Near Demo Quality. Solti is magnificent here. This record has even better sound than the famous Barbarolli. Another Wilkinson/ Kingsway winner.
It would be demo quality if it were recorded in ’67 instead of ’77; it doesn’t quite hang together in the climaxes the way an earlier recording would.
This lovely Island Sunray British Import LP has some of the BEST SOUND I’ve ever heard for this band. Glyn Johns has done it again! Side one is amazing — super sweet and spacious, OVERFLOWING with tubey magic. If you love trippy pop as much as we do here at Better Records — think Dark Side of the Moon, Taking Tiger Mountain, Ambrosia, Magical Mystery Tour, Thick As A Brick and the like — you may find this one right up your alley.
The sound by Glyn Johns absolutely blew us away; not many records in the last thirty years have been recorded this well. (more…)
Excellent sound for these tough-to-come-by early Willie Nelson songs! This is a compilation of material from some of Willie’s earlier albums, records that are very hard to find these days and almost impossible to find with great sound and clean surfaces. Fortunately, this record was cut very well, giving us a chance to hear just how good this music can sound.
This album features a bunch of Willie originals plus great covers of Help Me Make It Through The Night, Everybody’s Talkin’ and Both Sides Now. Tracking down the original albums these songs come from would be a tough task for anyone, and acquiring Hot Stamper copies would be prohibitively expensive for all but the most die-hard fans of the Red Headed Stranger. (more…)
Superb Sound on this Victrola pressing, with TRANSPARENCY, spaciousness and low level detail you will not believe.
And plenty of Living Stereo COLOR.
DEMO QUALITY SOUND, if what you’re demonstrating is the three dimensional quality of Living Stereo recordings. Amazing space, depth and width can be heard on this side one. And the music is sublime.
The low level detail in the opening and the amount of ambience heard in the quieter sections is shockingly realistic Yes, the recording is compressed, which led me to think that the entire record was compressed, but that’s not completely true. In some parts it’s quite dynamic. The quiet portions are very quiet; in a couple of places there are just horns playing off in the deep distance, followed by some flutes, and they sound very natural, just as you would hear them in a concert hall. (more…)
More of the Music of Billy Joel
We played about a dozen different copies of this record this week (11/01/07), and some of them were OUT OF THIS WORLD! The comments we made recently about Revolver are equally true for Songs in the Attic.
Both records are exceedingly difficult to reproduce, and both have come a long way sonically since our last shootout.
Notes from 2007
Over the course of the last year things have changed for the better. We’ve come up with a number of much more sophisticated and advanced cleaning techniques (which we will talk about at a later date so stay tuned). The ruler-flat, super-clean and clear Dynavector 17d replaced the more forgiving, less accurate 20x. The EAR 324 we acquired at the beginning of 2007 was a BIG step up over the 834p in terms of resolution and freedom from distortion slash coloration. And the third pair of Hallographs had much the same effect, taking out the room distortions that compromise transparency and three-dimensionality. With 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.
1965 Live Analog at its best. Present and lively with solid, full-bodied tonality, thanks to the engineering of the legendary Fred Plaut. A wonderful live performance, showcasing the more lyrical side of Miles.
Superb sound for this Columbia pressing. The bottom end is strong and full-bodied, there’s plenty of space and presence, and the tonality of the horns is right on.
The lineup on this record is fantastic, featuring George Coleman, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter and Tony Williams. (more…)
More of the Music of Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880)
This is one of the pressings we’ve discovered with Reversed Polarity.
Amazing in every way! The top end of this record is clear, clean and correct. No other copy sounded like this one on the first side. When you hear all the percussion instruments — the tambourines, triangles, wood blocks and what-have-you — you know instantly that they sound RIGHT.
The overall sound is very different from many of the other recordings of the work that we have offered in the past. Rather than smooth, rich and sweet, the sound here is big and bold and clear like nothing we have ever played.
This is Front Row Center sound for those whose systems can reproduce it!
And this is truly a top performance by Fistoulari and the Royal Philharmonic. I know of none better. For music and sound this is the one!
Side One
The Triple Plus sound makes this THE Gaite Parisienne to Own.
If you have a hot copy of LSC 1817 consider yourself very fortunate. If your copy of LSC 1817 has never thrilled you, then this pressing will beat the pants off it, as it is pretty darn THRILLING. Even if you do have a great 1817 I would still put this up against it and expect it to win the shootout.
It’s clear, clean and above all, TRANSPARENT. This is a claim no modern remastered record, in our opinion, can make. The energy is spectacular on this side. Not only that, but listen to the bite of the brass — that’s some high-rez sound! (more…)