{"product_id":"gordoourma_2602_4x__","title":"Gordon, Dexter - Our Man In Paris - Hot Stamper (Quiet Vinyl)","description":"\u003cp\u003eIt was not that many years ago that we didn't care a fig about Dexter Gordon. After finding Crazy Hot copies of One Flight Up and now this amazing record, we're counting ourselves ardent members of his fan club.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis Blue Note has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records cannot 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 control room hearing the master tape being played back, or, better yet, the direct feed from the studio, this is the record for you. It's what Golden Age Jazz Recordings, especially ones from 1963, are known for -- \u003ci\u003ethis sound\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf 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 less than one out of 100 new records do, if our experience with the hundreds we've played can serve as a guide.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eWhat The Best Sides Of Our Man In Paris 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:%221963%22\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e1963\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\u003eRemastering Out the Good Stuff\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat is lost in the newly remastered recordings so popular with the record collecting public these days? Lots of things, but the most obvious and irritating is \u003cstrong\u003etransparency\u003c\/strong\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eModern records tend to be small, veiled and recessed, and they rarely image well. In our experience, the most important quality they lack is \u003ci\u003etransparency\u003c\/i\u003e. Almost without exception they are opaque. They resist our efforts to hear into the music. We don't like that sound, and like it less with each passing day, although we certainly used to put up with it back when we were selling what we considered to be the better Heavy Vinyl pressings from the likes of DCC, Speakers Corner, Cisco and even Classic Records.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNow when we play those records they either bore us to tears or frustrate us with their veiled, vague, lifeless, ambience-challenged presentation. It was sometime in 2007 when we turned a corner. The remastered Blue on Heavy Vinyl came out and was such a mediocrity that we asked ourselves \"Why bother?\" That was all she wrote. We stopped selling those third-rate remasters and dedicated ourselves to finding, cleaning, playing and critically evaluating vintage pressings, regardless of era or genre of music.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe result is a website full of great sounding records that should find special appeal with audiophiles who set high standards, who own good equipment and who have well-developed critical listening skills.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eWhat We're Listening For on Our Man In Paris\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\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\u003epresence and immediacy\u003c\/strong\u003e.  The saxophone isn't \"back there\" somewhere, way behind the speakers. It's front and center where any recording engineer worth his salt would have put it.\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, full-bodied 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\u003eVinyl Condition\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMint Minus Minus 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":"Gordon, Dexter","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51446275277096,"sku":"gordoourma","price":249.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0257\/3415\/2295\/files\/gordoourmaninparis.jpg?v=1769802138","url":"https:\/\/better-records.com\/products\/gordoourma_2602_4x__","provider":"Better Records","version":"1.0","type":"link"}