More of the Music of Coleman Hawkins
More Reviews and Commentaries for Live Jazz Club Recordings
Sonic Grade: F
An Audiophile Hall of Shame pressing and another Classic Records Jazz LP poorly mastered for the benefit of audiophiles looking for easy answers and quick fixes.
The copy of the Classic I auditioned back in 1995 had Hawkin’s horn sounding squawky and sour. We never carried it.
I liked many of their other jazz titles — they did a better job with jazz than any other kind of music — but this was not their finest hour. Unless I got a bad copy, always a possibility.
Further Reading
Below you will find our reviews of the more than 200 Heavy Vinyl pressings we’ve played over the years. Feel free to pick your poison.
And finally,
A Confession
Even as recently as the early 2000s, we were still impressed with many of the better Heavy Vinyl pressings. If we’d never made the progress we’ve worked so hard to make over the course of the last twenty or more years, perhaps we would find more merit in the Heavy Vinyl reissues so many audiophiles seem impressed by.
We’ll never know of course; that’s a bell that can be unrung. We did the work, we can’t undo it, and the system that resulted from it is merciless in revealing the truth — that these newer pressings are second-rate at best and much more often than not third-rate and even worse.
Some audiophile records sound so bad, I was pissed off enough to create a special list for them.
Setting higher standards — no, being able to set higher standards — in our minds is a clear mark of progress. Judging by the hundreds of letters we’ve received, especially the ones comparing our records to their Heavy Vinyl and Half-Speed Mastered counterparts, we know that our customers see things the same way.