vin-jazz-w

We judged these vintage jazz records to have unacceptable sound based solely on the specific pressings we played.

We can’t say that other pressings don’t sound better. We just don’t plan on playing any more copies to find out.

How Does the D1/D1 Jazz Giant Black Label Pressing Sound?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Contemporary Jazz Albums Available Now

Even though the Black label original of Jazz Gianot we played in our shootout held its own well enough, it did suffer from a slight case of “old record” sound.

Head to head with the best vintage reissues, it was a bit crude, didn’t extend fully on the top end, and wasn’t as resolving in the midrange.

The fact that it earned a Super Hot (A++) sonic grade means that it could not have sounded too much like an old record. It was still doing most everything right.

It just had a few sonic shortcomings we recognized were holding it back.

The reissues that beat it in the shootout showed us just how good the album could sound, maybe not night and day better, but definitely better, a full grade better.

The Black Label original we played would still beat the pants off the godawful Analogue Productions Heavy Vinyl pressing that came out in the 90s, the one mastered by the formerly-brilliant Doug Sax.

For those who may not have been collecting back then, we describe in great detail the bad sound of the Heavy Vinyl pressing that AP produced for their version of Way Out West in 1992.

Mobile Fidelity got into the reissue act in 1994, making murky-sounding records on 200 gram vinyl and calling them Anadisqs.

Classic Records started producing their bright, screechy reissues of Living Stereo titles that year as well.

It seems a lot of bad sounding records were being made back then!

Is it any different now? (If it is, please contact me at tom@better-records.com and tell me what you think the differences are. I am at a loss after playing these six Heavy Vinyl titles in 2024 and finding that all of them fell well short of the mark. What mark is that, you ask? Why, the mark set by their vintage counterparts.)

(more…)

Looking For a Top Quality Jazz Record? Skip the OJC of All Night Long

Hot Stamper Pressings of Outstanding Jazz Recordings Available Now

If you see this OJC pressing in your local record store, best skip it.

The sound is dry and bright. It’s passable, but it’s certainly not very good, and probably the CD is better, assuming you are willing to go through a number of discs until you find one that is mastered properly.

To help you avoid records with this kind of sound, we have linked to others with similar problems on the blog.

Here are some of the titles we’ve found that tend to have dry sound and here are some that tend to have bright sound.

We’ve easily played more than a hundred OJC pressings in the 37 years we’ve been in the record business. Here are reviews for some of the ones we’ve auditioned to date:

(more…)

Art Pepper Today – Latest Findings

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Art Pepper Available Now

UPDATE 2024

In 2010 we wrote a commentary about the album which can be found here.

It’s a long story that goes into great detail comparing the sound of the original Galaxy pressings with those of the much more common OJC’s.

Fourteen years later (!) and here we are, finally getting to the point where we have enough copies of Art Pepper Today to do a proper shootout.

Since this is a title we have not played in a very long time, we took the opportunity to give a quick listen to both kinds of pressings just to make sure that both could be expected to do well enough to be included in the shootout.

The OJCs Fall Short in a Different Way

Well, it turns out that the OJC pressings are no longer cutting it. That’s money down the drain.

It seems to be the case that they are dark and hard sounding compared to the Galaxy pressings.

This is a bit surprising because most of the OJC pressings that we don’t like are thin and bright, not dark and hard.

That’s not the way OJC’s typically sound, but in the world of records, when has that ever counted for anything?

Patterns are helpful up to a point, but on this album, the patterns we see across the label have broken down, which is why our business is built upon a foundation of playing every record we sell and judging it strictly on its own merits.

There are just too many exceptions to whatever patterns we may think we have detected.

(more…)

Audiophiles Should Skip the OJC of More Swinging Sounds

Hot Stamper Pressings of Well Recorded Jazz Albums In Stock Now

The vintage OJC pressings we played in our most recent shootout suffer from sonic problems common to many of these reissues: it was bright and dry.

To help you avoid records with this kind of sound, better suited to those who might prefer the sound of a compact disc to vintage vinyl, we have linked to others with similar problems on the blog.

Here are some of the titles we found had dry sound and here are some that had bright sound.

The OJC pressing of this album is clearly better suited to the old school audio systems of the 60s and 70s than the modern systems of today. These kinds of reissues used to sound good on those older systems, and I should know, I had an old school stereo and some of the records I used to think sounded good back in the day don’t sound too good to me anymore (although this one never did).

The OJC pressings of More Swinging Sounds are thinner and brighter than even the worst of the later pressings we’ve auditioned. That is decidedly not our sound. It’s not the sound Roy DuNann was famous for, and we don’t like it either, although we have to admit that we did find the sound of many of these OJC pressings more tolerable in the past.

(more…)

These Two Weather Report Albums Didn’t Make the Grade

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Weather Report

These are a couple of the Weather Report albums we’ve auditioned over the years and found to be less than impressive.

Without going into specifics, we’ll just say these albums suffer from weak music, weak sound, or both. They may have some appeal to fans of the band, but audiophiles looking for top quality sound and music — our stock in trade — are best advised to look elsewhere.

We play mediocre-to-bad sounding pressings so that you don’t have to, a free service from your record-loving friends at Better Records.

You can find these two in our hall of shame, along with others that — in our opinion — are best avoided by audiophiles looking for hi-fidelity sound.

(more…)

The Recordings of Duke Ellington – Two More that Didn’t Make the Grade

More of the Music of Duke Ellington

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Duke Ellington

Pictured to the left are a couple of the Ellington albums we’ve auditioned over the years.

Without going into specifics, we’ll just say these albums suffer from weak music, weak sound, or both. They may have some appeal to fans of the man, but audiophiles looking for top quality sound and music — our stock in trade — are best advised to look elsewhere.

We play mediocre-to-bad sounding pressings so that you don’t have to, a public service from your record-loving friends at Better Records.

You can find these two in our Hall of Shame, along with others that — in our opinion — are best avoided by audiophiles looking for hi-fidelity sound. Some of these records may have passable sonics, but we found the music less than compelling.  These are also records you can safely avoid.

We also have an Audiophile Record Hall of Shame for records that were marketed to audiophiles for their putatively superior sound. If you’ve spent any time on this blog at all, you know that these records are some of the worst sounding pressings we have ever had the displeasure to play.

We routinely play them in our Hot Stamper Shootouts against the vintage records that we offer, and are often surprised at just how bad an “audiophile record” can sound and still be considered an “audiophile record.”

(more…)

Legrand Jazz – Skip the Mono

Hot Stamper Pressings of Large Group Jazz Recordings Available Now

This review is from well over ten years ago.

This album is more common in mono than stereo, but we found the sound of the mono pressing we played seriously wanting. It’s dramatically smaller and more squawky and crude than even the worst of the stereo pressings we played. 

We had a copy we liked years ago, but that was years ago.

We don’t have that copy anymore and we don’t have a stereo that sounds the way our old one did either.

More on the subject of mono versus stereo.

(more…)

The Recordings of Milt Jackson – These Two Didn’t Make the Grade

Hot Stamper Pressings of Jazz Recordings Available Now

Pictured to the left are a couple of the Milt Jackson albums we’ve auditioned over the years, both on CTI, a label we like very much.

Without going into specifics, we’ll just say these albums suffer from weak music, weak sound, or both. They may have some appeal to fans of the man, but audiophiles looking for top quality sound and music — our stock in trade — are best advised to look elsewhere.

We play mediocre-to-bad sounding pressings so that you don’t have to, a public service from your record-loving friends at Better Records.

You can find these two in our Hall of Shame, along with others that — in our opinion — are best avoided by audiophiles looking for hi-fidelity sound. Some of these records may have passable sonics, but we found the music less than compelling.  These are also records you can safely avoid.

We also have an Audiophile Record Hall of Shame for records that were marketed to audiophiles for their putatively superior sound. If you’ve spent any time on this blog at all, you know that these records are some of the worst sounding pressings we have ever had the misfortune to play.

We routinely put them in our Hot Stamper Shootouts against the vintage records that we offer, and are often surprised at just how bad an “audiophile record” can sound and still be considered an “audiophile record.”

Does the term still have any meaning?

(more…)

The Recordings of Duke Ellington – These Two Didn’t Make the Grade

More of the Music of Duke Ellington

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Duke Ellington

Pictured to the left are a couple of the Ellington albums we’ve auditioned over the years.

Without going into specifics, we’ll just say these albums suffer from weak music, weak sound, or both. They may have some appeal to fans of the man, but audiophiles looking for top quality sound and music — our stock in trade — are best advised to look elsewhere.

We play mediocre-to-bad sounding pressings so that you don’t have to, a public service from your record-loving friends at Better Records.

You can find these two in our Hall of Shame, along with others that — in our opinion — are best avoided by audiophiles looking for hi-fidelity sound. Some of these records may have passable sonics, but we found the music less than compelling.  These are also records you can safely avoid.

We also have an Audiophile Record Hall of Shame for records that were marketed to audiophiles for their putatively superior sound. If you’ve spent any time on this blog at all, you know that these records are some of the worst sounding pressings we have ever had the displeasure to play.

We routinely play them in our Hot Stamper Shootouts against the vintage records that we offer, and are often surprised at just how bad an “audiophile record” can sound and still be considered an “audiophile record.”

(more…)

The D4/D5 Stereo Pressings Are Just Awful on My Fair Lady

Hot Stamper Pressings Featuring Shelly Manne Available Now

In our experience, the Black Label stereo originals with D4/D5 stampers are terrible sounding.

With those stampers, My Fair Lady is undoubtedly a hall of shame pressing, as well as another early pressing we’ve reviewed and found wanting.

Both sides graded “No,” our not-especially-technical term for a record that sounds really bad.

Notes for Side One:

Track one is bright and unnatural up top. Track two is not very musical.

Notes for Side Two:

Track one is very weird sounding, thin and small.

(Obviously there was no need to play a second track.)

As you may have read elsewhere on the site, some Contemporary label originals are very poorly mastered, which should put paid to the idea that Hot Stampers are only, or even usually, original pressings.

In our most recent shootout, the second-best sounding pressing was on the early Black Label. We would love to give out the stampers for that one, but we don’t do that.

(more…)