Hot Stamper Pressings of Orchestral Spectaculars Available Now
May I refer you to the review Jonathin Valin wrote in 2013 for the Analogue Productions Scheherazade. (Emphasis added.)
LSC 2446 Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade. Grade: A+.
Another one of HP’s favorites, this LP (at least in its earliest pressings) is famously wonderful sounding, and the Analogue Productions version certainly lives up to the hype.
Once again string tone—and this disc is celebrated for its string tone—is ravishingly beautiful. The bass is astonishing, deep and authoritative. And dynamics are tremendous.
We Beg to Differ
The bass is not authoratative, it is overblown and annoying.
The dynamics are not tremendous, they are, in fact, lacking.
The string tone is at best passable – ravishingly beautiful is hopelessly off the mark.
A properly-mastered, properly-pressed vintage RCA should sound more or less like this one.
Worlds better in every way.
If I were in charge of the TAS Super Disc list, obviously I would not have put this record on it.
It’s not a Super Disc. It’s not even a Very Good disc.
To be honest, it’s actually a pretty Bad Disc. The TAS List is full of them these days.
Granted, it always had some bad records on it, but now it has a great many, with more being added every year, most of them pressed on Heavy Vinyl.
Reviewers
One of the things we’ve made an effort to do on this blog is to point out obvious shortcomings of the audiophile reviewers writing today, whether on websites or youtube.
It is our belief — backed by mountains of vinyl evidence — that these individuals have been misinforming and misleading our fellow enthusiasts for years. They’ve needed to be called to account for a very long time. We figured that was a job we could do as well as anyone. Better, if I may say so.
We also criticize the mastering engineers who are currently doing woefully shoddy work, criticism which some find objectionable.
We, however, see this as just another one of the many services we are uniquely qualified to provide to the audiophile community, especially in light of the fact that no one else seems interested in doing it other than our good friend and fellow record lover Robert Brook.
We’ve heard with our own ears thousands of amazing sounding vintage pressings — plain old records which make a mockery of the vinyl pressed today. They are yet more proof that the purportedly superior sound of remastered LPs is rarely if ever more than a shameful money-grab.
We regret that we waited until 2007 to wash our hands of these modern mediocrities, long after our stereo was good enough to make their shortcomings obvious beyond question.
Yes, we were late to the party, but the fact is that the party celebrating the demise of the badly-mastered audiophile record has never been held. It is long overdue.
Since no one else in the mainstream audiophile community will follow our lead, I guess we will have to limit the guest list to those who have acquired some of our wonderful Hot Stamper pressings, a somewhat smaller group but one that makes up for their lack of numbers with boatloads of enthusiasm. We wouldn’t have it any other way.
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The TAS List, back when I was just starting out in the 70s, comprised a great many excellent recordings that were not widely known. To be honest, most of it was over my head, including what HP was saying in his commentary concerning the strengths of the recordings — lots of talk of depth, soundstaging, the sound of one concert hall compared to another, etc. I was playing Crime of the Century on MoFi.
Once Classic Records pressings of the great Living Stereo recordings started showing up there in the 90s, we knew the standards of the old days were gone. (Although, to be fair, there were always plenty of questionable titles on the list.)
Now the list is populated by one Heavy Vinyl mediocrity after another, a sad state of affairs if you ask me.
There are probably more records on the current list that do not qualify as Super Discs than those that do, but I can’t say I am inclined to calculate the ratio.
And many of these albums contain music that is much too esoteric to be taken seriously by most music lovers. Harry always said the list was about sound, not music, so we recognize that this criticism is not fair. We happily concede that many of the titles on the list have the potential for excellent sound. We just couldn’t care less and neither do our customers. For that reason, we have no intention of doing shootouts for them.
As long as the music holds no appeal for us, we have better things to do with our time, time which we spend discovering amazing sounding pressings of music that will stand the test of time.
For our purposes, as purveyors of albums commanding prices well into the hundreds of dollars, we do not have the luxury of considering only the sound quality of the records we offer.
However, there is still one uniquely valuable service we can offer those who are still fans of The Absolute Sound Super Disc List.
We can join in the fun and offer the TAS-head a fairly good selection of Hot Stamper pressings of TAS List titles that actually have audiophile sound quality, all 100% guaranteed or your money back.
Further Reading