The Better Blog -- Updated Rarely by The Better Records Crew

6/16/2011 Almost a year since our last entry, ouch! Here's the deal. We've been putting all of our lastest "discoveries" about individual albums in the Hot Stamper listings we do every week. We're also doing regular commentaries these days which can be found in lots of different sections depending on the subject, so here are the places to look for them: Random Thoughts A wide ranging collection of thoughts and observations on issues that relate to recordings and audio equipment. If you are new to audio or the site, I expect you will find much of this commentary of interest. The mysteries of audio are many and deep. Few can be explained, but the discussion itself may provide some insight not easily found elsewhere. Audio Issues We discuss issues in audio raised by particular recordings we've auditioned. Home Audio Exercises Exercises, experiments and tests that you can do at home for fun and profit. Learning how to get better sound from the equipment and recordings you own doesn't have to cost a dime. It simply requires that you improve your critical listening skills. Heavy Vinyl Scorecard Contains ratings and reviews of some of the Heavy Vinyl records that have come our way over the years. Records that have been given poor grades can be found in our Hall of Shame, in the company of other audiophile pressings we found wanting. Letters and Testimonials Check out some of the praise we've received for our Hot Stampers, our equipment recommendations and our rugged good looks! (Well, two out of three ain't bad.) Hall of Shame, While we're digging around through old listings we often run into awful sounding audiophile records (Half-Speeds, Heavy Vinyl pressings, etc.) that deserve a home of their own so check out the latest entries. Hall of Fame Of course, we would much rather find records to put in this section -- and we do -- which is why it currently numbers well over seven hundred titles. In these entries you can read about the qualities we believe separate the best pressings from the second-raters. (If there is an audiophile pressing of the title under discussion we will usually mention how it fared as well.) Reviewing the Reviewers is a section we created in order to keep all the reviewer bashing we do around here in one easy to find place. 8/29/10 Classic Records has officially gone under. They will not be missed, not by us anyway, except for this reason: to borrow a line from Richard Nixon, I guess we won't have Classic Records to kick around anymore. We've been beating that dead horse since the day they started back in 1994. There are scores of commentaries on the site about their awful records for those who are interested. The last review we wrote for the remastered Scheherazade (easily found by typing LSC 2446 into the search field at the top of every page), which fittingly ended up in our Hall of Shame, with an equally fitting sonic grade of F. TAS Superdisc List to this day? Of course it is! With every improvement we've made to our system over the years, their records have somehow managed to sound progressively worse. (This is pretty much true for all Heavy Vinyl pressings, another good reason for our decision to stop carrying them in 2010.) That ought to tell you something. Better audio stops hiding and starts revealing the shortcomings of bad records. At the same time, and much more importantly, better audio reveals more and more of the strengths and beauty of good records. (Which of course begs the question of what actually is a good record -- what it is that makes one record good and another bad -- but luckily for you dear reader, you are actually on a site that has much to say about those very issues. Every Hot Stamper commentary is fundamentally about the specific attributes that make one copy of a given album better than another, and how much of them you're getting for your money with the unique pressing on offer.) There are scores of commentaries on the site about the huge improvements in audio available to the discerning (and well-healed) audiophile as I'm sure you've read by now. It's the reason Hot Stampers can and do sound dramatically better than their Heavy Vinyl or Audiophile counterparts: because your stereo is good enough to show you the difference. With Old School equipment you will continue to be fooled by bad records, just as I and all my audio buds were fooled twenty and thirty years ago. Audio has improved immensely in that time. If you're still playing Heavy Vinyl and Audiophile pressings there's a world of sound you're missing. We would love to help you find it. One Hot Stamper just might be all it takes to get the ball rolling. 8/28/10 It makes me sad when I read a reviewer write something as laughable as this, and I hope you feel the same way: My analog-reviewing ritual dictates that I always play side two of Paul Simon’s Graceland [Warner Bros. 25447-1] to kick things off. I listen for the syncopation of the drums and accordion during the funky, quick-time Zydeco riff at the start of "That Was Your Mother"; the subtle differences in ambience during the Ronstadt-Simon duet on "Under African Skies" that tell me each sang from his or her own booth; the speaker-to-speaker arc laid out by Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Simon singing "Homeless" a cappella -- a performance flecked with subtle throat and lip chirrups and trills; the faint background strumming of acoustic guitars from Los Lobos' David Hidalgo and Cesar Rosas as they double Simon on "The Myth of Fingerprints." Tim Aucremann / The Audio Beat / August 13, 2010 How bad does a record have to be before an audiophile reviewer won't use it as a test disc? This is not a good recording. At best it is passable. If your standards are this low you have no business reviewing equipment or anything else in audio for that matter. 06/05/09 We're spending much of our free time these days finding and dressing up records for our Heavy Vinyl Scorecard section. While we're digging around through old listings we often run into audiophile records that belong in our Hall of Shame, so check it out to see the latest entries. Of course we would much rather find records to put in our Hall of Fame -- and we do -- a section that currently numbers well over three hundred titles. 9/20 We have a new section on the site which we created in order to be able to keep a healthy portion of the Audiophile Reviewer bashing we do around here in one easy to find location. We call it Reviewing the Reviewers. But do yourself a favor. Don't buy any new Heavy Vinyl pressing based on a review you read elsewhere. It's very unlikely to be a good record. If you hear a copy at a friend's house or stereo store, okay, I can see that. But to buy one based on some reviewer's opinion -- a person whose stereo may be a godawful mess-- is just asking for trouble. as our letters section will attest, they know it when they hear it. As we never tire of saying, the idea that classic recordings can be properly remastered onto Heavy Vinyl turns out to be every bit the dead end that all the other audiophile fads are, were, and forever will be.