Hot Stamper Pressings of Orchestral Spectaculars Available Now
This London original pressing with 1K/1K stampers was so bright, dry, and shrill I could hardly stand to listen to it for more than the minute it took me to realize it was not going to get any better. The sound is bad enough to send it right into our hall of shame.
There are a number of other Deccas and Londons that we’ve played over the years that were disappointing, and they can be found here.
The copy we had back in 2010 was a very good sounding record, or so we thought.
Maybe we were wrong! It’s not as though we don’t admit to the possibility. You can read all about it below.
Falla’s Three-Cornered Hat is positively WONDERFUL on this copy (A++), and the Sinfonia Sevillana by Turina on side two is every bit as good! The second suite on side one is particularly lovely — check out how rich and full the sound is. Side two has a HUGE soundstage, as wide as they come. The sound is very rich and full of audiophile colors — this is the kind of record that you’re going to love playing for your audio pals!
Argenta brings the authentic Spanish flavor out in these works. Like so many audiophile reviewers over the years, you may find these performances definitive.
The strings on the first side are a bit dry to start, kind of like the sound many of you will recognize from Mercury’s classical records. Still, there’s much to like about the sound and you’ll have a very hard time finding a copy that’s any better. Most pressings do not have such an extended top end, and that quality here really brings this music to life.
On many copies the strings are somewhat dry, lacking Tubey Magic. This is decidedly not our sound, although it can easily be heard on many London pressings, the kind we’ve played by the hundreds over the years.
If you have a rich sounding cartridge, perhaps with that little dip in the upper midrange that so many moving coils have these days, you will not notice this tonality issue nearly as much as we do.
Our 17D3 is ruler flat and quite unforgiving in this regard.
It makes our shootouts much easier, but brings out the flaws in all but the best pressings, exactly the job we require it to do.
We discussed the issue in a commentary entitled Hi-Fi Beats My-Fi If You Are At All Serious about Audio.
Here are some of the other records we’ve discovered that are good for testing string tone and texture.
If audiophiles and audiophile reviewers are noticing these things on the records they review, whether it be in magazines or on audiophile forums, why aren’t they discussing them?
You, dear reader, since you are reading the only writer that has been criticizing these know-nothings for more than three decades now, surely know the answer to that one.