More Mercury Living Presence Records
Oh, and airless. Make that five words.
It’s been quite a while since I played the Classic pressing, but I remember it as unpleasantly hard and sour. Many of the later Mercury reissues pressed by Columbia had some of that sound, so I was already familiar with it when their pressing came out in 1998 as part of the just-plain-awful Mercury series they released.
I suspect I would hear it that way today. Bernie Grundman could cut the bass, the dynamics, and the energy onto the record.
Everything else was worse 99% of the time.
The fast transients of the plucked strings of the Balalaikas were way beyond the ability of his colored and crude cutting system.
In addition, harmonic extension and midrange delicacy were qualities that practically no Classic Records Heavy Vinyl pressing could claim to have.
Or, to be precise, they claimed to have them, and whether audiophiles really believed they did or not, Classic Records sure fooled a lot of them and the reviewers that pour out the facile and reductive superficialities that pass these days for audio journalism.
The better your stereo gets, the worse those records sound, and they continue to fall further and further behind with each passing year.
FURTHER READING
The sonic signature of the modern Heavy Vinyl Classical Reissue in Five Words: Diffuse, Washed Out, Veiled, and Vague
Classic Records – Rock and Pop
and we can’t forget this one
Bad Sounding Audiophile Records – The Complete List
And finally,
A Confession
One final note of honesty. Even as recently as the early 2000s we were still somewhat impressed with many of the better Heavy Vinyl pressings. If we had never made the progress we’ve worked so hard to make over the course of the last twenty plus years, perhaps we would find more merit in the Heavy Vinyl reissues so many audiophiles seem to prefer.
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 or worse.
Setting higher standards — no, being able to set higher standards — in our minds is a clear mark of progress. We know that many of our customers see things the same way.