worst-version-ever

Are these these the worst pressings of these albums ever committed to vinyl?

Of course, there’s really no way to know that. We haven’t played every version of every one of these albums ever pressed.

What we can tell you is that they are bad enough to make us think they must be in the running.

Which is our way of saying, whatever you do, don’t buy them.

And if you already own any, play them and read our reviews to see some of the shortcomings you might have missed.

Then get rid of them.

Neil Young / After the Gold Rush – Because Sound Matters?

More of the Music of Neil Young

Reviews and Commentaries for After the Gold Rush

I don’t know why I wasted so much time critiquing the sound of this remastered (2009) pressing. Frankly, it really wasn’t worth it.

However, since I listen to records for a living, I figured I might as well listen to this one, head to head of course with an excellent vintage pressing. 

We know what the good pressings of After the Gold Rush sound like, we play them regularly, and this newly remastered vinyl is missing almost everything that makes the album essential to any Right Thinking Music Lover’s collection.

We can summarize the sound of this dreadful record in one word: boring.

Since some of you reading this review are no doubt fans of Chris Bellman, the engineer credited on the album, and a man apparently held in some esteem by many audiophiles, perhaps we owe it to his fans to break down the sonic strengths and weaknesses of this pressing in more detail.

What It Does Right

It’s tonally correct. Unlike many modern pressings, it is not overly smooth.

Uh, can’t think of anything else…

What It Does Wrong

Where to begin?

It has no real space or ambience. When you play this record, it sounds as if it must have been recorded in a heavily padded studio. Somehow the originals of After the Gold Rush, like most of Neil’s classic albums from the era, are clear, open and spacious.

Cleverly the engineer responsible for this audiophile remastering managed to reproduce the sound of a dead studio on a record that wasn’t recorded in one.

In addition, the record never gets loud. The good pressings get very loud. They rock, they’re overflowing with energy.

And, lastly, there’s no real weight to the bottom end. The Whomp Factor* on this new pressing is practically non-existent. The bottom end of the originals is huge, deep and powerful.

The Bottom Line

This new Heavy Vinyl pressing is boring beyond belief. I wouldn’t give you a nickel for it. If Neil Young actually had anything to do with it, he should be ashamed of himself. If you want a good copy of the album, find yourself a vintage pressing. Please don’t throw your money away on this one.

If you did make the mistake of buying this album, did you notice its many shortcomings? And if not, why not?

And if Chris Bellman is such a good cutting engineer, as I hear tell, why does this record sound as bad as it so obviously does?

Were you perhaps a bit too impressed by the reputations of Young and Bellman and just figured those two guys must know what they are doing? It’s AAA, right? Made from the master tape? With tender loving care? Is there some reason it shouldn’t sound amazingly good with all that going for it?

No, no particular reason. It just doesn’t.

*For whomp factor, the formula goes like this: deep bass + mid bass + speed + dynamics + energy = whomp.

If you would like to evaluate your system’s ability to reproduce whomp, here are some records that we’ve found to be good for testing that quality.

Further Reading

Sonny Rollins Plus 4 – Defending the Indefensible

The Music of Sonny Rollins Available Now

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Sonny Rollins

This review is from 2014 or thereabouts.

I cannot recall hearing a more ridiculously thick, opaque and unnatural sounding pair of audiophile records than this 45 RPM Analogue Productions Heavy Vinyl release, and I’ve heard a ton of them. 

Surely someone must have noticed how awful these records sound.

So, being an enterprising sort, with a few idle moments to spare, I did a google search. To my surprise it came up pretty much empty. Sure, dealers are selling it, every last one of the bigger mail-order types.

But how is it that no reviewer has taken it to task for its oh-so-obvious shortcomings?

And no one on any forum seems to have anything bad to say about it either. How could that be?

We don’t feel it’s incumbent upon us to defend the sound of these pressings. We think for the most part they are awful and want nothing to do with them.

But don’t those who DO think these remastered pressings sound good — the audiophile reviewers and the forum posters specifically — have at least some obligation to point out to the rest of the audiophile community that at least one of them is spectacularly bad, as is surely the case here.

Is it herd mentality? Is it that they don’t want to rock the boat? They can’t say something bad about even one of these Heavy Vinyl pressings because that might reflect badly on all of them?

I’m starting to feel like Mr. Jones: Something’s going on, but I don’t know what it is. Dear reader, this is the audiophile world we live in today. If you expect anyone to tell you the truth about the current crop of remastered vinyl, you are in for some real disappointment.

We don’t have the time to critique what’s out there, and it seems that the reviewers and forum posters lack the — what? desire, courage, or maybe just the basic critical listening skills — to do it properly.

Which means that in the world of Heavy Vinyl, it’s every man for himself.

And a very different world from the world of Vintage Vinyl, the kind we offer. In our world we are behind you all the way. We guarantee your satisfaction or your money back.

Now which world would you rather live in?

Further Reading

Records are getting awfully expensive these days, and it’s not just our Hot Stampers that seem priced for perfection.

If you are still buying these modern remastered pressings, making the same kinds of mistakes that I was making before I knew better, take the advice of some of our customers and stop throwing your money away on Heavy Vinyl and Half-Speed mastered LPs.

At the very least let us send you a Hot Stamper pressing — of any album you choose — that can show you what is wrong with your copy of the album.

And if for some reason you disagree with us that our record sounds better than yours, we will happily give you all your money back and wish you the very best.

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Thelonious Monk / Brilliant Corners – This Pig Sure Wears Pretty Lipstick

More of the Music of Thelonious Monk

What a Good Copy of Brilliant Corners Should Sound Like

During our most recent shootout of Brilliant Corners, we took the opportunity to play the Craft pressing cut by Bernie Grundman and released in 2023.

We thought it was godawful, the worst sounding version of the album that we’ve ever played.

But how is that possible? Read all about the best practices being followed and look at the description of the fancy packaging below. Why would they go to all that trouble just to produce a bad souding record?

For the answer to that question, you will have to ask them. We’re stumped.

  • Pressed using a one-step lacquer process at RTI utilizing Neotech’s VR900 compound
  • All-analog mastering by Bernie Grundman from the original master tapes
  • Housed in a foil-stamped, linen-wrapped slipcase
  • Numbered and limited to 4,000

They used Neotech’s VR900 compound! Really?! That must be an awesome compound!

Apparently even the VR900 compound was not enough to save this pathetic excuse for a record.

For those of you who might be new to this blog, we should point out that we have been stumped by Bernie Grundman’s work for more than twenty five years. The first RCA he remastered for Classic Records, LSC 1806, was a so bright and the strings were so shrill that it probably lasted on our turntable maybe all of five minutes. My ears just couldn’t take it, even on a system that was dramatically darker and less revealing than the one we use now.

Equally bad sounding Classic Records were to follow by the hundreds.

Our quickie notes for side one can be seen below. After hearing side one fall so short of the mark, we dropped it from the shootout and put the Craft pressing on the shelf to go back to whoever loaned it to us. Who cares what side two sounds like if side one is that bad? Time is money. We are in the business of finding good records to sell to our customers, not playing crap Heavy Vinyl that only the most hard-of-hearing collector types would consider owning.

Before long we had a change of heart. We thought we owed it to Bernie’s fans to be more thorough, so we took our best side two and played it against the Craft pressing.

The scathing notes you see are the result of the emotions you might experience if you were forced to sit through an album whose sound has been completely screwed up. Keep in mind we brought this on ourselves. We volunteered for this duty.

And it was ruined not by some audiophile wannabe engineers making audiophile records. A guy like this has an excuse. He doesn’t know anything about making records.

No, this turd was made by someone who should know better than to turn in such shoddy work. It’s inarguable that Bernie Grundman used to make good sounding records. We know that for a fact because we’ve played them by the hundreds.

He apparently has lost whatever skill he previously possessed.

And it simply won’t do to deny it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our notes for side two, for those who have trouble reading our scratch:

  • Horns so thin.
  • The richness is gone.
  • Snare is hard and boxy.
  • The bottom of the piano and horns is gone.
  • Bass isn’t connected to anything.

(When I asked our listening guy what he meant by this, he said all of the rich lower mids were gone and all that was left down there was blubbery deep bass. Robert Brook has quite a bit to say about that subject, well worth reading.)

  • Gritty horn texture.
  • This is CRAP!

At least one reviewer liked it a lot more than we did:

While the Neotech VR900 vinyl compound can sometimes sound soft, here it does not. but it surely is dead quiet. The quiet further expresses the skilled front to back layering in Jack Higgins’ live mix. The celeste Monk plays with his right hand while playing piano with his left definitely sounds best on this “One Step”. Likewise, Monk’s solo piano on “I Surrender Dear” has the most profound and pleasing sustain—though again, none of these editions are less than a seriously pleasant listen and each has its minor pleasing embellishments. Also, on “Bemsha Swing” from the second recording session, where the sound is quite different and Roach’s drum kit is pushed further back on the soundstage, the NeoTech VR900’s quiet (plus probably the “One Step” process), proves its worth. You really catch all of what Roach is doing.

My conclusion: other than the inexplicably poor cover art reproduction, this is a recording worthy of a “Small Batch” One-Step and Bernie Grundman did his usually great mastering job.

Hard to believe we played the same record. When it comes to Michael Fremer’s reviews, we say that a lot. All the time in fact. Possibly without exception. To be sure I would have to check my notes, and that’s more trouble than it’s worth.

More from Robert Brook

Robert Brook did a shootout using both his own and many of our killer copies and went into great detail about the time-consuming, somewhat exhausting experience and what he learned from it. We feel that the many insights he gained make his review one that audiophiles will find well worth reading.

If you want to make progress in this hobby, he’s the guy that can show you how to do it based solely on his personal experience.

Further Reading

Below you will find our reviews of the more than 200 Heavy Vinyl pressings we’ve played over the years.

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Stills / Manassas – A Classic Records Disaster

More of the Music of Stephen Stills

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Stephen Stills

The Classic pressing was a disaster. Can you imagine adding the kind of grungy, gritty sound that Bernie’s mastering chain is known for (around these parts, anyway) to a recording with those problems already? It was a match made in hell.

Back in the day when I was selling lots of Classic Heavy Vinyl, this was one of the titles I refused to have anything to do with. This and Stephen Stills’ first album — both were personal favorites of mine and both were awful on remastered Heavy Vinyl.

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

Lots of rave reviews for the two of them in the audiophile press at the time though. I guess nothing ever really changes, does it? Played a Sundazed record lately? Well, there you go. How are these people impressed with such bad sound?

Of course I know exactly how it is possible to be impressed by bad sound. I spent my first twenty years in audio being clueless. Why should I expect the audiophile of today to have figured things out in less time than it took me?

I was a clueless audiophile record dealer (but I repeat myself) in the 90s, and I have the catalogs to prove it.

Falling Short

As a general rule, Manassas, like most Heavy Vinyl pressings, will fall short in some or all of the following areas when played head to head against the vintage pressings we offer:

My question to the Vinyl True Believers of the world is this: Why own a turntable if you’re going to play records like these?

I have boxes of CDs with more musically involving sound and I don’t even bother to play those. Why would I take the time to throw on some 180 gram record that sounds worse than a good CD?

If you are stuck in a Heavy Vinyl rut, we can help you get out of it. We did precisely that for these folks, and we can do it for you.

The best way out of that predicament is to hear how mediocre these modern records sound compared to the vintage Hot Stampers we offer.

Once you hear the difference, your days of buying newly remastered releases will — we hope — be over.

Even if our pricey curated pressings are too expensive, you can avail yourself of the methods we describe to find killer records on your own.

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Who on Earth Could Possibly Take the Sound of this Awful Remaster Seriously?

More Orchestral Music Conducted by Georg Solti

Hot Stamper Decca and London Pressings Available Now

There actually is such a person who does exactly that, can you imagine?

Only an Audiophile True Believer could be fooled by sound so ridiculously unnatural.

But the world is full of such people. They bought into the Audiophile BS of Mobile Fidelity in the 80s and apparently haven’t learned much since.

Now they think Heavy Vinyl is the answer to the world’s problems. The more things change…

If your stereo is any good at all, you should have no trouble hearing the sonic qualities of this album described below. If you are on this blog, and you have tried some of our Hot Stamper pressings, there is a good chance you’re hearing pretty much what we’re hearing. Why else why would you pay our prices?

One thing I can tell you: we would never charge money for a record that sounds as weird and wrong as this MoFi.

A well-known reviewer has many kind things to say about this pressing, but we think it sounds like a hi-fi-ish version of a ’70s London, which means it’s opaque and the strings are badly lacking in Tubey Magical sheen and richness.

The bass is like jello on the MoFi, unlike the real London, which has fairly decent bass.

If a self-styled Audiophile Reviewer cannot hear the obvious faults of this pressing, I would say there’s a good chance one or both of the following is true:

  1. His equipment is not telling him what the record is really doing, and/or,
  2. His listening skills are not sufficiently developed to notice the shortcomings in the sound.

The result is the worst kind of Reviewer Malpractice.

But is it really the worst kind? It seems to be the only kind!

MoFi had a bad habit of making bright classical records. I suppose you could say they had a bad habit of making bright records in general. A few are dull, some are just right, but most of them are bright in one way or another. Dull playback equipment? An attempt to confuse detail with resolution? Whatever the reasons, the better and more accurate your equipment becomes, the most obvious this shortcoming will be. My tolerance for their phony EQ is at an all time low. But hey, that’s me.

Describing the real London pressing, we wrote, “Huge scope — depth and width like you will not believe, perfect for this music. The voices in the chorus are clearly separated out and so big and rich! This side is open and sweet in the best Golden Age tradition. Smooth like live music — there’s no phony top here, unlike the MoFi, which is nothing but phony sound from top to bottom. What a joke they played on the audiophiles of the day.”

And now it goes for big money on ebay because some audiophile web pundit put it on his list of great recordings. Can you imagine having a list of great recordings that includes a MoFi pressing? That one entry renders the list risible, and the fact that no one has called this person on it is a sure sign that there are still far too many audiophiles who simply cannot or will not learn to listen for themselves.

It’s the SLAM factor in a recording that let’s you appreciate how much air these large orchestral instruments can really move when the piece calls for it, and of course these pieces do call for it, big time. Night on Bald Mountain especially. The concert hall is supposed to shake with the blasts of brass and tympanic beatings called for by Mussorgsky.

Note that it’s rare for a half speed mastered record to have deep solid bass. What their cutters manage for bass is never as tight, defined or note-like as the better real time cutters. We wrote about the subject in the track commentary for the song Deja Vu.

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The Abbey Road Remix on Vinyl

More of the Music of The Beatles

Reviews and Commentaries for Abbey Road

BREAKING NEWS from 2020

We got a copy of the Abbey Road Remix in, cleaned it and played it. Now we can officially report the results of our investigation into this modern marvel. Imagine, The Beatles with a new mix! Just what it needed, right?

So what did we hear?

The half-speed mastered remixed Abbey Road has to be one of the worst sounding Beatles records we have ever had the misfortune to play.

Hard to imagine you could make Abbey Road sound any worse. It’s absolutely disgraceful.

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

I will be writing more about its specific shortcomings down the road, but for now let this serve as a warning that you are throwing your money away if you buy this newly remixed LP.

UPDATE 11/2022

As you may have guessed by now, I have completely lost interest in detailing the abundant shortcomings of this awful record. Do yourself a favor and don’t buy one.

If you did buy one, do yourself a different favor: order any UK pressing from 1970-1986 off the web and play that one head to head with it so you can hear how badly they screwed with and screwed up the new mix.

When the remastering is this incompetent, we

Remastering a well-known title and creating a new sound for it is a huge bête noire for us here at Better Records.

Half-Speed Mastered Disasters that sound as bad as this record does go directly into our Audiophile Record Hall of Shame.

If this isn’t the perfect example of a Pass/Not-Yet record, I don’t know what would be.

Some records are so wrong, or are so lacking in qualities that are critically important to their sound — qualities typically found in abundance on the right vintage pressings — that the defenders of these records are fundamentally failing to judge them properly. We call these records Pass/Not-Yet, implying that the supporters of these kinds of records are not where they need to be in audio yet, but that there is still hope. If they target their resources (time and money) well, there is no reason they can’t get to where they need to be, the same way we did. Our Audio Advice section may be of help in that regard.

Tea for the Tillerman on the new 45 may be substandard in every way, but it is not a Pass/Not-Yet pressing. It lacks one thing above all others, Tubey Magic, so if your system has an abundance of that quality, as many tube systems do, the new pressing may be quite listenable and enjoyable. Those whose systems can play the record and not notice this important shortcoming are not exactly failing. They most likely have a system that is heavily colored and not very revealing, but it is a system that is not hopeless.

A system that can play the MoFi pressing of Aja without revealing to the listener how wrong it is is on another level of bad entirely, and that is what would qualify as a failing system. My system in the ’80s played that record just fine. Looking back on it now, I realize it was doing more wrong than right.

One of our good customers recently moved his stereo into a new house.

Hey Tom,

Interestingly, the electricity and spatial characteristics are so much better in the new place that I’ve had a complete sea change regarding the MoFi Kind of Blue. If you recall, I previously found this oddly EQ’d and unrealistic, but also wasn’t as hell bent against it as you are (though I certainly have been against other crappy heavy vinyl from MoFi, Analog Productions, Blue Note, etc.). Well, now I can’t stand it. It sounds fucking atrocious. The difference between it and my humble hot stamper copy is night and day. Whole collection sounds better, and is awesome to rediscover again, but this one really stood out. Onwards and upwards!

Conrad,

That is indeed good news. That record is pass-fail for me. If anyone cannot tell how bad it is, that is a sure sign that something is very wrong somewhere. Glad you are hearing it as I am hearing it. It is indeed atrocious.

TP

Conrad followed up with these remarks:

The MoFi Kind of Blue never sounded right or real, but now it sounds downright puke. Will hang onto it and use as a test record for fun on other systems. As bad as it is, as I’ve said before, you have no idea how much worse their Junior Wells Hoodoo Man Blues is. My god; you’d suspect your system is broken, playing that. Bloated asphyxiated subaquatic delirium.

Cheers,

C

Well said!

Further Reading

Donald Fagen / Morph The Cat – Mastered by the Cats from DCC

More of the Music of Steely Dan

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Steely Dan

Yet another Disastrous Heavy Vinyl release with godawful sound, and in this case, equally godawful music, a fitting entry for our Audiophile Hall of Shame.

Sonic Grade: F

Hopelessly murky, muddy, opaque, ambience-free sound, and so artificial I honestly cannot make any sense of it.

This is someone’s idea of analog? It sure ain’t mine.

Is this music for robots? That would explain a lot. Audiophile robots, perhaps?

Why do audiophiles waste their money on crap like this?

And Kamikiriad from 1993 was musically every bit as bad.

The last good record Donald Fagen was involved with was The Nightfly.

After that, there is no reason to buy anything he recorded, whether as a solo artist or as part of the reformed Steely Dan.

And there would never be a good reason to buy a record that sounds as bad as this one on vinyl.

The CD has to be better.

Further Reading

Santana / Abraxas – A 180 gram Columbia Disaster

More of the Music of Santana

Reviews and Commentaries for Abraxas

Sonic Grade: F

There is a 180 gram domestic pressing of Abraxas that may still be available. The reason we never sold it even when we were selling Heavy Vinyl many years ago is that it’s AWFUL. One side, I don’t remember which one, is actually Mono.

You will see people selling this record on Ebay as an audiophile pressing. Believe me, no audiophile in his right mind would want this record.

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

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.

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Supertramp – An A&M Half-Speed Mastered Disaster

More of the Music of Supertramp

Hot Stamper Pressings of Breakfast in America Available Now

Sonic Grade: F

An Audiophile Hall of Shame pressing and a Half-Speed Mastered Disaster if there ever was one. If this isn’t the perfect example of a Pass/Not-Yet record, I can’t imagine what would be.

It is just awful. So washed out, brittle, thin and lifeless, it practically defies understanding that anyone with two working ears ever considered calling this piece of crap an “audiophile” record.

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

If you don’t think the major labels had anything but contempt for audiophiles, play this pressing and see for yourself the kind of garbage they were happy to pawn off on an unsuspecting audiophile “community.”

The audiophile community? Was there ever such a thing?

There is now of course, Hoffman’s being the most popular. On his forum you will find self-described audiophiles Defending the Indefensible at every turn. I am happy to report that threads mentioning — sorry, I meant to say bashing — Hot Stampers are some of the most popular.

Further Reading on Half-Speed Mastering

If you are buying these modern pressings, take the advice of some of our customers and stop throwing your money away on Heavy Vinyl Pressings and Half-Speed Mastered Records.

People have been known to ask us:

At the very least let us send you a Hot Stamper pressing — of any album you choose — that can show you what is wrong with your Half-Speed mastered pressing.

And if for some reason you disagree that our record sounds better than yours, we will happily give you all your money back and wish you the best.

To learn more about records that sound dramatically better than any Half-Speed ever made (with one exception, John Klemmer’s Touch), please go here:

Below you will find our breakdown of the best and worst Half-Speed mastered records we have auditioned over the years.

New to the site? Start here.

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Workingman’s Dead is Dead as a Doornail on Rhino Records

More of the Music of The Grateful Dead

More Records that Sound Like CDs

Sonic Grade: F

An Audiophile Hall of Shame pressing and a Heavy Vinyl Disaster if there ever was one (and oh yes, there are plenty).

The 2003 Rhino reissue on heavy vinyl of Workingman’s Dead is absolutely awful. It sounds like a bad cassette. The CD of the album that I own is superb, which means that the tapes are not the problem, bad mastering and pressing are.

This pressing has what we call ”modern” sound, which is to say it’s clean and tonally correct for the most part, but it’s missing the Tubey Magic the originals and the good reissues both have plenty of.

Is it the worst version of the album ever made? The pressings on the last WB labels are pretty awful, but this awful? Who can say.

Rhino Records has really made a mockery of the analog medium. Rhino bills their releases as pressed on “180 gram High Performance Vinyl”. However, if they are using performance to refer to sound quality, we have found the performance of their vinyl to be quite low, lower than the average copy one might stumble upon in the used record bins.

The CD versions of most of the LP titles they released early on are far better sounding than the lifeless, flat, pinched, so-called audiophile pressings they did starting around 2000. The mastering engineer for this garbage actually has the nerve to feature his name in the ads for the records. He should be run out of town, not promoted as a keeper of the faith and defender of the virtues of “vinyl”. If this is what vinyl sounds like I’d switch to CD myself.

And the amazing thing is, as bad as these records are, there are people who like them! I’ve read postings on the internet from people who say the sound on these records is just fine, thank you very much. I find this sad.

Their Grateful Dead titles sound worse than the cheapest Super Saver reissue copies I have ever heard. The Yes Album sounds like a cheap cassette, a ghost of the real thing.

More Heavy Vinyl Reviews

Here are some of our reviews and commentaries concerning the many Heavy Vinyl pressings we’ve played over the years, well over 200 at this stage of the game. Feel free to pick your poison.

There are many kinds of audiophile pressings — Half-Speeds, Direct-to-Discs, Heavy Vinyl Remasters, Japanese Pressings, the list of records offered to the audiophile with supposedly superior sound quality is endless. Having been in the audiophile record biz for more than thirty years, it has been our misfortune to have played them by the hundreds,

How did we find so many bad sounding records? The same way we find so many good sounding ones. We included them in our shootouts, comparing them head to head with our best Hot Stamper Pressings..

When you can hear them that way, up against an actual good record, their flaws become that much more obvious and, frankly, that much more inexcusable.

Back to 2000

Even as recently as the early 2000s, we were often impressed with many of the better Heavy Vinyl pressings. If we’d never made the progress we’ve worked so hard to make over the course of the last twenty or more years, perhaps we would find more merit in the Heavy Vinyl reissues so many audiophiles seem impressed by.

We’ll never know of course; that’s a bell that can be unrung. We did the work, we can’t undo it, and the system that resulted from it is merciless in revealing the truth — that these newer pressings are second-rate at best and much more often than not third-rate or worse.

When I say worse, I know whereof I speak. Some audiophile records have pissed me off so bad I was motivated to create a special ring of hell for them.

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