On this website you’ll find quite a few articles now that discuss the relative virtues of some reissued versions of various titles when those versions are compared to a vintage copy of the same title. When I started writing these articles a few years ago I was interested in how well your typical 180g modern vinyl reissue stacked up against the average vintage copy of the same title. You can find these articles under the category title “Vintage or Reissue.”

Or I can just give you the synopsis for just about every one of these articles right here, which is this: your average modern reissue, when compared to even your run of the mill vintage pressing, doesn’t stack up well at all. In fairness, these records are generally not mastered to sound great on a high quality playback system. These records are made to sound good on decent systems that are built to highlight the strengths of such records and downplay their flaws. This fact has become even more clear to me as my own system has improved and as a fair number records that used to sound good to me no longer do.

But until recently I had not heard a copy of The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds that sounded better to me than the stereo reissue from Analogue Productions. Analogue Productions, at least from a marketing standpoint, is not producing your “average” modern records.  AP is clearly marketing to and presumably mastering and cutting records for the audiophile market. My copy easily bested another recent reissue I owned as well as a mono original I had for a while, and I’ve been pretty content with it for the few years I’ve owned it.

Nonetheless, when the prices of Hot Stamper copies of Pet Sounds started to drop into a range that I could justify (yes their prices have been going down!) I went for a copy so I could hear for myself if and how a Hot Stamper might improve on the Analogue Productions version I’d been enjoying. After all, the AP version, if it lived up to its hype, should theoretically be able to compete with pretty much any version out there.

Before I get into that, I’d like to say a few words about the audiophile hobby to help keep all I’ll say going forward here in perspective. I’m a somewhat obsessive audiophile who is not wealthy, and while I’m not as obsessive as many other audiophiles out there, I’m way more obsessive about sound than your average record collector with a decent stereo.

I realize that not everyone who lands on this site has the money, time and / or level of obsessiveness required to appreciate everything I’m writing about here. To other collectors, and to the “budding” audiophiles who have found their way here I would say this – buy and play the records you like and that you enjoy listening to, but leave open the door to the possibility that your system and your ear will improve over time and that your opinion about what sounds good to you may very well change in the future. Mine certainly has.

Also to the “budding audiophiles” I would say this about Pet Sounds – you may very well like the Analogue Productions version as it does have some strengths. For one it’s transparent, and your average vintage copy is not. And for less than 1/3 the price of a Hot Stamper this might be the better choice for you. But if you’re interested, here’s what I found comparing my Hot Stamper copy to my AP copy.

The Hot Stamper has great depth to the soundstage, and the instruments in every part of it sound clear and true with room to breathe. This alone is reason enough to recommend a Hot Stamper of Pet Sounds. It really gives you a sense of the recording and has the analog audiophile grail “master tape sound” all over it. The instruments generally, and the drums especially, have good weight to them on this copy. The various percussion instruments have a very “live in the studio” sound on the Hot Stamper, whereas on the AP version the bells and tambourines sound “twinkly” and lacking in realness and presence.

The AP does capture a sense of the studio space as well, but perhaps because of the stereo mix, the musical elements sound dispersed. There’s a lack of cohesiveness to the sound of the AP version. The instruments present as a collection of individual parts that don’t quite seem to be playing together in the same space. I have not heard AP’s mono vision of Pet Sounds but it’s possible that version sounds more cohesive than the stereo version.

The bass on the Hot Stamper, while very good, is not always as tight and solid as I’d like it to be. But on the AP version it often sounds bloated. This bass bloat, one of the most common problems with modern records, is not as bad on AP’s Pet Sounds as on some other modern reissues I’ve heard, but it’s still an issue with this version.

But what really matters most on Pet Sounds, and for that matter any Beach Boys album, are the vocals and how well they’re reproduced. Sometimes Brian Wilson’s vocals threaten to overwhelm the other elements of the mix on this album. I strongly suspect that this is what’s on the master tape and therefore to the extent that it would be considered a flaw, it is a flaw in the recording and/or the mix and thus will be there to some extent on every copy of the record. If the vocals are not resolved well on this record they are going to sound “groany,” “whiny” and unpleasant, and these vocal qualities are not a good fit for this music.

AP seems to have tried to fix this “problem” by smoothing out the vocals in the mix, and if this is in fact what they set out to do they achieved it. If on your copy of this record the vocals sound too loud and whiny which I suspect is the case on the majority of copies, then you will likely find the AP version of this record a welcome relief. The vocals on the AP never sound harsh or overbearing.

But the vocals on the AP version also lack a certain assertiveness, and they fail to convey the passion and angst in Wilson’s songs. The smoothing out of the vocals on the AP comes at the expense of a realness and palpability that I feel serves this music better. I will admit that, on occasion, I find Wilson’s vocals a bit loud and harsh on the Hot Stamper, but overall they have a power and forcefulness that I’m more drawn to.

On “Caroline No”, for instance, Wilson’s passion really comes through on the Hot Stamper. I found this song in particular to have a “high rez” sound that really highlighted Wilson’s vocals and an overall “tubey” warmth that the AP version couldn’t match.

This smoothing out of the vocals on the AP version is also sometimes at the expense of the vocal harmonies, which can sound distant on this version. On “Here Today” for instance, the backing vocals almost disappear on the AP version. On the Hot Stamper the vocal harmonies are invariably sweet, full and present.

Pet Sounds shares a kinship with The Beatles’ Sgt. Peppers in that it came out not long before it and was apparently part of the inspiration for the fab five in making that album. I love both albums and artistically, each album certainly more than holds its own with the other. But Sgt. Peppers is by far the better recorded album. It can sound AMAZING, while Pet Sounds can sound, well…,  very good as it does on this Hot Stamper copy, or just good as it does on the Analogue Productions version. Unfortunately I don’t think Pet Sounds will ever sound AMAZING.

Still, if you love this album as I do then I would say it’s worth springing for a Hot Stamper. I seriously doubt you’ll find another copy of this album with the “master tape” sound you’ll get with a copy from Better Records. But if your record budget is limited, or you just can’t see your way clear to spending on a Hot Stamper, then you might be perfectly happy with a copy from Analogue Productions.