This original Vanguard Black Label pressing (VSD-2132) has a side one that’s simply OUT OF THIS WORLD, A Triple Plus all the way.
Why such a high rating? Of all the copies we played, this side one was the perfect blend of Tubey Magical richness coupled with clarity and presence.
Miss Devrath is front and center, live in your living room, as natural a human voice as you will ever hear on record. Of the six sides of this music we are offering today, this was the only Triple Plus side. There is simply nothing to fault; side one on this copy sounds right in a way that no other side we played did. And some of the other sides were quite good; you wouldn’t think the sound was lacking in any way. But after playing this side one it’s clear what the best copies are really capable of — completely natural Demo Disc Sound.
I believe Volume One used to be on the TAS Superdisc List, and for a time the Classic Heavy Vinyl reissue may have been as well. I remember playing the Classic years ago and thinking the sound was not bad, not as awful as most of their stuff, but still far from what it should be.
How anyone can take Classic Records seriously is beyond me, yet HP has many of their records on his Super Disc list and he is certainly not alone in praising their remastered pressings. In our opinion you should be able to hear what’s wrong with their records from another room, a test we would happily submit to.
That dark, hard, smeary, transient- and texture-free sound one hears on all their records is pretty obvious to those of us who listen to vintage vinyl all day. (Vintage vinyl has its own share of problems, just not those.) How the vast majority of audiophile reviewers can be fooled by such second-rate fare is frankly beyond understanding.
Side Two
Excellent, but quite a step down from Side one. Unlike side one, here the voice can be a little hard and piercing when at its loudest. The sound is still quite good: open and clear, not dull, veiled and smeary like so many we played.
The Music
This is an album of folk songs from the Auvergne area of France, arranged by Canteloube. These are some of the most beautiful tunes you’ll ever hear, with delicious orchestration perfectly fitting to the works. Davrath’s pure, innocent young voice is clearly the perfect interpreter of these songs.
This is an Older Vocal Review.
Most of the older reviews you see are for records that did not go through the shootout process, the revolutionary approach to finding better sounding pressings we developed in the early 2000s and have since turned into a fine art.
We found the records you see in these older listings by cleaning and playing a pressing or two of the album, which we then described and priced based on how good the sound and surfaces were. (For out Hot Stamper listings, the Sonic Grades and Vinyl Playgrades are listed separately.)
We were often wrong back in those days, something we have no reason to hide. Audio equipment and record cleaning technologies have come a long way since those darker days, a subject we discuss here.
Currently, 99% (or more!) of the records we sell are cleaned, then auditioned under rigorously controlled conditions, up against a number of other pressings. We award them sonic grades, and then condition check them for surface noise.
As you may imagine, this approach requires a great deal of time, effort and skill, which is why we currently have a highly trained staff of about ten. No individual or business without the aid of such a committed group could possibly dig as deep into the sound of records as we have, and it is unlikely that anyone besides us could ever come along to do the kind of work we do.
The term “Hot Stampers” gets thrown around a lot these days, but to us it means only one thing: a record that has been through the shootout process and found to be of exceptionally high quality.
Not just a good sounding record. A record that was played in a shootout and did well.
The result of our labor are the dozens of Pop and Jazz Vocal titles seen here, every one of which is unique and guaranteed to be the best sounding copy of the album you have ever heard or your money back.
Further Reading