Hot Stamper Pressings of Living Stereo Recordings Available Now
Many years ago, perhaps around 2010, we played a nice copy of LDS 2625 and had this to say about it:
1s/ 2s. Side 2 has DEMO QUALITY sound. These rare Soria pressings have a tendency to be noisy so this is as quiet a copy as you are likely to find.
Unusually smooth. Just the opposite of the Mercury recordings. Perfect for this kind of music.
UPDATE 2025
The last couple of copies we picked up in preparation for a shootout we had been wanting to do were a little bright and would probably have earned grades of 1.5+, which are good, not great Hot Stamper grades.
Unless we can find some better sounding copies — not likely since this album on the original Soria pressing in stereo is rare and usually fairly expensive — we are very unlikely to be offering this title to our customers anytime soon.
Seems we got this one wrong. Live and learn is our motto, for precisely this reason.
Leave this RCA to the collectors. Some audiophiles are of the opinion that vintage Living Stereo recordings on the original label can do no wrong, but we do not subscribe to that view. We’ve played too many of them that don’t sound especially good.
There are quite a number of other records that we’ve run into over the years with shortcomings. Here are some of them, a very small fraction of what we’ve played, broken down by label.
- London/Decca records with weak sound or performances
- Mercury records with weak sound or performances
- RCA records with weak sound or performances
1962 was a phenomenal year for audiophile quality recordings – we’ve auditioned and reviewed more than one hundred and twenty titles as of 2025, and there are undoubtedly a great many more that we’ve yet to discover.
When it comes to classical and orchestral titles, more than a dozen are so good that we would consider them Must Owns.
Further Reading