Better Records - the best pressings ?

[Strays Dave]

Are copies of records like snowflakes (no two are alike) ?  Tom Port of Better records says so.  Certain pressings at the plant are better than others.  I'm inclined to call it hair splitting. 

 

https://better-records.com/

 

I originally read the article below. I emailed the link below to a friend. She had to "register" but was able to read it without a subscriptions. 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/interactive/2022/perfect-sound-quality-vinyl-records/

 

 

 

 

 

[Anderton]

A lot of it depends on the vinyl. So if the vinyl is variable, I could easily see why different pressings would sound different.

[Strays Dave]

I'm afraid the article won't be easily accessed.   I copied and pasted it below. Apologies for any squirrelly formatting. I just tend to think of what I'll call "Hot Rod Syndrome".  But one man's quirk is another man's expertise ?  I'm thinking that if he's focused on finding flaws in the record, he's tending to ignore the music being played. Sgt. Pepper has a pop or crackle ? Oh my, worthless.

 

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Tom Port is a 68-year-old man who spends his days in an office park outside Los Angeles where he takes it upon himself to determine which records are the best-sounding in the world. This is a task for which he considers himself uniquely qualified. Port is a true audio iconoclast. He delights in telling you that the slab of vinyl you’re listening to isn’t worthy of his ears and the only thing more pathetic is the audio setup you’re using to listen to it.

 

Port developed his self-proclaimed skills over decades of scouring used LP bins, gathering up multiple copies of the same album and comparing them side by side — listening sessions he calls “shootouts.” That’s what I’m here today to observe. It’s just one stop on my year-long search for the perfect sound, an attempt to take a lifelong passion for music and find out if I’ve really been hearing it.

 

“The number of copies of ‘Sgt. Pepper’ I’ve played or ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ are well over 100, maybe close to 200, to find the ones that are really good,” Port says. “I want the best, and that’s exactly what should be driving you. You get this very special record. You may have only five of them in your whole collection. But those five are like a drug. They’re just so beyond anything you’ve ever heard, and you just can’t believe it.”

 

Port believes that records are like snowflakes — no two are the same. So many things can impact the pressing, including room temperature, the split second the stampers are pressed onto the hot, vinyl biscuit, and unknown factors no human can understand. You can’t find the best-sounding record by reading the marketing sticker proclaiming the latest advances in audio technology. The only way is to use your ears. So Port and his staff at Better Records sit for hours in a windowless room, unplug the small refrigerator in the back so as not to get any electrical interference, and simply listen.

 

Speaker wires hang from the ceiling like renegade strands of linguine so as not to cross and cause feedback. Port sits in a chair on one side of the room, its position marked under each leg with blue electrical tape. Sunshine English, a staffer, sits at a VPI turntable outfitted with a Dynavector cartridge. On the menu today, at my request, is jazz trumpeter Kenny Dorham’s 1959 album “Quiet Kenny.” It’s an elegant album that has become a collector’s item. Original copies in top condition regularly sell for more than $1,500. I don’t have one of those, but I’ve brought three copies with me, all of which claim to be on the cutting edge of new audio technology

 

The first is from the Electric Recording Co., based in London, which produces roughly a dozen albums each year on vintage equipment painstakingly restored by owner Pete Hutchison. ERC makes just 300 copies of each reissue and charges $376 per album. The stock sells out immediately. Then the records pop up on eBay for as much as $2,000.

 

English has agreed not to reveal which copy is being played so the shootout can be truly blind. She lowers the needle onto the ERC edition of “Quiet Kenny.” Port groans loudly. “Listen to that bass,” he says. “Blah, blah, blah, blah. Who wants to play a record that sounds like this?”

 

Next up is a copy pressed by Analogue Productions, the Kansas-based label founded by Chad Kassem. Port says that Kassem “has never made a single good sounding record” since AP’s founding in 1991. (Kassem calls Port a “f---ing loser.”) This blind listen gets better marks, which surprises Port when he’s told it’s an Analogue.

“That’s the best-sounding Analogue Productions record I’ve ever heard,” Port says. “Because it’s not terrible.”

 

The third is a test pressing from Tom “Grover” Biery, a former Warner Bros. veteran who is starting a label called Public Domain Recordings. Biery believes records are too expensive and wants to offer a solid-sounding, cheaper alternative to the costly reissues coming out today. Port calls it serviceable but flat. He grumbles that it’s a mono, not a stereo recording.

 

“It sounds tonally correct,” he says. “But the problem with mono is everybody is in line between me and Sunshine, and they’re all standing one behind the other. Can you really separate out all those musicians when they’re all right in the middle? It’s very difficult. I don’t like it.”

None of these would make the hot stamper cut. (Port defines a hot stamper as a pressing that sounds better than other copies of the same album.) We talk more about ERC and how coveted Hutchison’s records are in the market. He agrees to try song two on the ERC vinyl, but things don’t get better. I suggest that maybe English adjust the arm on the turntable. The vertical tracking angle, or VTA, as he calls it. “Nothing can fix this record,” he shouts back. “It’s junk. And that guy should be ashamed of himself.”

 

There is something almost charming in Port’s brash refusal to praise anything pressed in the modern era or to consider a digital source. (He won’t even listen to music in his car; the system just can’t compare to that in his shootout room, he says.)

 

And Port’s take, as rigid as it is, makes a certain amount of sense when you consider the scandal that emerged during the reporting for this story.

Mike Esposito, a Phoenix record store owner and YouTuber, claimed that Mobile Fidelity (MoFi), a reissue record label beloved by analog-only purists, had been misleading its customers and using digital files in the production chain.

The revelation sparked outrage among the label’s devotees and plunged audiophiles into something of an existential crisis. Two customers filed a lawsuit against the Sebastopol, Calif., company after an article was published by The Washington Post.

 

Experts such as Esposito and Michael Fremer, the dean of audiophile writing, had included some of the now-exposed company’s records on their list of the best-sounding analog albums. Could digital technology have advanced enough to fool even the best of ears?

A trio of acclaimed mastering engineers — Bernie Grundman, Kevin Gray and Ryan K. Smith — told me that an all-analog chain always sounds better than an album with a digital step, but that didn’t seem to settle the debate.

 

It also brought back an exchange I’d had earlier in the summer with Grammy-winning producer T Bone Burnett. He had spent years working with scientists to create a special record that would capture a recording session in a way a normal LP couldn’t, using materials primarily found in space stations. He recruited Bob Dylan to rerecord his first iconic composition, “Blowin’ in the Wind.” Burnett made only one copy of the record. It would be auctioned by Christie’s only weeks after we met in New York for $1.78 million.

After Burnett played me the song, we talked about the process behind the recording. Burnett told me he captured the session on a restored Nagra tape machine as well as a digital recorder. When it came time to put the song on the disc, he chose the digital recording as his source. I asked him whether he worried about the analog crowd. He was unrepentant.

“There was no noise or tape hiss,” he said. “That’s the way we deemed it was best. I don’t have to apologize for it. It’s a great recording.”

Which may lead to the biggest lesson of my quest. Don’t pretend to know everything.

[Anderton]

I'll comment on the article later, but right now I have to go back to counting how many angels can dance on the head of a pin

[spokenward]

I think that this article has a better angle on the subject. It's from 2015. You have to use the term "dead wax" in a sentence for serious cred.

 

https://www.wired.com/2015/03/hot-stampers/

 

In the last century, it was common for hot records (in the sales sense) to be manufactured in plants owned by totally different companies. These presented different vinyl commodities, different presses and wildly different quality control practices. That practice lessened as labels consolidated and bought into their own pressing plants. From time to time competitors would take on outside pressing jobs.