Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Gustav Holst Available Now
This recording has what we here at Better Records like to call blockbuster sound.
Even on the best copies, the recording does not sound very much like a live orchestra, nor is it actually even trying to sound like a live orchestra in concert.
It’s trying to be huge and powerful in your home.
Which is more in line with a rock Demo Disc such as Crime of the Century or Dark Side of the Moon.
Everything has been carefully and artificially placed in the soundfield. Each instrument or group of intstruments is given its own space and (sometimes ridiculous) location.
It’s clearly not the recreation of a live orchestral event.
No live concert I have ever attended sounds anything like this record.
Instead it’s the actual creation of a unique orchestral sound, with unique staging of its own design. Lots of microphones were used, which cause instruments and sometimes whole sections of the orchestra to appear in places and take up spaces they could not possibly occupy in reality.
If you have a good-sized listening room and your stereo images well, with realistic three-dimensional staging and depth, you will have no trouble hearing what we are talking about with any pressing of the album.
This is the sound that Bernard Herrmann made such wonderful use of with his series of Phase IV recordings for Decca, rather different than the four mics and two stereo channels of the Fiedler Gaite Parisienne from RCA in 1954.
Which is ironic. HP talked about The Absolute Sound of live unamplified music as being the standard, yet somehow this recording ended up in his Top Twelve all time greats. Makes no sense to me, but neither do many of the records on the TAS Super Disc list.
That said, our current favorite Planets is the other Planets on the TAS List, Previn’s reading on EMI from 1974.
If I were in charge of the TAS Super Disc list, I certainly would not have put this record on it.
Here are some others that we do not think qualify as Super Discs.
Speakers Corner and Super Analogue
Avoid both of the above mentioned Heavy Vinyl pressings. I would award a failing grade to the former; it’s unbelievably bad. I’d go with a C Minus or so for the Super Analogue. It’s not awful but it is smeary, veiled, bloated and dark like most of the records that label put out. Any good import pressing will kill it.
VTA
Accurate VTA adjustment for classical records is critical to their proper reproduction. If you do not have an arm that allows you to easily adjust its VTA, then you will just have to do it the hard way (which normally means loosening a set screw and moving the arm up and down until you get lucky with the right height).
Yes, it may be time consuming, it may even be a major pain in the ass, but there is no question in my mind that you will hear a dramatic improvement in the sound of your classical records once you have learned to precisely adjust the VTA for each and every one of them. We heard the improvement on this record, and do pretty much on all the classical LPs we play. (All records really.) VTA is not a corner you should be cutting. Its careful adjustment is critical. Of course, so are anti-skate, azimuth and tracking weight.
Further Reading