Owner of Better Records, Tom Port, in California on May 23. I don’t have one of those, but I’ve brought three copies with me, all of which claim to be on the cutting edge of new audio technology. Original copies in top condition regularly sell for more than $1,500. On the menu today, at my request, is jazz trumpeter Kenny Dorham’s 1959 album “Quiet Kenny.” It’s an elegant album that has become a collector’s item. Sunshine English, a staffer, sits at a VPI turntable outfitted with a Dynavector cartridge. Port sits in a chair on one side of the room, its position marked under each leg with blue electrical tape. Speaker wires hang from the ceiling like renegade strands of linguine so as not to cross and cause feedback. So Port and his staff at Better Records sit for hours in a windowless room, unplug the small refrigerator in the back so as not to get any electrical interference, and simply listen. You can’t find the best-sounding record by reading the marketing sticker proclaiming the latest advances in audio technology. So many things can impact the pressing, including room temperature, the split second the stampers are pressed onto the hot, vinyl biscuit, and unknown factors no human can understand. Port believes that records are like snowflakes - no two are the same.
They’re just so beyond anything you’ve ever heard, and you just can’t believe it.” You may have only five of them in your whole collection. “I want the best, and that’s exactly what should be driving you. Pepper’ I’ve played or ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ are well over 100, maybe close to 200, to find the ones that are really good,” Port says. It’s just one stop on my year-long search for the perfect sound, an attempt to take a lifelong passion for music and find out if I’ve really been hearing it. Port developed his self-proclaimed skills over decades of scouring used LP bins, gathering up multiple copies of the same album and comparing them side by side - listening sessions he calls “shootouts.” That’s what I’m here today to observe. He delights in telling you that the slab of vinyl you’re listening to isn’t worthy of his ears and the only thing more pathetic is the audio setup you’re using to listen to it. This is a task for which he considers himself uniquely qualified. Tom Port is a 68-year-old man who spends his days in an office park outside Los Angeles where he takes it upon himself to determine which records are the best-sounding in the world.
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