Hot Stamper Pressings of Recordings with Heifetz Performing
An audiophile hall of shame pressing from Cisco / Impex / Boxstar / whatever.
The Cisco pressing of LSC 2577 should not have sound that is acceptable to any person who considers himself an audiophile.
There is no violinist in front of you when you play their pressing.
There is someone back behind your speakers under a thick blanket, and his violin sure doesn’t sound very much like a real violin — no rosiny texture, no extended harmonics, no real body.
In short, the sound of this reissue is much too smeary, veiled, and lacking in presence to be taken seriously.
Unfortunately for those of us who love good music with good sound, Cisco’s releases from this era (as well as DCC’s) had to fight their way through Kevin Gray’s transistory, opaque, airless, low-resolution cutting system. We discuss that subject in more depth here.
Rejected
I am proud to say we rejected this title out of hand when we first auditioned it in 2008 and never offered it for sale. (Their Peer Gynt released about the same time was every bit as bad.)
We’ve played dozens and dozens of good violin recordings. We have no problem recognizing good violin sound when we hear it.
When this record was remastered back in 2008, most of our better sounding Hot Stamper classical pressings would go directly to our best customers, customers who wanted classical recordings that actually sounded good. not just the kind of Golden Age Recordings that were supposed to.
Don’t get us wrong — we’re not foolish enough to make any claims for audiophile quality sound on the typical vintage classical record. We’ve played too many to make that mistake.
Bad sounding Golden Age records are the rule, not the exception.
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