More of the music of Gustav Holst (1874-1934)
Reviews and Commentaries for The Planets
This EMI 45 RPM Japanese Import 2 LP set is considered one of the great Planets by many audiophiles, but it’s not, based on our playing of a copy we had years ago, which means it belongs in our audiophile hall of shame.
The best copies on British or Dutch EMI vinyl are clearly better than this “audiophile” pressing.
What could be less surprising?
This is precisely why we dislike Japanese pressings as a rule — they sound like this audiophile trash.
Our favorite performance of The Planets can be found here.
The Big Picture from a Lifelong Audiophile
You may have seen the following text in another listing, but it bears repeating.
There is nothing new under the sun, and that is especially true when it comes to bad sounding audiophile records. The world is full of them.
There has been one big change from the days when I self-identified as a freshly minted audiophile in the 70s.
Yes, the records being marketed to audiophiles these days may have second- and third-rate sound, but at least now they have good music. That’s progress, right?
The title reviewed above is a good example of the kind of crap we newbie audiophiles used to put up with back in the old days, long before we had anything resembling a clue.
This one clearly belongs on our list of bad audiophile records.
You might be asking: What kind of audio fool was I? to buy a dumbass record like this.
It’s a fair question. Yes, I admit I was foolish enough to buy records like this and expect it to have good music, or at least good sound. Of course it had neither. Practically none of these kinds of records ever did. Sheffield and a few others made some good ones, but most Direct to Disc recordings were crap.
As clueless as I was, even back in the day I could tell that I had just thrown my money away on this lipsticked-pig in a poke.
But I was an audiophile, and like a certain Mr. Mulder, I wanted to believe. These special super-hi-fidelity records were being made for me, for special people like me, because I had expensive equipment and regular records are never going to be good enough to play on my special equipment, right?
To say I was wrong to think about audio that way is obviously an understatement. Over the course of the last forty years, I (and to be fair, my friends and my staff) have been wrong about a lots of things in the worlds of records and audio.
You can read more about many of the things we got wrong under the heading: live and learn.
The good news? Audio progress is real and anyone who goes about doing audio the right way can achieve the equivalent of miracles.
Further Reading
- Record collecting for audiophiles – 45 RPM pressings
- Record collecting for audiophiles – Japanese pressings
- Record collecting for audiophiles – a guide to understanding the fundamentals
