As one of the people who participated in that RCA Living Stereo Scheherazade "shootout", I have no idea of what Tom Port is on about in that interview. Firstly, the files I received were definitely NOT named in any way so as to enable us to differentiate between them based just on that. We simply received two files of the same excerpt and each was generically named. So there was no possible way to tell just by looking at the file names, nor anything else for that matter.
Secondly, the point of the exercise wasn't so much a double blind test to work out which was which mainly because almost everyone acknowledged they sounded quite different to each other. This was never going to be a really challenging shootout like comparing cables or high res PCM versus DSD. The difference was significant to begin with, so it was more of a test to establish which of the two we listeners preferred (if indeed we did have a preference for one or the other, after all, we might have decided both were great despite sounding so different to each other).
For my own part, as an extremely experienced listener to golden age classical recordings, it was no trouble at all to tell which LP was which, as was the case for many other experienced listeners. And really, nothing came as a surprise. It was pretty obvious to me that the newer release was closer sounding to other efforts in recent years that are known to be "closer to the master tape" (that itself being based on commentaries provided over the years by people who have made qualified comparisons of RCA Living Stereo releases to the master tapes). So in other words, the new Analogue productions pressing was deemed "more accurate". But even knowing this, I preferred the "hot stamper". But not because it was a Tom Port Hot Stamper. It was because in the specific area of acoustic instrumental timbre (my number 1 priority in any aspect of audio reproduction) it simply sounded more like what I hear in the concert hall and was a more organic experience, particularly when it came to string sound. Certain other things were not as good as the new AP pressing though.
I have often felt that some of the reason for my preferring the original releases is that back in the very early days, engineers were aiming for that final sound on the LP itself and did whatever was needed in all the preceding steps to obtain that sound. And I doubt when doing this in the 50s and 60s they were expecting that one day almost 50 years hence, someone would take the original session master tapes and make high resolution digital transcriptions of them - basically "flat", and then sell them to the public like that!
Incidentally, I also definitely recall from my listening notes that whilst preferring the Hot Stamper, there was no way in the world I felt it was worth anything remotely like the asking money compared to the $30 AP release. Would I ever buy one of these hot stampers? In theory yes, but only in the circumstance where I was desperate for a title that I felt sure would never be reissued by one of the audiophile reissue labels. I have little to no doubt that if you buy a Hot Stamper you are going to be very satisfied. But obviously acquiring (or even rounding off) a collection that way would be cost prohibitive for most listeners. I don't even begrudge the asking price - it is a huge amount of work to do what he does. It's just that in the end, when you can get a really good sounding record by Analogue Productions for $30, it is very hard to justify the prices of original releases- even when they are cherry picked mint minuses.
Secondly, the point of the exercise wasn't so much a double blind test to work out which was which mainly because almost everyone acknowledged they sounded quite different to each other. This was never going to be a really challenging shootout like comparing cables or high res PCM versus DSD. The difference was significant to begin with, so it was more of a test to establish which of the two we listeners preferred (if indeed we did have a preference for one or the other, after all, we might have decided both were great despite sounding so different to each other).
For my own part, as an extremely experienced listener to golden age classical recordings, it was no trouble at all to tell which LP was which, as was the case for many other experienced listeners. And really, nothing came as a surprise. It was pretty obvious to me that the newer release was closer sounding to other efforts in recent years that are known to be "closer to the master tape" (that itself being based on commentaries provided over the years by people who have made qualified comparisons of RCA Living Stereo releases to the master tapes). So in other words, the new Analogue productions pressing was deemed "more accurate". But even knowing this, I preferred the "hot stamper". But not because it was a Tom Port Hot Stamper. It was because in the specific area of acoustic instrumental timbre (my number 1 priority in any aspect of audio reproduction) it simply sounded more like what I hear in the concert hall and was a more organic experience, particularly when it came to string sound. Certain other things were not as good as the new AP pressing though.
I have often felt that some of the reason for my preferring the original releases is that back in the very early days, engineers were aiming for that final sound on the LP itself and did whatever was needed in all the preceding steps to obtain that sound. And I doubt when doing this in the 50s and 60s they were expecting that one day almost 50 years hence, someone would take the original session master tapes and make high resolution digital transcriptions of them - basically "flat", and then sell them to the public like that!
Incidentally, I also definitely recall from my listening notes that whilst preferring the Hot Stamper, there was no way in the world I felt it was worth anything remotely like the asking money compared to the $30 AP release. Would I ever buy one of these hot stampers? In theory yes, but only in the circumstance where I was desperate for a title that I felt sure would never be reissued by one of the audiophile reissue labels. I have little to no doubt that if you buy a Hot Stamper you are going to be very satisfied. But obviously acquiring (or even rounding off) a collection that way would be cost prohibitive for most listeners. I don't even begrudge the asking price - it is a huge amount of work to do what he does. It's just that in the end, when you can get a really good sounding record by Analogue Productions for $30, it is very hard to justify the prices of original releases- even when they are cherry picked mint minuses.
