{"product_id":"moodyonthe_2605","title":"Moody Blues, The - On The Threshold Of A Dream - Super Hot Stamper (With Issues)","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\u003eBoth sides give you silky highs, surprising clarity, amazing openness and transparency, real weight to the bottom end, lots of air in the flutes, wonderful texture to the strings, and so much more. The acoustic guitars sound impressive, with the proper balance between pluck and body. The vocals are shockingly clean and clear throughout.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCopies like this bring all the psychedelic Moody Blues magic to life in your living room. The richness, sweetness, and warmth on this one give you exactly the sound you want for this wild music. You get lovely Tubey Magic and clarity. The sound is cleaner, clearer, richer, sweeter, and more present that you could have imagined.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt has been my experience that as good as the British originals of the Moody Blues records are -- and I think they are the best sounding pressings of their music that can be found -- their one consistent shortcoming is an overly smooth top end. We managed to find a handful of copies that break with that tradition, and the results are wonderful.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eWhat The Best Sides Of On The Threshold Of A Dream 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:%221969%22\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e1969\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\u003eNo Sacrifice Necessary - You Can Have It All\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAllow me to steal some commentary from our last Moody Blues Hot Stamper shootout winner, the one we did for the wonderful Lost Chord, in which we say that all the clarity and resolution comes...\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cu\u003ewithout\u003c\/u\u003e \u003cu\u003esacrificing\u003c\/u\u003e the Tubey Magical richness, warmth and lushness for which the Moody Blues recordings are justifiably famous. We're not kidding -- this pressing presents this music in a way that no previous LP of it that we've ever played could. It's so correct from top to bottom, so present and alive, while still retaining all the richness and sweetness we expect from British Moody Blues records, that we find it hard to believe you can do any better, in this life anyway. This copy managed to take the Moodies' wonderful music to another level. It's the very definition of a Hot Stamper.\u003c\/blockquote\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eWhat We're Listening For On On The Threshold Of A Dream\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\u003ecomes 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\u003eThree Qualities to Look For\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAchieving just the right balance of \"Moody Blues Sound\" and transparency is no mean feat. You have to be using the real master tape for starters. Then you need top extension, a very rare quality of these imports, and finally, good bass definition to keep the bottom end from blurring the midrange. No domestic copy in our experience has ever had these three qualities, and only the best of the imports manages to get all three on the same LP.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Nautilus Half-Speed is actually pretty good but it sure doesn't sound like this. It robs the music of some essential energy, ambiance, and warmth. Those of you with budget front-ends will find the Nautilus to be very enjoyable, but if you've put a lot of time, energy, and money into your system then there is no substitute for the real thing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eCutting Through the Moody Muck from Way Back When\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLittle by little over the course of 2007-2008 things began to change. We came up with a number of much more sophisticated and advanced cleaning techniques.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe ruler-flat, super-clean and clear Dynavector 17d replaced the more forgiving, less accurate 20x.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe EAR 324 we acquired at the beginning of 2007 was a \u003ci\u003ebig\u003c\/i\u003e step up over the 834p in terms of resolution and freedom from distortion slash coloration.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAnd the third pair of Hallographs had much the same effect, taking out the room distortions that compromise transparency and three-dimensionality.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWith the implementation of a number of other seemingly insignificant tweaks, each of which made a subtle but recognizable improvement, the cumulative effect of all of the above was now clearly making a difference. The combination of so many improvements was nothing less than dramatic.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWe saw the Moody Blues, not through a glass darkly, but clearly for the first time, and we loved what we were hearing.\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":"Moody Blues","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51802420379944,"sku":"moodyonthe","price":149.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0257\/3415\/2295\/files\/moodyonthe.jpg?v=1759851248","url":"https:\/\/better-records.com\/products\/moodyonthe_2605","provider":"Better Records","version":"1.0","type":"link"}