Paul McCartney and Wings
Wings at the Speed of Sound

*NOTE: On side 1 of disc 1, there is a bubble that plays 12 times as a light thud about 1/2 way into track 3, "She's My Baby." On side 2 of disc 2, there is a mark that plays 16 times lightly at the start of track 1, "Silly Love Songs." There is another mark that plays 14 times at a moderate level during the outro to track 2, "Cook of the House." This same mark plays 25 times at a moderate level at the start of track 3, "Time to Hide."

*NOTE: Side 1 of disc 1 was not noisy enough to rate our M-- to EX++ grade, but it's not quite up to our standards for Mint Minus Minus either. If you're looking for quiet vinyl, this is probably not the best copy for you.

The better copies such as these two have the qualities that really make the songs come to life and give you a taste of the old McCartney magic.

These vintage Capitol pressings have the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records rarely even BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn't showing signs of coming back. If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to "see" the performers, and feeling as if you are sitting in the studio with McCartney and the band, these are the records for you. It's what vintage all analog recordings are known for -- this sound.

If you exclusively play modern repressings of vintage recordings, I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it -- not often, and certainly not always -- but maybe one out of a hundred new records do, and those are some pretty long odds.

What The Best Sides Of Wings at the Speed of Sound Have To Offer Is Not Hard To Hear

• The biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space
• The most Tubey Magic, without which you have almost nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes in 1976
• Tight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low
• Natural tonality in the midrange -- with all the instruments having the correct timbre
• Transparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional studio space

No doubt there's more but we hope that should do for now. Playing these records is the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above, and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find pressings that sound as good as these two do.

Import Vs. Domestic

We've played plenty of both and in our experience the better domestic pressings are clearly superior. This is not true for many of McCartney's albums but it is definitely true for this Wings at the Speed of Sound and his first, McCartney.

The copies that were flatter, more transistory, more opaque, less present; the ones that had no real extension up high or down low, or little in the way of Tubey Magic -- here we are basically describing the all-too-common typical pressing -- simply did not make the cut and ended up in the trade pile. That's not our sound and never has been.

What We're Listening For On Wings at the Speed of Sound

• Energy for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?
• Then: presence and immediacy. The vocals aren't "back there" somewhere, lost in the mix. They're front and center where any recording engineer worth his salt would put them.
• The Big Sound comes next -- wall to wall, lots of depth, huge space, three-dimensionality, all that sort of thing.
• Then transient information -- fast, clear, sharp attacks, not the smear and thickness so common to these LPs.
• Tight punchy bass -- which ties in with good transient information, also the issue of frequency extension further down.
• Next: transparency -- the quality that allows you to hear deep into the soundfield, showing you the space and air around all the instruments.
• Extend the top and bottom and voila, you have The Real Thing -- an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.

Our Famous 2-packs

Our 2-pack sets combine two copies of the same album, with at least a Super Hot Stamper sonic grade on the better of each "good" side, which simply means you have before you a pair of records that offers superb sound for the entire album.

Audiophiles are often surprised when they hear that an LP can sound amazing on one side and mediocre on the other, but since each side is pressed from different metalwork which has been aligned independently, and perhaps even cut by different mastering engineers from tapes of wildly differently quality, in our experience it happens all the time. In fact it's much more common for a record to earn different sonic grades for its two sides than it is to rate the same grade. That's just the way it goes in analog, where there's no way to know how a any given side of a record sounds until you play it, and, more importantly, in the world of sound everything is relative.

Since each of the copies in the 2-pack will have one good side and one noticeably weaker or at best more run-of-the-mill side, you'll be able to compare them on your own to hear just what it is that the Hot Stamper sides give you. This has the added benefit of helping you to improve your critical listening skills. We'll clearly mark which copy is Hot for each side, so if you don't want to bother with the other sides you certainly won't have to.

Vinyl Condition

Mint Minus Minus and maybe a bit better is about as quiet as any vintage pressing will play, and since only the right vintage pressings have any hope of sounding good on this album, that will most often be the playing condition of the copies we sell. (The copies that are even a bit noisier get listed on the site are seriously reduced prices or traded back in to the local record stores we shop at.)

Those of you looking for quiet vinyl will have to settle for the sound of other pressings and Heavy Vinyl reissues, purchased elsewhere of course as we have no interest in selling records that don't have the vintage analog magic of these wonderful recordings.

If you want to make the trade-off between bad sound and quiet surfaces with whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing might be available, well, that's certainly your prerogative, but we can't imagine losing what's good about this music -- the size, the energy, the presence, the clarity, the weight -- just to hear it with less background noise.

Side One

• Let 'Em In
• The Note You Never Wrote
• She's My Baby
• Beware My Love
• Wino Junko

Side Two

• Silly Love Songs
• Cook of the House
• Time to Hide
• Must Do Something About It
• San Ferry Anne
• Warm and Beautiful

Rolling Stone Review

...At the Speed of Sound ostensibly invites the listener to spend a day with McCartney and Wings—a day in which the listener is gently harangued as well as entertained. “Let ‘Em In” begins with door-knocking sound effects, out of which steps a marching band. Like most of the rest, “Let ‘Em In” puts a simple musical theme through carefully arranged changes. The melodic idea is small, but quintessentially McCartneyesque in its provincial jollity.

With the electronic soup-slurping sounds that open side two, one notes that it is almost time for lunch on this imaginary visiting day. But first the McCartneys answer those critics who lashed out at Venus and Mars‘s lovebird verses with a tract in defense of moon, June and spoon, “Silly Love Songs.” It’s a clever retort whose point is well taken; the center of the song focuses on the syllables “I love you,” which Paul and Linda reiterate with the insistence of phonetics instructors, weaving the phrase through a disarmingly lovely three-part chorus. Homeyness then climaxes with Linda singing “Cook of the House,” complete with sizzling pan and running water. A surrealist concept like side one’s first-rate “The Note You Never Wrote,” “Cook” is a rockabilly nursery rhyme.