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.

An Insult to Aaron Copland on Reference Records

Hot Stamper Pressings of Orchestral Music Available Now

Yet another Reference Record we’ve reviewed and found wanting.

In all the years I was selling audiophile records, one of the labels whose appeal made no sense to me whatsoever (along with their long-forgotten TAS list brethren, American Gramaphone and Telarc) was Reference Records.

Back then, when I would hear one of their orchestral or classical recordings, I was always left thinking, “Why do audiophiles like these records?”

I was confused, because at that time, back in the 80s, I had simply not developed the listening skills that today make it so easy to recognize the faults of their recordings.

I made the mistake of thinking that other audiophiles with more advanced equipment and more refined listening skills must be hearing something I was not.

I had trouble putting my finger on what I didn’t like about them, but now, having worked full time (and then some!) for more than twenty years to develop better critical listening skills, the shortcomings of their records, or, to be more accurate, the shortcomings of this particular copy of this particular title, took no time at all to work out.

My transcribed notes for RR-22:

  • Lean tonality
  • No real weight
  • No Tubey Magic
  • Blurry imaging when loud
  • No real depth
  • Bright tonal balance

Is this the sound you are looking for in an audiophile record?

Shouldn’t you be looking for audiophile quality sound?

Well, you sure won’t find it here.

On our current playback system, this Reference Record is nothing but a joke, a joke played on a much-too-credulous audiophile public by the ridiculously inept and misguided engineers and producers who worked for Reference Records.

This is a reference for something? For what?

As I wrote about another one of their awful releases, if this is your idea of a reference record, you are in real trouble.

It would be hard to imagine that anyone who has ever heard a good vintage classical recording — here are some of our favorites — could ever confuse this piece of audiophile trash with actual hi-fidelity orchestral sound.

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Moondance on Heavy Vinyl Is a Disgrace to Audiophiles and Record Lovers All Over the World

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Van Morrison Available Now

The original grade I gave out in 2015 when I last played this remastered version as part of a shootout was “D.” I explained at the time:

Just listen to how strange Van’s voice sounds, so lean, hard and sour. That alone qualifies it for an “F,” but considering how bad most pressings of this album are, let’s be fair, if not downright generous, and call it a “D.”

I just revisited the record in a current shootout, and after giving it some thought I have decided that the right grade is in fact “F.” It cannot be any other, for reasons I discuss below.

In 2014 I had written:

Where is the Tubey Magic of the originals? The sweetness? The richness? And why is there so little ambience or transparency? You just can’t “see” into the studio on this pressing the way you can on the good originals, but that’s fairly consistently been the knock on these remastered Heavy Vinyl records. We noted as much when we debunked Blue all the way back in early 2007, so no surprise there.

Having just played a marvelous shootout-winning early pressing, this time around I found the reproduction of Van’s voice on the reissue to be so leaned-out, artificial and unpleasant that I could hardly stand to listen to it.

We had reset the VTA correctly; the overall tonal balance of the recording from top to bottom was correct. It was only the voice that sounded so off. All the other shortcomings I had mentioned before were still true of course, but none of that mattered. The singer on this record just sounded awful.

As you know, we are constantly making improvements to our playback system. The real Moondance we had just played sounded better than ever. The fake Moondance, however, was sounding worse than ever. That’s what higher quality playback can do for you. It makes your good records sound better than they’ve ever sounded, and shows you just how bad your bad records really are.

Do I have a bad copy of the Heavy Vinyl pressing? Maybe, can’t say I don’t. If any of you out there in the real world have a copy of this pressing that you like, and would be willing to send it to me to hear for myself, I would be more than happy to give it a listen and report my findings on this blog.

Short of that I’m not sure what more I can do. I certainly do not feel the least bit inclined to waste a nickel of my hard-earned money on another copy of this ridiculously badly-mastered crap vinyl.

If you want to read about other records that have these same shortcomings, there are links below to the ones we’ve auditioned and identified to date. Our advice would be to avoid them, and if you own some of these pressings, perhaps now is the time to give them another listen and see if you don’t hear the same faults we did.

And, of course, the Hot Stamper pressings we offer, when played side by side with any of these Heavy Vinyl remasters, can help you to see more clearly just where these new records are going wrong, or, in the case of Moondance, completely off the rails.

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Fifth Dimension – More Dead as a Doornail Sundazed Sound

Hot Stamper Pressings of Sixties Pop Recordings Available Now

This review was written probably more than twenty years ago, back in the day when we actually would order up the latest Sundazed title in the hopes of finding something worth offering to our customers. Looking back, it’s hard to imagine a bigger waste of our time. So few were any good and so many were terrible, why were we bothering to fish where there weren’t any good fish?

Through it all, through the worst of those dark days, somehow we managed to learn some important lessons.

The main lesson we learned was that there was no record with sound so bad that it could not be released.

Even worse, there was no record with sound so bad that it would prevent the better known reviewers from raving about it. (If you think anything has changed, just pull up the latest TAS Super Disc list. The bad souding Heavy Vinyl pressings to be found there far exceed the good sounding vintage pressings they’ve nominated for inclusion over the last 50 years. A small sample.)

Our days playing and selling even the best of these kinds of modern reissues are long gone. By 2007 everything had changed.

Our Old Review

The best stereo copies are rich, sweet and Tubey Magical — three areas in which the Sundazed reissues are seriously lacking.

If anyone still cares, anyone besides Michael Fremer, that is. He seems to like some of their remastered records. We can’t be bothered with mediocrities such as this and the rest of their sorry output, but apparently people are still buying these records. The label is still in business and cranking out more dreck with each passing year. 

And none of the Columbia monos we’ve played did much for us either. Congested and compressed, with no real top, who in his right mind could possibly prefer that sound?

Audiophiles? Record collectors? What in god’s name are they listening with, or for?

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The Four Seasons Direct to Disc at 45 RPM

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Antonio Vivaldi Available Now

This RCA Direct-to-Disc 45 RPM Double LP has awful sound, with exceptionally hard and shrill string tone.

This is precisely why we dislike Japanese pressings as a rule — they sound like this audiophile trash.

If you own this album, it should make a good one for testing string tone and texture. The strings on this record are awful, and they should sound awful on your stereo too.

The Big Picture from a Lifelong Audiophile

You may have seen this text in another listing, but it bears repeating.

There is nothing new under the sun, and that is especially true when it comes to bad sounding audiophile records. The world is full of them.

There has been one big change from the days when I self-identified as a freshly minted audiophile in the ’70s.

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

The title reviewed above is a good example of the kind of crap we newbie audiophiles used to put up with back in the old days, long before we had anything resembling a clue.

This one clearly belongs on our list of bad audiophile records.

You might be asking: What kind of audio fool was I? to buy a dumbass record like this.

It’s a fair question. Yes, I admit I was foolish enough to buy records like this and expect it to have good music, or at least good sound. Of course it had neither. Practically none of these kinds of records ever did. Sheffield and a few others made some good ones, but most Direct to Disc recordings were crap.

As clueless as I was, even back in the day I could tell that I had just thrown my money away on this lipsticked-pig in a poke.

But I was an audiophile, and like a certain Mr. Mulder, I wanted to believe. These special super-hi-fidelity records were being made for me, for special people like me, because I had expensive equipment and regular records are never going to be good enough to play on my special equipment, right?

To say I was wrong to think about audio that way is obviously an understatement. Over the course of the last forty years, I (and to be fair, my friends and my staff) have been wrong about a lots of things in the worlds of records and audio.

You can read more about many of the things we got wrong under the heading: live and learn.

The good news? Audio progress is real and anyone who goes about doing audio the right way can achieve a great deal.

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Axis: Bold As Love Is More of the Same Heavy Vinyl Trash from Classic Records

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Jimi Hendrix Available Now

One of the worst things those dummies at Classic ever did. The mono mix sounds just plain awful.

Their reissue of the mono mix is flat and dry with practically no Tubey Magic whatsoever.

It positively screams “CHEAP REISSUE.” That two word description reminds me of this record, although to be fair the sound is quite a bit worse on the Hendrix.

Is it the worst version of the album ever pressed? It almost has to be, doesn’t it?

Further Reading

Even as recently as the early 2000s we were still impressed somewhat with the better Heavy Vinyl pressings. If we had 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 are enamored with these days.

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 and even worse.

Some audiophile records have such bad sound that I was pissed off to the point of creating a special sh*t list for them. As of 2025, it contains close to 300 titles. That is a lot of bad sounding audiophile records! I should know, I played an awful lot of them.

Having now retired, I’m pleased to be able to leave that job in the more than capable hands of the listening crew at Better Records. They have been playing many of the newer releases and finding the sound is every bit as bad or worse these days.

Setting higher standards — no, being able to set higher standards — in our minds is a clear mark of progress. Judging by the hundreds of letters we’ve received, especially the ones comparing our records to their Heavy Vinyl and Half-Speed mastered counterparts, we know that our customers see things the same way.

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Acoustic Sounds Was Selling This Ridiculously Bad “TAS List” Record Back in the Day

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Cat Stevens Available Now

This commentary was written circa 2001. 

I remember 15 years ago when Acoustic Sounds was selling the then in-print 25th Anniversary Island pressing (with 7U stampers as I recall) for $15, claiming that it was a TAS List record. If you’ve ever heard the pressing, you know it has no business going anywhere near a Super Disc List. It’s mediocre at best and has virtually none of the magic of the good originals.

NEWSFLASH: Just looked it up on Discogs, a site that did not exist when I wrote this commentary. My memory is apparently better than I thought it was. The 25th Anniversary Island Life Collection pressing came out in 1986.

    • Matrix / Runout (Runout side A, variant 1): ILPM 9154 A-1 ILPM•9154•A1
    • Matrix / Runout (Runout side B, variant 1): ILPM 9154 B-7U-1-1-3
    • Matrix / Runout (Runout side A, variant 2): ILPM 9154 A-8U-1- G10
    • Matrix / Runout (Runout side B, variant 2): ILPM 9154 B-7U-1-

By the way, I am not aware of any of these pressings from the 80s being especially good sounding. I remember playing some of them but I don’t remember liking any of them. They were cheap reissues that satisfied those looking for import vinyl, not audiophile quality sound.

I refused to sell it back in those days, for no other reason than the fact that it’s far from a Better Sounding Record. I don’t like misrepresenting records and I don’t like ripping off my customers. It’s bad for business.

That pressing was a fraud and I was having none of it.

Chad probably didn’t even know the difference.

When you don’t know much about records, you can say all sorts of things and not get called out for them. Audiophiles are a credulous bunch and always have been. They still believe the same nonsense that I foolishly fell for back in the 80s. (And I admit that even as late as 2006 I was still a fan of certain Heavy Vinyl pressings.)

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Tea for the Tillerman – This Is Your Idea of Analog?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Cat Stevens Available Now

Dear Record Loving Audiophiles of Earth,

I’m afraid we have some bad news. [This was written back in 2011 when the record came out so it’s hard to imagine that what I am about to say is news to anyone after all these years.]

Regrettably we must inform you that the 2011 edition of Tea for the Tillerman pressed by Analogue Productions on Heavy Vinyl doesn’t sound very good. We know you were all hoping for the best. We also know that you must be very disappointed to hear this unwelcome news.

But the record is what it is, and what it is is not very good. Its specific shortcomings are many and will be considered at length in our review below.

Yes, we know, the folks over at Acoustic Sounds, in consultation with the late George Marino at Sterling Sound, supposedly with the real master tape in hand, and supposedly with access to the best mastering equipment money can buy, labored mightily, doing their level best to master and press the Definitive Audiophile Tea for the Tillerman on Vinyl of All Time.

It just didn’t come out very good, no matter what the reviewers say. And what do they say? Allow me to quote one.

…superbly dynamic, spacious and detailed…The attack of the pick on the guitar strings is astonishingly clean and detailed.

Depth is pronounced…

…the resolution of low level detail reveals a host of details that are either buried or glossed over on the other versions I’ve heard…

Uh-oh, wait a minute, here’s a blindingly red flag:

If you have the edition, you’ll find this similar in one way: there’s nothing “mellow” about the overall production and when the music gets loud (and Marino lets it get so) it can get a bit hard, but better that than to soften it and lose the clarity, focus and detail of this superb recording, especially in the quieter passages where the resolution of low level detail is astonishing.

More about that later.

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We Review the Classic Records Pressing of SR 90212

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Chabrier Available Now

The Classic Records pressing of the famous Mercury is a gritty, shrill piece of crap.

I used to have a less-than-revealing all-tube system back in the 90s, but even that system, limited as it was and not remotely as revealing as the one we have now would have had a hard time hiding the faults of this awful record.

I don’t know how dull and smeary a stereo would have to be in order to play a record this phony and modern sounding in order to make it listenable, but I know that it would have to be very dull and very smeary, with the kind of vintage sound that might work for Classic’s Heavy Vinyl pressings but not much else.

It’s a disgrace, and the fact that it’s on the TAS Super Disc list is even more disgraceful.

Which all adds up to an audiophile hall of shame pressing and a record perfectly suited to the stone age stereos of the past.

Argenta and Ansermet

I much prefer Ansermet’s performances on London to those of Paray on Mercury.

As of 2022 we actually prefer the famous Argenta recording for Decca that’s on the TAS List, CS 6006.

Both are excellent and clearly superior to the Paray, even on the original Mercury pressings we’ve played.

UPDATE 2024:

This recording is no longer on the TAS Super Disc list. Our favorite, the London with Argenta, is however.

We call that progress! Maybe there’s hope for the TAS List yet.

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Also Sprach Zarathustra by Way of Zubin Mehta – No Great Shakes

More of the music of Richard Strauss

A very good performance, with passable sonics.

But passable sonics are not going to cut it at the prices we charge.

Unlike many audiophiles and the reviewers who write for them, we have never been taken with most of the recordings of Zubin Mehta and the LA Philharmonic.

They almost always suffer from exactly the same problems that we heard on this album. We had about five copies on hand in preparation for a shootout, some of which I had noted seemed to sound fine, but once we listened more critically we started to hear the problems that eventually caused us to abandon the shootout. We ended up giving away the stock to our good customers for free.

Here is what my notes say:

By the way, if you do have some of these and want to play them, the 4G side two was the best we played, much better than any 6G side two.

This link will take you to our current favorite recording of the work.

Opacity Vs. Transparency

Note that we have been especially anti-heavy vinyl in our recent commentaries for their consistently opaque character, the opposite of what is necessary in order to hear into the music, deep into the soundstage, to see and hear ALL the instruments, even the ones at the back.

Try that with any Classic Record or Speakers Corner pressing. Our Hot Stamper pressings can show you precisely what you have been missing all these years if you have been collecting and playing releases from those labels and others like them.

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Michael Fremer Says You Should Own the Classic 45 of Time Out

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Dave Brubeck Available Now

Michael Fremer spends two hours and ten minutes on his site going through a list of 100 All Analog In Print Reissued Records You Should Own.

On this list is the 45 RPM Bernie Grundman cutting of Time Out. Fremer apparently liked it a whole lot more than we did. We think it is just plain awful.

The MoFi Kind of Blue is on this same list, another pressing that is astonishingly bad, or, at the very least, really, really wrong.

If you’re the kind of person who might want to give Michael Fremer the benefit of the doubt when it comes to All Analog records he thinks sound good, ones he thinks you should own, try either one of them. If you think they sound just fine, you sure don’t need me to tell you that they’re completely and utterly awful.

There might be some decent records on the list, but if it has two massive failures that I just happened to come across in the five minutes I spent watching the video — I have very little tolerance for the sort of amateurishness he displays — I would suspect the winners are few and the losers many.

As a practical rule, if you want good sounding vinyl, you should avoid anything on his list.

And if you do try some and do like them, let me know which ones you think sound good and I will try to get hold of some copies and listen to them for myself.

Here is what we had to say about the Brubeck that Mikey recommends. We called it:

An audiophile hall of shame pressing and another Classic Records jazz LP poorly mastered for the benefit of audiophiles looking for easy answers and quick fixes. Sonic Grade: F.

Our story:

Not long ago we found a single disc from the 45 RPM four disc set that Classic Records released in 2002 and decided to give it a listen as part of a shootout. My notes can be seen below, but for those who have trouble reading my handwriting, here they are:

  • Big but hard
  • Zero (0) warmth
  • A bit thin and definitely boring
  • Unnatural
  • No fun
  • No F***ing Good (NFG)

Does that sound like a record you would enjoy playing? I sure didn’t.

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