zero-tube

Some records are so completely lacking in analog warmth, richness and sweetness that they sound more like bad CDs than records. They have so little Tubey Magic that you might as well peg the figure at ZERO.

This is definitely not our sound. No Hot Stamper pressing could possibly lack Tubey Magic — it’s one of the analog qualities that sets our records apart from even the best of those pressed on Heavy Vinyl – but plenty of other records do, and this link will take you to about 50 of them.

Paganini on Heavy Vinyl – Where Is the Outrage?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Paganini Available Now

Years ago we managed to get hold of the Heavy Vinyl pressing put out by Fenn Music in Germany, about which a well known record dealer on the web (you may recognize the style) had this to say:

“Stunning Reissue Of EMI ASD 440 Recorded In Stereo In 1961. This Recording Featuring The Royal Philharmonic Conducted By Alberto Erede Provides Convincing Proof, If Any Were Needed, That Menuhin Was One Of The Great Violinists Of The 20th Century.”

The “convincing proof” provided by this record is that those responsible for it are Rank Incompetents of the Worst Kind (see what I did there?).

Screechy, bright, shrill, thin and harsh, it’s hard to imagine worse sound than this piece of Heavy Vinyl trash delivers.

Had I paid good money to buy this pressing from 2004 in the hopes of hearing the supremely talented Yehudi Menuhin of 1961 tear it up on Paganini’s legendary first two concertos, I can tell you one thing: I would be pissed.

Where is the outrage in the audiophile community over this kind of trash?

I have yet to see it. I suspect I will grow quite a bit older and quite a bit grayer before anyone from the audiophile commentariat notices just how bad this record sounds. I hope I’m proven wrong.

Screechy, bright, shrill, thin and harsh, it’s hard to imagine worse sound from this piece of Heavy Vinyl garbage.

In other words, no trace of the original’s (or the early reissue’s) analog sound. At most I may own one or two classical CDs that sound this bad, and I own quite a few. When audiophiles of an analog bent tell you they don’t like the sound of CDs, this is why they don’t like them: they sound like this junky Heavy Vinyl record.

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An RCA Direct Disc with Bad Music & Bad Sound, Like Most Audiophile Albums from the ’70s

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Beatles Available Now

The records being marketed to audiophiles these days may have second- and third-rate sound, but at least they now have good music. That’s progress, right?

It is progress, because this RCA direct to disc recording is the kind of crap that used to qualify as an “audiophile record” when I was starting out in the mid-70s. These records were displayed on the walls of all the hi-fi stores I used to frequent back in the day.

They cost a lot more than regular records did too. Many were pressed in Japan, and I vaguely recall that the retail prices were in the range of $15 to $18. That’s $77 to $92 in today’s money. Can you imagine paying that for a record with such poor sound and music?

The Beatles Medley is particularly misguided. These guys have no idea what to do with the music of The Beatles.

A record such as this clearly belongs in our audiophile hall of shame, which is a general catchall section for the many bad sounding records that have been marketed to audiophiles over the last fifty years. We’ve played and reviewed more than 300 to date, which of course is but a mere fraction of the many thousands of questionable pressings that have been produced since the 70s. There has always been a mid-fi collector market, and no shortage of enterprising types to take advantage of it.

It turns out that many of the most shameful offenders for sound are more recent releases that have only come our way in the last few years. Here are some of their stories.

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A Question for Classic Records – What Did You Do to My Beloved Hot Rats?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Frank Zappa Available Now

Second question: This pressing of Hot Rats is analog?

You could’ve fooled me.

And somebody’s been messing around with the drums on the new version — a certain Mr. Frank Zappa no doubt. He really did the album a disservice. If you know the album well, and I know it very well, having played it literally hundreds of times, the Classic is positively unlistenable. (The reworked CD of Ruben and the Jets is even worse.)

Bernie’s version for Classic beats a lot of copies out there — the later Reprise pressings are never any good — but it can’t hold a candle to a good one.

What’s wrong with the Classic?

Well, to my ears it just doesn’t sound natural or all that musical. Sure, it’s a nice trick to beef up those drums and give them some real punch, but does it sound right? Not to these ears.

The other quality that the best copies have going for them and the Classic has none of is Tubey Magic. The Classic is clean, and at first that’s a neat trick since the originals tend to be a bit murky and congested.

But it’s clean like a CD is clean, in all the wrong ways. 

The overall sound of the best originals is musical, natural and balanced. The Classic has that third quality — it’s tonally correct, no argument there — but musical and natural? Not really.

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Cat Stevens Part 2 – Is This the Truest Tillerman of Them All?

More of the Music of Cat Stevens

More Reviews and Commentaries for Tea for the Tillerman

If you haven’t read Part 1 of this story, please click here.

Back to our real story. I listened to my good original pressing. I call it White Hot at least!

Then I put the new pressing on the table, set the SDS for 45 RPM, and got the volume just right. I proceeded to carefully adjust the VTA by ear, going up and down with the arm until the sound was right, which is simply standard operating procedure for every record we audition.

These are my actual notes for But I Might Die Tonight.

This is what I heard as the song worked its way through the various sections, in real time.  The first thing I heard at the start was Zero Tubey Magic for the first verse. One of the last things I heard at the end was No Real Space. Space is what you hear at the end for the big piano and drums finish.

Let’s take it line by line. First up:

Zero Tubey Magic

I didn’t hear much Tubey Magic on the new pressing. The best early pressings — domestic A&M Browns, Pink or Sunray UK Islands — often have simply phenomenal amounts of the stuff. It’s a hallmark of the recording.

If a new pressing comes along without it, that’s a problem. I guess that George Marino‘s cutting system at Sterling could probably do some things well, but it sure doesn’t seem to be able get the sound of tubes right. His 33 RPM cutting had no Tubey Magic, and this one has no Tubey Magic. If I had hired him to cut a record for me and it came out sounding like this, I would find somebody else to cut records for me.

He’s dead now, rest in peace. I would doubt that anyone at Sterling has a better cutting system, and therefore no one should expect any records that have been mastered there to sound very good.

Vocal Is Clear, Clean and Dry

This is the sound you sometimes get with modern, super-clean transistor cutting equipment. It’s low distortion, like a CD is low distortion. We don’t think we should have to put up with dry vocals on records when the good pressings we have been playing all our lives have noticeably richer vocals.

Not rich like Dream With Dean, nothing is that rich, but rich and full-bodied the way the good pressings of this album always make them sound.

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The Original Jazz Classics Series Got Off to a Bad Start with Concorde

Here Are Some Potentially Good Sounding OJC Pressings

OJC-002! Fantasy’s second release in the series, but not a very good one.

The copy (or copies; who can remember?) we’ve auditioned in the past did not impress us sonically, so don’t expect to see Hot Stampers of this title on OJC coming to the Better Records website any time soon.

The music might be wonderful — we unreservedly follow the maxim de gustibus non est disputandum — but the sound of this pressing is not likely to be of audiophile quality.

There may be great sounding pressings of the album – how could we possibly know there aren’t without playing every version ever pressed — but we’re pretty sure the OJC pictured here will always fall short of the mark.

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Dire Straits – Brothers in Arms

More of the Music of Dire Straits

  • A Brothers In Arms like you’ve never heard, with a STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side one mated to a solid Double Plus (A++) side two
  • Tonally correct from start to finish, with a solid bottom and fairly natural vocals (for this particular recording of course), here is the sound they were going for in the studio
  • After doing a comparison between our top copy and the Chris Bellman 45 RPM remaster, at very loud levels mind you, I now have much more respect for this recording than ever before – it’s truly a Demo Disc on the right Robert-Ludwig-mastered copy
  • Drop the needle on “So Far Away” – it’s airy, open, and spacious, yet still rich and full-bodied
  • 4 stars: “One of their most focused and accomplished albums … Dire Straits had never been so concise or pop-oriented, and it wore well on them.”
  • We admit that the sound may be too processed and lacking in Tubey Magic for some
  • When it comes to Tubey Magic, there simply is none — that’s not the sound Neil Dorfsman, the engineer who won the Grammy for this album, was going for
  • We find that the best properly-mastered, properly-pressed copies, when played at good loud levels on our system, give us sound that was wall to wall, floor to ceiling, glorious, powerful and exciting — just not Tubey Magical

Fully extended from top to bottom with a wide-open soundstage, this is the sound you need for this music. There’s plenty of richness and fullness here as well — traits that are really crucial to getting the most out of a mid-’80s recording like this.

The bottom end on “So Far Away” really delivers the goods — it’s punchy and meaty with healthy amounts of tight, deep bass.

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Soultrane Sucks on the Early OJC

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of John Coltrane Available Now

The early OJC reissues from 1982 of this title are awful.

And whatever Heavy Vinyl they’re churning out these days is probably every bit as bad, but — I’m guessing, never played one so don’t hold me to it — in the opposite way.

The OJC is thin and bright, and the modern reissue (I’m assuming, based on playing scores of them) is probably thick, veiled, overly smooth, lacking in space and boosted in the bass — because that’s the sound that audiophiles record buyers seem to like these days.

Without the excellent sounding 60s and 70s reissues that we are still able to find in audiophile playing condition, all that we would have available to buy for our shootouts would be the originals. 

At the big bucks those records go for nowadays, shootouts would be impossibly expensive.

So our thanks go to Rudy for doing a good job on these later pressings!

UPDATE 2025

We were surprised to find that the right stampers on the new OJC pressings can have very good sound. Click on the link below to that Soultrane has joined the group of good sounding modern OJC pressings.

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Steely Dan ‎on MCA Audiophile Vinyl – Sounds Like a Good CD to Me

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Steely Dan Available Now

Clean and clear and tonally correct, just like a good CD should sound.

If this is what you are after, why not just buy the CD? It’s bound to be a lot cheaper.

Some songs sound better than others, but I can’t for the life of me remember which ones. I auditioned copies of this record more than twenty thirty years ago. Once I got rid of them I never bought another. Why would I?

No doubt there are still audiophiles extolling the virtues of this record on various internet threads.

One thing you can be sure of: these are people who are not serious about making progress in audio.

Some of the pressings these audiophiles like can be found in our stone age audio record section.

If you have top quality, highly-tweaked modern equipment, a good room, and the myriad other things that make exceptionally good vinyl playback possible these days — in a way that was not possible even ten or fifteen years ago — you would have no reason to keep a record of such mediocrity in your collection.

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Oh, So That’s Who Butchered Neil Young’s Greatest Hits

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Neil Young Available Now

When I reviewed the Classic Records pressing of Neil Young’s Greatest Hits in 2005, I had never heard of Chris Bellman. As it turns out, he’s the guy who cut this piece of crap. I had no idea. And why would I care anyway?

UPDATE 2025

The median price the album sells for on Discogs as of 10/2025 is $142.92, and it has sold for as much as $288 and change in the past. There are bigger wastes of money in the world of records — this guy can be counted on to produce more than his share, some at prices that even make us blush — but it is hard to imagine how anyone could get less for his $142 than by buying this 2 disc set.

The most shocking thing about the fact that he cut the album is not how awful it sounds.

No, there are plenty of awful sounding Heavy Vinyl pressings in the world, enough to fill up the glossy-paged catalogs of every mail order audiophile record dealer from here to Timbuktu.

What is shocking is that there are audiophiles — self-identified lovers of sound, who are undoubtedly believe themselves capable of telling a good sounding record from a bad one — that defend this man’s work.

How does anyone take this guy’s records seriously?

To be fair, it should be said that I actually like one of the records Mr Bellman has cut, the 45 of Brothers in Arms, discussed here. An excerpt:

[In this video] I’m asked if I like any modern mastering engineers, and the only one I can think of is Chris Bellman, because he mastered one of the few Heavy Vinyl pressings I know of that sounds any good, Brothers in Arms, released in 2021. I played it when Edgers [Geoff Edgers from WAPO] brought it by the studio when he first visited me in preparation for his article.

My best copy was clearly better in some important ways, but Bellman’s mostly sounds right, and that surprised me because most of these modern records sound funny and weird and almost never sound right.

(Geoff brought over three records that day: Brothers in Arms, the remastered Zep II, and a ridiculously bad sounding Craft pressing of Lush Life, which was mastered by Kevin Gray, and one which I have not had time to review yet. It was my introduction to the Craft series, and let’s just say we got off on the wrong foot. I told Geoff it sounded like a bad CD, and that’s pretty much all I remember of it. The average price for that pressing on Discogs is roughly $69 these days. The CD is cheaper and there is very little doubt in my mind that it would be better sounding to boot.)

I stand by my admiration for Brothers in Arms, a very good reissue, something that might give one of our lowest level Hot Stamper pressings a run for its money.

But he has a lot of explaining to do when it comes to the other records of his we (and Robert Brook) have played. Reviews are coming, late as always, but for now here is what we’ve written about the records he’s credited with remastering.

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Just Say No to The Yes Album on Rhino

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Yes Available Now

You can find this one in our audiophile record hall of shame, along with almost 300 others that, in our opinion, make a mockery of the term “audiophile record.”

Is it the worst version ever?

Hard to imagine it would have much competition. The CD I own is dramatically better sounding, and it can probably be had for ten bucks or less. (Make sure Joe Gastwirt had nothing to do with whatever version you buy. His stuff is usually no-noised garbage.)

That notorious hack Ron McMaster strikes again.

Rhino Records 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 produced starting around 2000.

The mastering engineer for this junk title 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 would have switched to CD years ago.

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. It’s sad.

Their Grateful Dead titles sound as bad as the cheapest Super Saver reissue copies I have ever heard. And those are terrible!

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