Living Stereo Titles Available Now
The Music of Peter Frampton Available Now