{"product_id":"ambrolifeb_2601_4x__","title":"Ambrosia - Life Beyond L.A. - Super Hot Stamper (Quiet Vinyl)","description":"\u003cp\u003eVintage covers for this album are hard to find in exceptionally clean shape. Most of the will have at least some amount of ringwear, seam wear and edge wear. We guarantee that the cover we supply with this Hot Stamper is at least VG.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis Hot Stamper Ambrosia LP has the kind of sound you would never expect to find in the grooves of this album. It was a thrill to hear, especially at the volumes at which we played it! The transparency and openness were excellent. We’re big fans of this band here at Better Records -- we love their take on complex, Big Production Arty Rock.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eThe Music\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLife Beyond L.A. may not be especially well known in audiophile circles but it is certainly an album we know and love here at Better Records. I’ve been playing it regularly for decades. There’s so much good music on the album that, now that we can hear it right, we’ve come to appreciate it all the more. It rocks in a more straightforward manner compared to the first two albums. It’s still got plenty of proggy elements and breakdowns, but now there’s an entirely new jazz element introduced into the mix, which comes to the fore strongly on the wonderful \"Apothecary.\" Side one is exceptionally strong from first note to last.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSide two starts out brilliantly with the dynamic, energetic \"Dancin’ By Myself,\" a song that ranks with the best by the band. It’s followed by \"Angola,\" a tongue-in-cheek staple of their live act these days, and then on to the wonderful ballad \"Heart to Heart,\" pointedly reminiscent of \"Holdin’ On To Yesterday,\" right down to the violin solo. The last track is a bit of a downer, but everything before that is superb.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eWhat The Best Sides Of Life Beyond L.A. Have To Offer Is Not Hard To Hear\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe most Tubey Magic, without which you have \u003ci\u003ealmost\u003c\/i\u003e 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 \u003ca href=\"\/search?q=tag:%221978%22\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e1978\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eNatural tonality in the midrange -- with all the instruments having the correct timbre\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTransparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional studio space\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNo doubt there's more but we hope that should do for now. \u003ci\u003ePlaying the record is the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above,\u003c\/i\u003e and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find a pressing that sounds as good as this one does.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eAdventures in Sound\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLife Beyond L.A. is also yet another example of the value of taking part in the myriad revolutions in audio. If you never want your prized but sonically-challenged records to sound any better than they do right now, this minute, don’t bother to learn how to clean them better, play them back better or improve the acoustics of your room. No one can make you do any of those things. The only reason you might have for doing them is that it will allow you to enjoy more of your favorite music with much better sound. Is that a good enough reason? If you’re on this site I’m guessing it is.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat’s the reason we do it. We want records like this one, which didn’t start sounding good until about 2005, and now sound \u003cu\u003emuch\u003c\/u\u003e better than we ever thought they could, to keep getting better and better. Why shouldn’t they?\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd these improvements we talk about so much have allowed us to enjoy records we could never fully enjoy before because they never really sounded all that good to us. Now they do, and they will keep getting better, as more and more developments come along in all areas of analog reproduction.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eWhat We're Listening For On Life Beyond L.A.\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eEnergy\u003c\/strong\u003e for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThen: \u003cstrong\u003epresence and immediacy\u003c\/strong\u003e. 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.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eThe Big Sound\u003c\/strong\u003e comes next -- wall to wall, lots of depth, huge space, three-dimensionality, all that sort of thing.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThen \u003cstrong\u003etransient information\u003c\/strong\u003e -- fast, clear, sharp attacks, not the smear and thickness so common to these LPs.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eTight punchy bass\u003c\/strong\u003e -- which ties in with good transient information, also the issue of frequency extension further down.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eNext: \u003cstrong\u003etransparency\u003c\/strong\u003e -- the quality that allows you to hear deep into the soundfield, showing you the space and air around all the instruments.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eExtend the top and bottom\u003c\/strong\u003e and \u003ci\u003evoila\u003c\/i\u003e, you have The Real Thing -- an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eShooting Out the Tough Ones\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAmbrosia albums are always tough shootouts. Like Yes, another radio-friendly pop-prog band, their everything-but-the-kitchen-sink music and approach to recording make it \u003ca href=\"\/search?q=tag:%22difficulty-of-reproduction%22\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003edifficult to translate their complex sound to disc\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e (vinyl or otherwise). Everything has to be tuned up and on the money before we can even hope to get the record sounding right. (VTA is of course critical in this respect.)\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e If we’re not hearing the sound we want, we keep messing with it until we do. There is no way around sweating the details when sitting down to test a complex recording such as this. If you can’t stand the tweaking tedium, get out of the kitchen (or listening room as the case may be). Sweating the details is what we do for a living here at Better Records. Ambrosia’s recordings require us to be at the top of our game, both in terms of reproducing them as well as critically evaluating them. When you love it, it’s not work, it’s fun. Tedious, exasperating fun.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eVinyl Condition\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMint 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.)\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThose 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf 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.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ambrosia","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51322888978728,"sku":"ambrolifeb","price":74.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0257\/3415\/2295\/files\/ambrolifeb.jpg?v=1765304938","url":"https:\/\/better-records.com\/products\/ambrolifeb_2601_4x__","provider":"Better Records","version":"1.0","type":"link"}