Hot Stamper Pressings of Mercury Recordings Available Now
Not a bad Mercury Golden Import, but not a very good one either — there aren’t too many of those by the way — and certainly not in the same league with the better recordings of the work.
Best to give this one a pass if you are looking for audiophile sound.
These days, practically all of the Golden Import reissues we play sound much too much like the bulk of the Philips pressings we’ve auditioned over the years have a tendency to sound:
- overly smooth,
- smeary,
- compressed,
- recessed and
- veiled.
Hot Stamper pressings of Mercury classical and orchestral recordings can be found here.
More than anything, the changes we hear in the records we play now tie into the idea of progress in audio, since without progress the records that sounded good to me in 2006 would still sound good to me now, and thank goodness they don’t.
Live and learn is our motto, onward and upward, and we have made that approach to audio the very foundation of our business.
If you are stuck in a Heavy Vinyl rut, we can help you get out of it. We did precisely that for these folks, and we can do it for you.
(You may of course not be aware that you are stuck in a rut. Most audiophiles aren’t. The best way out of that predicament is to hear how mediocre these modern records sound compared to the vintage Hot Stampers we offer. Once you hear the difference, your days of buying newly remastered releases will most likely be over. Even if our pricey curated pressings are beyond your budget, you can avail yourself of the methods we describe to find killer records on your own.)
We have three categories of sound quality for the thousands of records we’ve auditioned over the years.
- Pressings with excellent sound quality
- Pressings with middling sound quality
- Pressings with weak sound quality or music
For 37 years we’ve been helping music loving audiophiles the world over avoid bad sounding records.
Mostly we write about good sounding records, and there are thousands that can be found here.
If you are in the market for better sounding records, we have hundreds of them for sale here.
Further Reading
- What to listen for on classical records
- Best orchestral performances with top quality sound
- Well recorded classical albums from the core collection available now
