The Classic Records pressing of the famous Mercury is a gritty, shrill piece of crap.
I used to have a less-than-revealing all-tube system back in the 90s, but even that system, limited as it was and not remotely as revealing as the one we have now would have had a hard time hiding the faults of this awful record.
I don’t know how dull and smeary a stereo would have to be in order to play a record this phony and modern sounding in order to make it listenable, but I know that it would have to be very dull and very smeary, with the kind of vintage sound that might work for Classic’s Heavy Vinyl pressings but not much else.
It’s a disgrace, and the fact that it’s on the TAS Super Disc list is even more disgraceful.
Which all adds up to an audiophile hall of shame pressing and a record perfectly suited to the stone age stereos of the past.
Argenta and Ansermet
I much prefer Ansermet’s performances on London to those of Paray on Mercury.
As of 2022 we actually prefer the famous Argenta recording for Decca that’s on the TAS List, CS 6006.
Both are excellent and clearly superior to the Paray, even on the original Mercury pressings we’ve played.
UPDATE 2024:
This recording is no longer on the TAS Super Disc list. Our favorite, the London with Argenta, is however.
We call that progress! Maybe there’s hope for the TAS List yet.
The standard Classic Records failings are as obvious and as irritating on this remaster as they are on practically all the other records they released. The main ones we would point the reader to are these:
- A lack of ambience.
- Smeary and hard strings.
- A lack of Tubey Magic.
- An overall veiled and recessed presentation.
In a recent commentary we went into some detail about Bernie Grundman’s shortcomings as a mastering engineer.
Those shortcomings are on full display on this famous Mercury, which even on this dreadful reissue somehow ended up on the TAS Super Disc list.
Proof positive that the TAS list is no longer a guide to top quality recordings, if it ever was.
Further Reading
The sonic signature of the modern Heavy Vinyl Classical reissue in four words: diffuse, washed out, veiled, and vague.
Here are some of our reviews and commentaries concerning the many Heavy Vinyl pressings we’ve played over the years, well over 200 at this stage of the game. Feel free to pick your poison.
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 or more years, perhaps we would find more merit in the Heavy Vinyl reissues so many audiophiles seem impressed by.
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 and even worse.
Some audiophile records sound have such poor sound, they had me so pissed off I was motivated to create a special ring of hell for them.
Setting higher standards — no, being able to set higher standards — in our minds is a clear mark of progress. Judging by the hundreds of letters we’ve received, especially the ones comparing our records to their Heavy Vinyl and Half-Speed mastered counterparts, we know that our customers see things the same way.
Further Reading
- Unsolicited audio advice
- Basic concepts and realities explained
- Reviews for the worst sounding Heavy Vinyl pressings we played in 2024 and 2025
