Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Claude Debussy Available Now
In 2005 we played an excellent original pressing of Debussy’s Iberia (LSC 2222) and compared it to the Classic Records reissue. We wrote:
This is a wonderful sounding Shaded Dog pressing. Side two is especially dynamic.
This has long been considered one of the Living Stereo triumphs. The spaciousness and tonal correctness are legendary. However, this copy does not have the prodigious bass of some that I’ve heard.
The Classic reissue has plenty of deep bass, but it’s shrill and hard and altogether unpleasant, so the better bass comes at a steep price.
For better sounding recordings of Iberia, we know of two and they can be found by clicking here.
A typical review of a Classic Records classical release might read very much like this:
Classic Records ruined this album, as anyone who has played some of their classical reissues should have expected.
Their version is dramatically more aggressive, shrill and harsh than the Shaded Dogs we’ve played, with almost none of the sweetness, richness and ambience that the best RCA pressings have in such abundance.
In fact their pressing is just plain awful, like most of the classical recordings they remastered, and should be avoided at any price.
With every improvement we’ve made to our system over the years, Classic’s remastered classical offerings have managed to sound progressively worse. Why is that, you ask?
Better audio stops hiding and starts revealing the shortcomings of bad records.
At the same time, and much more importantly, better audio reveals more and more of the strengths and qualities of good records.
Begging the Question
But what actually is a good record? Don’t I have to offer some evidence for what causes a record to be good rather than simply asserting that the original is good and the Heavy Vinyl reissue is bad, or at least worse?
Luckily for you, dear reader, you are actually on a blog that has much to say about these issues.
There are scores of commentaries on the blog about the huge improvements in audio available to the discerning (and well-healed) audiophile. It’s the main reason Hot Stampers can and do sound dramatically better than their Heavy Vinyl or audiophile counterparts:
Because your stereo is good enough to show you the difference.
With an unrevealing audio system, you will continue to be fooled by bad records, just as I and all my audio buds were fooled twenty and thirty [now forty] years ago.
Audio has improved radically in that time. If you’re still playing audiophile pressings, there’s a world of sound you’re currently missing. We know because we’ve been auditioning records practically every day, all day, for twenty years now and we have heard the changes these improvements in cleaning, tweaking, room treatments and better equipment have made in the sound of the records we play.
One amazing sounding orchestral Hot Stamper pressing might just be what it takes to get the ball rolling. Because explaining doesn’t work, only hearing works.
Further Reading