Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Jean Sibelius Available Now
This is a wonderful sounding London Stereo Treasury pressing featuring one of our favorite violinists, Ruggiero Ricci, performing the Sibelius Violin Concerto in D Minor.
The tone of the violin on side one is just right — every nuance of Ricci’s bowing can clearly be heard.
While the violin sounds amazing on side one, the orchestra lacks a bit of weight.
This side is also not quite as Tubey Magical as it could be. In our opinion, however, the violin tone and the incredible dynamics are more than enough to make us want to award this record a fairly high grade.
Side two actually has a bit more fullness, but this also seems to rob the violin of some of its presence.
This is an older classical/orchestral review.
Most of the older reviews you see are for records that did not go through the shootout process, the revolutionary approach to finding better sounding pressings we developed in the early 2000s and have since turned into a full-time practice for our staff of ten.
We found the records you see in these older listings by cleaning and playing a pressing or two of the album, which we then described and priced based on how good the sound and surfaces were. (For Hot Stamper listings, the sonic grades and vinyl playgrades are listed separately.)
We were often wrong back in those days, something we freely admit.
There is no reason to hide the fact that we know a great deal more now than we used to. Audio equipment and record cleaning technologies have come a long way since those darker days, a subject we discuss here.
100% of the records we offer on our site have been cleaned, then auditioned head to head against a number of other pressings under rigorously controlled conditions. We award the copies in the shootout sonic grades for each of their sides, and then condition check the best sounding ones for surface noise before listing them on the site.
As you may imagine, this approach requires a great deal of time, effort and skill, which requires a highly trained staff. No individual or business without the aid of such a committed group could possibly dig as deep into the sound of records as we have, and it is unlikely that anyone besides us could ever do the work we do, not at scale anyway.
The term “Hot Stampers” gets thrown around a lot these days, but to us it means only one thing: a record that has been through the shootout process and found to be of audiophile quality.
The result of our labor is the hundreds of titles seen here, every one of which is unique and guaranteed to be the best sounding copy of the album you have ever heard, or you get your money back.
Further Reading