Very best sounding Vinyl

@millercarbon

Can’t see how there are doubters. I have zero hidden agenda other than trying to build a vinyl collection about 35-40 years too late. Lol. And its capitalism supply vs. demand at its most exaggerated level.

Now Im sure there are duds and you have 30 days to return no questions asked. I have about 20 other records so far from other popular sites. Of those 20, Joni Mitchell Blue and Norah Jones Come away.. are top notch that i bought elsewhere, the other 18 suck and prob spent $450. Would I much rather have instead 3 reference quality stamper recordings? Yeah maybe, probably. The Queen vinyl is that good and I had it in cd and cassette which wasn’t even close to the realism of this vinyl record.

I have a TP Damn the Torpedoes on a MCA Masterphile album release  (they made a handful of these titles back in the early 80's - I also have Who's Next) and the Petty one is amazing. Not sure if it's "White Hot" but it's up there. Who's next is nice, but I think the original recording just wasn't that great. 

MFSL Aja has been played so much that the jacket color is gone at certain areas from handling, but the vinyl still sounds great to me. Especially drums and effects on the title track. Signal to noise is kind of low as it is on some of the MFSLs. On the other hand, I have the MFSL of Katy Lied (big collector's item) and it stinks - original tapes must have had some problems. Japanese pressing of Gaucho is amazing, better sounding than Aja (but not as good an album, but still up there).

Maybe one of these days I'll consider a Better Records one, but I've never paid more that $50 for a record, so it will take a mind set change. Fagen Morph the Cat could be a consideration - haven't been able to find that.

aj523,
Sound quality on vinyl is very complicated. At first glance the BR concept seems preposterous. Anyone buying vinyl has come across some that are noisier than others, sometimes so bad they get a refund or replacement. Happens a lot. Almost always the replacement seems identical except for surface noise.  

Reading about Hot Stampers made me curious. There's several dupes in my collection. Never thought to compare them. Sure enough, no two really do sound quite the same. Okay most the difference was slight, but one it was big enough to really make me think there might be something to this.  

Now with around a dozen I have to say, no duds. Of course, all we can really do is fine exceptionally good pressings. In this respect records are just like everything else. The perfect component does not make the recording sound good. It merely allows the really good recordings to shine through unmolested. The really good pressing is just the same. So the quality depends first and foremost on the underlying recording.  

That said, it is sometimes shocking to hear how much better the original recording was than we thought. Tom Petty is a good example. Never in my life imagined his recordings were any good. They certainly don't sound great on anything else I ever heard. But the White Hot Stamper of Southern Accents is mind-blowing in its dynamics and sized. I mean its just huge! And Damn the Torpedoes is supposed to be even better??! We will just have to see!

I don’t know if like classical. But if you want a recording that sounds like a real orchestra is in the room with you. Find a reissue of the DECCA Mahler Symphony No. 2 Restoration, with Heather Harper and Helen Watts by Georg Solti and The London Symphony.
Gerald